Fig. 1. Overlay image of the similar-looking figures in Jean Honoré Fragonard's Head of an Italian Peasant (left) and Diogenes (right)
«Two drawings hang side by side in the middle gallery of the exhibition Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant—Works from New York Collections. Their subjects, bearded men with dark, curly hair, bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. Both depict their sitter in three-quarter view, directing a penetrating gaze toward the viewer. Both were executed in brush and brown wash, with the artist first laying down areas of pale golden-brown wash to describe the weathered topography of the man's face, followed by progressively darker touches to accentuate the features and dark hair.»
Left: Fig. 2. Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806). Head of an Italian Peasant, 1774. Brush and brown wash over black chalk underdrawing, 12 1/4 x 9 1/2 in. (31 x 24 cm). Private collection
The first sheet, Head of an Italian Peasant (fig. 2), was made in Rome in 1774, when the artist was on a yearlong tour through Italy and eastern Europe in the company of his wealthy friend and patron Pierre Jacques Onésyme Bergeret de Grancourt. Fragonard had visited Italy once before, in his youth, but this trip allowed the artist the freedom to choose his own subjects. Rather than copy the remnants of antiquity and the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance, as students were assigned to do, he focused on the living inhabitants of the Eternal City.
His drawings during this period include many sharply observed portraits of friends and companions, but they also record the colorful figures he would have encountered on the streets: dwarfs, fishermen, vendors, and entertainers. The vocation of the bearded man in this drawing is not clear. Fragonard seems to have been drawn to the time-worn quality of his face, furrowed brow, and hair. The man is presented sympathetically, with a psychological intensity unusual for this period.
Right: Fig. 3. Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806). Diogenes, 1774. Brush and gray-brown wash over traces of black chalk underdrawing, 14 x 11 in. (35.5 x 27.9 cm). Private collection
Fragonard made the second sheet, Diogenes (fig. 3), under very different circumstances. In late August of the same year while on their way back to Paris, Fragonard, Bergeret, and the rest of their entourage stopped in Dresden. They spent over a week in the city, making regular visits to the princely collections of the Elector of Saxony, who opened his painting galleries to visitors.
One canvas that particularly caught the artist's eye was Jusepe de Ribera's bust-length portrayal of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes (d. 323 B.C.) (fig. 4). In the Spanish painter's haunting work, Diogenes, who sought to escape the corruption of civilization, is depicted with a full beard and wrapped in a dark mantle. He grasps his lantern, an attribute that alludes to his search, in broad daylight, for an honest man in the marketplace.
Left: Fig. 4. Jusepe de Ribera (Spanish, 1591–1652). Diogenes, 1637. Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in. (76 x 61 cm). Staatliche Kunstsammlingen, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
One could dismiss the twin-like resemblance of these two bearded men as a simple coincidence since, on some level, it is. However, the pairing also exposes deeper truths of Fragonard's working process and artistic sensibility. For him, the distinction between observed reality and the art of the past was never hard and fast. Rather, the fluid exchange between the two is one of the underlying characteristics that unites his work.
In recording the features and weary expression of a man who posed for him in Rome, Fragonard stands before his subject, brush in hand, but also sees him through the filter of the art of the past, remembering the old men that populate not only his own compositions, but those of Tiepolo and Rembrandt before him. Thus, the unidentified sitter of Fragonard's drawing is at once a living, breathing person and a timeless archetype, rich in artistic pedigree.
Likewise, the man Fragonard had drawn from life in Rome must have been still vivid in his memory when he later came across Ribera's painting in Dresden. While the drawing he made in Germany is an accurate rendition of the Baroque painter's composition, it is at the same time infused with a naturalism and psychological depth carried over from his experience making life studies. The comparison of these two works is a perfect illustration of the ways in which Fragonard's work leads viewers to question accepted notions of what is an "original" and what is a "copy."
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Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant—Works from New York Collections, on view at The Met Fifth Avenue through January 8, 2017