A Game of Hot Cockles

c. 1775/1780

Jean Honoré Fragonard

Painter, French, 1732 - 1806

Towering, pale, celery-green trees frame a view of a lush park with about a dozen elegantly dressed, light-skinned men and women in this vertical landscape painting. The color palette is dominated by moss and lemon-lime green, golden yellow, and spruce blue. The men all wear jackets with long tails over knee-breeches, and their long hair is pulled back at the napes of their necks. The women wear long dresses with full skirts and hints of lace at the sleeves and bust, and their brown or white hair is pulled up. Nine of the men and women gather to our right on a stone terrace along the bottom edge of the painting. A man in butter yellow kneels in front of a woman wearing rose pink. Around this pair, people stand, kneel, sit, or recline wearing aquamarine blue, light turquoise, or ivory white. A man and woman sit on a bench to our left, a little removed from the larger group. This woman wears ruby red and the man leaning toward her wears topaz blue. Two people in the park beyond these groups are painted with only a few strokes of pale blue and white paint, and they look over a low hedge row lining the walking path. Beds of red flowers fill the lower corners of the composition in front of a statue of a woman to our left and a person, perhaps on a fountain, to our right. The grassy walking path and trees become more blue as they fade into the hazy distance between the tall tress to either side. The sky fades from pale blue along the horizon to a silvery blue, almost white, at the top.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 55

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 115.5 x 91.5 cm (45 1/2 x 36 in.)
    framed: 144.5 x 121.3 cm (56 7/8 x 47 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1946.7.6

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  French Paintings of the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries: A Game of Hot Cockles, c. 1775/1780

A young woman draws on an oval surface with white chalk while three winged, baby-like putti gather nearby, all on a bank of pale pink clouds in this horizontal painting. The woman and putti have pale, rosy skin, flushed cheeks, and hazel-brown eyes. To our left, the woman reclines with her upper body propped up on her far elbow, which rests on a steel-blue cushion as her legs stretch out to our right. Her light brown hair is braided and wrapped across the top of her head. She wears a loose, seafoam-green robe over a billowing ivory-white garment that has slipped off the shoulder closer to us. A round paint palette with brushes sticking out of its thumb hole and a roll of blue and white paper sit in the lower left corner, behind the woman. The woman and the objects are on a red cloth. In front of the woman is a rounded surface, perhaps a canvas, on which she draws. She holds up a gold-colored stylus with her right hand, closer to us, with a pointed piece of white chalk in one end and black chalk in the other. The canvas is taller than her head, so the child-like putto she draws on it is life-sized. The three nude putti on the far side of the canvas have copper or golden-blond, curly hair, flushed, rounded cheeks, short wings in white or peacock blue, pudgy torsos, and dimpled limbs. One putto, presumably the one the woman draws, sits back on the bank of clouds with a carnation-pink sash across his chest. He pulls his chin back and looks at her from under his eyebrows. He holds a gold-colored torch with a pink flame in one hand, and the other hand rests near a cylindrical quiver of arrows. Another putto peeks around the side of the canvas, and the third stands and props the canvas up. That third putto holds up a wreath of laurel leaves up over the canvas, above the woman’s drawing hand. The bank of clouds is parchment-brown with muted pink and blue highlights against a vivid blue sky. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “F Boucher – 1765.”

Scholarly Series:  French Paintings of the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Possibly William Williams Hope [1802-1855], Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire, and Paris; possibly by gift to Madame Jenny Colon [1808-1842], Paris.[1] Emile [1800-1875] and Isaac [1806-1880] Péreire, Paris, by 1864; (Péreire sale, at their residence by Pillet and Petit, Paris, 6-9 March 1872, no. 60); Frédéric-Alexis-Louis Pillet-Will, comte Pillet [1837-1911], Paris, until at least 1910.[2] (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London), by 1932;[3] Calouste Gulbenkian [1869-1955]; (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London);[4] sold 1942 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[5] gift 1946 to NGA.
[1] For the Hope-Colon provenance, see W. Bürger, "Galerie de MM. Pereire," Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. I, 16 (April 1864): 201.
[2] The painting was lent by Pillet-Will to an exhibition in Berlin in 1910.
[3] The painting was lent by Wildenstein to a 1932 exhibition in London.
[4] Georges Wildenstein's letter of 21 January 1952 to John Walker (NGA curatorial files) confirms Gulbenkian's ownership and the fact "that my father bought [it] back from him."
[5] See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/41.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1885

  • Exposition de tableaux, statues et objects d'art au profit de l'oeuvre des Orphelins d'Alsace-Lorraine, Salle des États au Louvre, Paris, 1885, no. 193.

1910

  • Ausstellung von Werken französischer Kunst des XVIII. Jahrhunderts, Königliche Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1910, no. 320 (no. 45 in French ed.).

1932

  • Exhibition of French Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1932, no. 211.

1946

  • Recent Additions to the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1946, no. 771.

1987

  • Fragonard, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1987-1988, no. 165.

1996

  • Das Capriccio als Kunstprinzip. Zur Vorgeschichte der Moderne von Arcimboldo und Callot bis Tiepolo und Goya: Malerei - Zeichnung - Graphik, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne; Kunsthaus Zürich; Palais Harrach, Vienna, 1996-1997, no. 91, repro.

2014

  • De Watteau à Fragonard. Les fête galantes, Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, 2014, no. 57, repro.

2015

  • Fragonard amoreux: galant et libertin, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2015-2016, no. 70.

Bibliography

1864

  • Bürger, W. "Galerie de MM. Pereire." Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. I, 16 (April 1864): 201.

1885

  • Portalis, Roger. "Les peintures décoratives de Fragonard et les panneaux de Grasse." Gazette des Beaux Arts ser. 2, 32 (1885): 483.

1889

  • Portalis, Roger. Honoré Fragonard, sa vie et son oeuvre. 2 vols. Paris, 1889: 282.

1906

  • Nolhac, Pierre de. J.-H. Fragonard. Paris, 1906: 159.

1944

  • "Kress Makes Important Donation of French Painting to the Nation." Art Digest 18, no. 19 (1 August 1944): 5.

  • "One of the Greatest Donations of XVIIIth Century French Painting Ever Received by a Museum - The Kress Collection." The Illustrated London News 115, no. 2992 (26 August 1944): 249

  • "The Almanac: French Paintings Given to the National Gallery." The Magazine Antiques 46, no. 5 (November 1944): 288.

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1944: 124, color repro.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 168, repro.

1948

  • Wildenstein and Company. French XVIII Century Paintings. New York, 1948: 4.

1956

  • Einstein, Lewis. "Looking at French Eighteenth Century Pictures in Washington." Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 6th ser., 47, no. 1048-1049 (May-June 1956): 238-239, repro. 246.

  • Réau, Louis. Fragonard: sa vie et son oeuvre. Brussels, 1956: 158.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 369, repro.

1960

  • Wildenstein, Georges. The Paintings of Fragonard. New York, 1960: no. 444

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 51.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 43, repro.

1971

  • Watson, Francis. "Fragonard." Art News Annual 37 (1971):86

1972

  • Mandel, Gabriele. L'Opera completa di Fragonard. Milan, 1972: no. 469, repro.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 130, repro.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 331-332, fig. 294.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 341, no. 459, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 157, repro.

1987

  • Cuzin, Jean-Pierre. "Jean-Honoré Fragonard: Vie et oeuvre." Fribourg, 1987. English edition New York, 1988: 203, 206, fig 253, 325-326, no. 341, repro.

1989

  • Rosenberg, Pierre. Tout l'oeuvre peint de Fragonard. Paris, 1989: 106, no. 315, repro.

1990

  • Sheriff, Mary D. Fragonard. Art and Eroticism. Chicago and London, 1990: 85-89, 117, 118, repro.

1996

  • Timken Museum of Art. Timken Museum of Art: European works of art, American paintings, and Russian icons in the Putnam Foundation collection. San Diego, 1996: 154, repro. fig. 2.

2004

  • Rosenberg, Pierre. "Fragonard, La Fête à Saint-Cloud, Louis-Pierre Marchal de Sainscy, et la Banque de France." In Place de Victoires: histoire, architecture, societé. Ed. Isabelle Dubois et. al. Paris, 2004: 254-257, repro.

2005

  • Baillio, Joseph, et al. The Arts of France from François Ier to Napoléon Ier. A Centennial Celebration of Wildenstein's Presence in New York. Exh. cat. Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 2005: 78 (not in the exhibition).

2006

  • Milam, Jennifer. Fragonard's Playful Paintings: Visual Games in Rococo Art. Manchester, 2006: 131, 141, 142, 143.

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 39, 188-194, color repro.

Inscriptions

On stretcher: two handwritten labels, "79" and "Rep. 67"; written in blue pencil "11624".

Wikidata ID

Q20178700

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