Provenance

Jean Groult

French, 1868 - 1951

Explore Selected Works

From a distance, we look down onto and across a lush park filled with elegantly dressed, light-skinned adults and children gathered in small groups as one woman swings from tall trees in this vertical painting. The color palette is dominated by celery and avocado green and soft straw yellow. An aquamarine-blue sky with towering white and ash-gray clouds fills the upper three-quarters of this painting. On our left, soaring trees reach two-thirds of the way up the composition. Two walls mark an entrance to the garden in the lower left. Stone fountains carved into the shape of lions sit on top of the walls with streams of water pouring from their mouths to urns below. People gather next to the entrance and further down a slope to our right. They relax together in pairs except for one group, which has two women and two children. The women’s long dresses have ruffled sleeves that come to their elbows, and the men wear long jackets and knee-length britches over stockings. A woman wearing a butter-yellow and rose-pink ball gown sits on a swing with ropes tied back into the trees to our left. She swings out diagonally high above the other people. Below the woman, some of the people watch and point to her as she swings. To our right, a woman in a crimson-red and yellow gown sits on a boxy, stone structure and looks through a telescope while a man leaning onto the box, wearing a brown coat, looks on. A woman in a strawberry-red dress and a man in a teal-blue jacket play with a small white dog at the edge of the pool in front of the entrance while another woman and man sit and stand between the entrance walls. In the distance to our right, trees and shrubs grow in front of pewter-gray hills under the lavender-purple horizon.
Jean Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, c. 1775/1780, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.17

The Swing

Jean Honoré Fragonard · c. 1775/1780 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.17

From a distance, we look slightly down into a lush park filled pairs and groups of elegantly dressed, light-skinned adults and children frolicking and socializing in this vertical painting. The color palette is dominated by celery and olive green and tawny, soft brown. An aquamarine-blue sky filled with towering white clouds and soaring trees fills the upper three-quarters of this painting. People gather in small groups around a fountain to our left, a balustraded terrace at the center, and a dining table enclosed by tall trellises to our right. On the terrace, a blindfolded woman in a butter-yellow gown stretches out her arms over several people leaning away from her. The people in this game with her and the others wear suits and dresses in warm crimson red, rose pink, goldenrod yellow, baby blue, or teal. The women’s long dresses have ruffled sleeves that come to their elbows. The men wear jackets over cream-white shirts, and some wear white stockings with knee-length britches. The base of the fountain to our left is carved with statues around the base. A jet of water sprays up from a shallow bowl above. Atop the tall terrace surrounding the dining table, a statue of a woman wearing a helmet looks down to our left in profile. Water cascades in a waterfall on the far side of the terrace below, presumably from a second, unseen fountain.
Jean Honoré Fragonard, Blindman's Buff, c. 1775/1780, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.16

Blindman's Buff

Jean Honoré Fragonard · c. 1775/1780 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.16

Antoine Watteau, The Bower, c. 1716, red chalk and red chalk counterproof on laid paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1982.72.1

The Bower

Antoine Watteau · c. 1716 · red chalk and red chalk counterproof on laid paper ·  Accession ID  1982.72.1

Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain, Three Figures Dressed for a Masquerade, c. 1740s, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.92

Three Figures Dressed for a Masquerade

Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain · c. 1740s · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.92

Bibliography

1961

  • Seligman, Germain. Merchants of Art: 1880-1960, Eighty Years of Professional Collecting. New York, 1961: 195-196.

1989

  • Les donateurs du Louvre. Paris, 1989:223-4

1996

  • Rosenberg/Prat 1996, no. 234.