Читать книгу Rococo - Victoria Charles - Страница 14

Boucher had a large number of pupils. One of the best and most talented was Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), the son of a perfume manufacturer. He came from Grasse, the city of perfume, and he looked up to Boucher and essentially painted romantic gardens with fountains, grottoes, temples and terraces and intended to continue this chivalrous and successful tradition, for instance with The Bathers (1756), with the famous The Swing and The Stolen Kiss, when the storms of revolution broke out and brought a violent end to this kind of art. So he decided to bring down the curtain on the end of the 18th century, which was heralded by Watteau with his tender and sometimes melancholy pictures and with his fireworks. Watteau was deep and lost in thought; Fragonard was bright and lively. His pastoral and boudoir scenes were popular, especially his fêtes-galantes in the Rococo style. Under the patronage of King Louis XV, he became the great artist of pleasure, desire and carefree enjoyment of life. He missed the connection with the classical trend that arrived after the Revolution. He died, as reported, alone and forgotten in 1806 in a café where, despite his poverty, he was treating himself to an ice cream as a means of recuperating from the wear and tear of the day.