Art Insights — A Young Girl Reading by Jean-Honore Fragonard

The 18th-century French painter Jean-Honore Fragonard created some of the most recognizable and flamboyant works during the Rococo period. His painting The Swing is one of the artworks that are synonymous with Rococo. A large part of Fragonard’s works were colorful, expressive, and filled with emotion. Except one that stood out of the rest and gained great popularity.

This work has its own unique features. Since Fragonard was learning from the French masters, such as François Boucher and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, he took a lot of inspiration from their stylistics, eventually creating artworks in a manner Boucher did.

However, A Young Girl Reading is a synthesis of the influence of both of these French masters. Fragonard took the typical Rococo color scheme and did it in an exquisite manner of Boucher. However, he also took the most of the calm scenery and depicted this young girl as a well-focused in an everyday life scene in a manner Chardin loved to do.

A Young Girl Reading (1770) by Jean-Honore Fragonard. Oil on canvas, 81.1 cm × 64.8 cm.

This artwork also represents the time that Fragonard was living. During the 1770s, the popularity of expressive, emotional scenes was slowly fading, and it seems that the French painter tried to follow the trend. Many of his works featured the scene of reading, but all of them were done in Fragonard’s typical style — playful and with slight notes of eroticism. A Young Girl Reading has none of these features, and it clearly goes against all the works that made Fragonard famous. It is a calm but still serious scene.

The Rococo period had several prominent art critics, but the most influential was Denis Diderot. He was not a fan of the Rococo style and often criticized the French masters and their works. Diderot viewed them as too playful and extravagant. He regularly published reviews of the artworks displayed in the Paris Salon. His reviews were very sharp but well-respected by the general audience. Of course, for the painters of that period, Diderot was the main nemesis, and Fragonard got plenty of critics from him as well.

One of Fragonard’s works that were displayed in the Salon got the following review by Diderot: “What a wonderful omelet from the children’s (chickens) bodies… Very soft, yellow and well toasted”. The famous art critic often cited Fragonard’s works as something light and fluffy.

There are reasons for such a description. Fragonard’s works had a common feature — his expressive brushstrokes were clearly recognizable by their direction. You can see those in A Young Girl Reading as well. The bright yellow dress of a girl is painted in a similar way, as well as other noticeable details — her hair and the pillow under her back.

Fragonard used very thin brushstrokes. Look at the shadows and the collar on the girl’s neck. For the collar, he used a thick layer of white color and afterward, created shadows with the opposite side of the brush, carving them out. With a minimum of brushstrokes, Fragonard created a lively and well-detailed painting.

It is why the 18th-century art catalogs described A Young Girl Reading as an artwork that was made in a single session. Knowing the expressive style of paintings Fragonard had, it might be true. Many of his stylistic features had to be done quickly, without letting the paints get dry.

Yet, there is plenty of controversy about the origins of this painting. Nobody really knows whether it was an actual person depicted in this painting or Fragonard simply used his own imagination to paint this girl. When the X-Ray photography of this painting was done, it revealed that the actual scene was painted over another head looking towards the viewer, not onto the book.

There is a version that this girl is one of Fragonard’s Fantasy Figures. Back in 2012, in one of the auctions in Paris, there was sold a page with more than a dozen of his sketches. A Young Girl Reading was found amongst them, and this led to a conclusion that this girl was just a fruit of Fragonard’s imagination. However, the X-Ray photography still gives a doubt. Maybe the French painter initially had a model for this scene, but some circumstances led him to paint the face of a girl all over again. Most likely, this will remain a topic for debate for art historians.

All the uncertainty and controversy around its origins add value to Fragonard’s work. You can recognize the artist, indeed. He created something that had the features of his artistic style, but the motifs behind this painting are unclear. Still, it remains one of his most popular works, and it has often been used as an inspiration for the other painters, who depicted the young women reading books, notes, or pieces of paper. A Young Girl Reading is a timeless painting. In a way, it symbolizes the fade of the extravagant and frivolous Rococo period that helped Fragonard to earn eternal fame.

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