Jean-Honoré Fragonard was one of the supreme exponents of the French Rococo style and his painting The swing in the Wallace Collection, London, is perhaps his most famous work. Yet despite this elevated status, mystery surrounds its origins. New documentary and technical research presented here by Yuriko Jackall may, however, have finally established for whom it was painted and why the painting was hidden away for the first few years of its existence.
The May issue also includes the publication by Ludovic Jouvet of a previously unknown and spectacular medal of the Sun King, Louis XIV, as well as Humphrey Wine’s study of the intriguing collection of the publisher Denis Mariette (the uncle of the more famous Pierre-Jean Mariette). Other articles feature the work of French Romantic painters: Andrew Watson establishes the early history of Delacroix’s The death of Sardanapalus in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and Thadeus Dowad identifies Girodet’s first Mamluk model.
Exhibition reviews include Sarah Whitfield discussing Bonnard’s Worlds (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and the Phillips Collection, Washington) and Lisa Stein assessing Saul Leiter (MK Gallery, Milton Keynes). Catalogue reviews feature Christoph Martin Vogtherr on Louis XV, Lunarita Sterpetti on Eleonora of Toledo and Eric M. Zafran surveying art in eighteenth-century Rome. Meanwhile, an impressive and wide range of new books are examined: these feature Megan McNamee on diagrams in medieval manuscripts, Christine Gardner-Dseagu on photographing Pompeii and Richard Thomson on Henry Lerolle.
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