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The Armoire
Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732-1806)
1778
- Medium
- Etching on ivory laid paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 34.2 × 46.1 cm (13 1/2 × 18 3/16 in.); Plate: 42 × 55.2 cm (16 9/16 × 21 3/4 in.); Sheet: 49.3 × 65.2 cm (19 7/16 × 25 11/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Henry C. Woods Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
The Rococo taste for narrative led the great painter and printmaker Jean-Honoré Fragonard to devote his largest etching to a risqué domestic drama. A young woman and her paramour have been interrupted in a compromising position by her parents. The rumpled state of the bedclothes alone would have roused their ire, but they have also discovered the young man hiding in their daughter’s closet. The mortified young man’s strategically positioned hat leaves both the parents and viewers in little doubt of his dishonorable intentions. The girl stands barefoot and weeping in the corner out of modesty and fear, unable to meet her furious parents’ gaze.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
