He has an illustrious surname, joined David’s studio at 13, devotes his life to the search for beauty… but no one remembers him! In Angoulême, the first retrospective of the virtuoso offspring of Jean-Honoré Fragonard promised to open the doors to a powerfully narrative imagination. The second confinement unfortunately deprived us of it.
In their essay on 18th century art, the Goncourt brothers, great fans of Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) and of gossip, tell that the painter one day found his son burning the precious collection of paternal prints. “I make a tasty holocaust”, the young man would have boasted. From this anecdote, some have made a founding gesture. Because if he is largely forgotten today, Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard (1780-1850) eclipsed his progenitor on the scene of the arts and success.
For art historian Rebecca Duffeix, specialist in Alexandre-Évariste and curator of the exhibition closed too soon at the Angoulême museum, this autodafe that the Goncourts delight in must remain a simple anecdote. « The influence of Jean-Honoré in the painted work of his son is important enough so that this glitch is not made a digest of their supposed bad relations. », she specifies.
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