The Music Lesson (Fragonard)

The Music Lesson (c. 1770) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

The Music Lesson is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Jean Honoré Fragonard, created c. 1770, now held in the Louvre, in Paris, to which it was donated by Hippolyte Walferdin in 1849.[1]

The subject was a frequent one in the Dutch Golden Age, most famously Vermeer's work of the same title, and was a common allegory for the five senses in Baroque art.[2] Fragonard converts the subject into a fête galante scene of dreamy love, with the young music teacher courting his pupil and looking at her cleavage.[3]

  1. ^ (in French) "Catalogue entry". 1765.
  2. ^ (in Spanish) Eva-Gesine Baur, «El rococó y el neoclasicismo» en Los maestros de la pintura occidental, Taschen, 2005, pág. 361 ISBN 3-8228-4744-5.
  3. ^ Arnaudet, Daniel. "The Music Lesson". legacy-uma.org. Retrieved 2021-04-11.