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Fragonard panels in the East Gallery accompanied by a rarely exhibited set of seating furniture carved by Nicolas Heurtaut. The Frick Collection, New York City. —Michael Bodycomb photo

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Canapé by Nicolas Heurtaut showing Beauvais tapestry cover after Boucher, The Frick Collection, New York City. —Michael Bodycomb photo

 

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FRAGONARD PANELS RELOCATE TO SKYLIT GALLERY AT THE FRICK w/2 cuts

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NEW YORK CITY — For the first time since their arrival at the Frick mansion in 1915, the principal panels of Jean-Honore Fragonard’s “Progress of Love” series can be seen in dramatically different, partly skylit illumination and outside of their longstanding gallery installation at the Frick Collection until September 16.

These monumental works are a major attraction at the museum, and they have been temporarily placed on view in the East Gallery while the Fragonard Room undergoes its first major relighting and refurbishment in 75 years.

The six panels are accompanied by a set of seating furniture carved by one of the most important chairmakers of the Eighteenth Century, Nicholas Heurtaut (1720–1771). Not often on view, these four chairs and two canapés still bear their original Beauvais tapestry upholstery, the designs of which are after Oudry and Boucher. The frames and tapestries have been traced back to their creation in the 1760s for a client named Francois de Bussy, a career diplomat serving the French royal court.

The panels are also joined by two very important commodes — highlights from the Frick’s furniture collection — that are customarily on view in the Fragonard Room. On the south wall stands a neoclassical mahogany veneered example by French Royal furniture maker Jean-Henri Riesener (1734–1806), an exact contemporary of Fragonard who was in great favor with Marie-Antoinette through the abolition of the monarchy (examples of his work for her can be found nearby in the South Hall of the Frick).

The collaborative brilliance of royal ébénistes Gilles Joubert (1689–1775) and Roger Lacroix (1728–1799) is in evidence on the north wall of the East Gallery in the form of a commode created in 1769 for Madame Victoire, fourth daughter of Louis XV. Considered one of the finest in existence, it is a fine example of transitional furniture, displaying rococo features through its curvilinear form — a serpentine front and cabriole legs — and the forward-looking neoclassicism of its magnificent marquetry and gilt bronze mounts.

A newly acquired Oushak carpet covers much of the large oak floor, suggestive of the way the rooms of the mansion appeared in photographs taken in the 1920s. The large medallion carpet comes from ancient village in western Turkey where it was most likely made in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Installed in the East Gallery this spring, the rug sets off the other four paintings currently on view in the room, the four full-length portraits by American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler, who had an abiding love for the decorative arts of the East.

“This summer, we seized upon the opportunity to place these remarkable masterpieces by Fragonard on view in a way they’ve never before been seen at the Frick,” said Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Colin B. Bailey. “The result is stunning, in fact, even beyond our own level of anticipation, and we hope the public will also take this unprecedented opportunity to enjoy these paintings in their temporary setting between now and the middle of September.”

The Fragonard Room of The Frick Collection is named for Fragonard’s “Progress of Love” (four panels painted between 1771 and 1773, the remaining ten between 1790 and 1791), considered by many to be the artist’s masterpiece and one of the greatest decorative ensembles of the Eighteenth Century. For his mistress the comtesse du Barry, Louis XV commissioned the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux to design an entertainment pavilion on the estate of a chateau that the king had recently bought for her in the village of Louveciennes, just outside of Versailles.

Fragonard (1732–1806) was commissioned to complete four large canvases — which have since come to be recognized as “The Pursuit,” “The Meeting,” “The Lover Crowned” and “Love Letters” — for Madame du Barry’s dining room. The series was installed at Louveciennes by 1772, but by 1774 the inventory of paintings at the chateau recorded the series as having been returned to Fragonard and supplanted by works from another artist, Joseph Marie Vien (1716–1809), probably because of a change in the tastes of the period.

Fragonard retained the paintings in his studio until 1790, when he spent a year living with a cousin at Grasse, where they were than installed. In Grasse, Fragonard painted ten additional panels (the two large-scale works “Love Triumphant” and “Reverie,” four “Hollyhocks” and four overdoors of putti) to complete “The Progress of Love” ensemble. The four original panels are on view in the East Gallery along with “Love Triumphant” and “Reverie.”

The Frick Collection is at 1 East 70th Street. For information, www.frick.org or 212-288-0700.