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Your galleryThe Letter, or The Spanish Conversation
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Find the letter in the young man’s hand as he leans over the back of the sofa, then follow the woman’s sideways look toward him.
A young man in a ruffed doublet, dressed in what was called the Spanish fashion, leans over a sofa toward a woman with a letter in his hand, and the scene is left teasingly unclear. Fragonard laid in the forms with a loose underdrawing and then brushed brown washes over them to catch the light. The woman is said to be his sister-in-law, the painter Marguerite Gérard.
Brush and brown ink and brush and brown wash, with graphite, on ivory laid paper · 39.9 × 29 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Rococo
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Letter, or The Spanish Conversation
- Artist
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard French, 1732-1806
- Date
- c. 1778
- Medium
- Brush and brown ink and brush and brown wash, with graphite, on ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- 39.9 × 29 cm (15 3/4 × 11 7/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Margaret Day Blake Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.