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The Good Mother
ca. 1762-1763
Artwork Viewer
Fragonard admired the work of seventeenth-century Dutch artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, whose Holy Family with Angels (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg), then in a Parisian private collection, inspired this painting. The French artist reduced Rembrandt’s composition to two figures and suppressed the religious content to create a secular scene of an attentive mother and her sleeping child. A thin glaze of dark pigment applied over lighter areas mimics the yellowed varnish that Fragonard would have seen on Rembrandt's painting, already more than a century old at the time.
- Artist
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard
- Title
- The Good Mother
- Date
- ca. 1762-1763
- Object Type
- Painting
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 18 1/2 x 22 1/4 in. (47 x 56.5 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mrs. Herbert Fleishhacker
- Accession Number
- 54.2