The Good Mother

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The Good Mother

ca. 1762–1763

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

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 (1732–1806)
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

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