MASP

By Luciano Migliaccio
The scene Education is Everything, staged in a rustic setting of corn cobs hung out to dry, shows the back of a young woman squatting, playing with two lap dogs to amuse several children. The larger dog is wearing a wide-brimmed hat, while the other wears a black cloth like a cloak and is holding a long corn stalk between its paws. The painting’s second owner, the French engraver Delaunay, reproduced it with its current title, together with another painting by Fragonard, The Young Preacher, on a print announced in Journal de Paris (1791, p. 4) and Mercure de France (1791, pp. 83-84) and later shown at that year’s Paris Salon (1791, n. 538). Later, the two scenes were also engraved by B. Eredi (1750-1812) and G. B. Cecchi, possibly in Florence, and dedicated to Giuseppe Rucellai and Baron Ricasoli, respectively. Delaunay’s engravings derived from paintings, rather than from drawings that may have served as preliminary studies, titled The Education (Aylesburg, Waddesdon Manor) and The Preacher (Los Angeles, Armand Hammer Foundation), given the striking differences between sketches and canvases. The two paintings are identical in size; they once belonged to the same owner before going to Aubert, Delaunay, and Comte Stroganoff, and both canvases were copied by Delaunay, Eredi, and Cecchi. These facts point to a common origin for the two canvases. Even so, there is only a slight affinity between the two paintings conceived as pendants, but this is not untypical of Fragonard. Another drawing presented as the artist’s autograph in an auction at Versailles (Nov 19, 1972, n. 29) also gave rise to some doubt (Rosenberg 1987, n. 226). With respect to iconography, this is how Rosenberg defined the painter’s attitude toward young models: “Less sensitive than Chardin to the serious side of children, and, unlike Greuze, hardly interested in their moral upbringing, Fragonard describes their marvels and their jewels with a communicative friendliness”. Most certainly, faced with a choice between a morally serious painting and the pleasure of offering a show of magical colors, Fragonard had no hesitation in plumping for the latter. The light cast on the canvas, reflecting brightly on the tamer’s back, creates a luminous perspective that actually becomes the picture’s main focus, illuminating with masterly irony the two dogs spoofing the heroes of historical paintings or the gold-framed ancestral portraits rotting in the palaces. Without wishing to see an outright satirization of aristocracy in this painting, it should however be remembered that not only did Fragonard become a freemason, but also seems to have been alluding, at least in his choice of a title, to the nature vs nurture debate and the need for schooling to counter the effects of luxurious living, often posed by the philosophes of the period. The painting was reproduced as an engraving, presumably with the artist’s consent, two years after the 1789 Revolution, which indicates how this iconography was viewed by bourgeois society. Fragonard showed his admiration for Dutch painting, particularly that of Frans Hals. Seen through the cynic eyes of the Dutch painter, the insecure, elegant youths and the vice-ridden old captains do somewhat resemble lap dogs and mastiffs. From the palettes of Dutch and Venetian painters, Fragonard took his technique of swift brush strokes, revealing the artist’s gesture in which “the paintbrush juxtaposes, without blending, colors such as cinnabar, Prussian blue, and chromoplast yellow to create light, shade, a reflection on an arm...”. (Goncourt 1914, p. 332). The Abbot of Saint-Non appropriately defined the impact of this style of painting: “Mr. Fragonard is all fire”.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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