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The Two Sisters

I have always loved Jean~Honore Fragonard. He has long been a favorite of mine. A copy of his painting The Swing hung in our foyer for years and I remember being a little girl looking at it (my mother also a lover of all things French and an interior designer). After reading a wonderful post by Lauren of Marie~Antoinette's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century about The Pursuit by Fragonard, I thought I would post some of my favorite works. Enjoy!

A Woman with a Dog

The Swing

The Portrait of a Woman with a Dog is related to an inventive series of imaginary portraits referred to collectively as the Figures de fantaisie. They feature archaic costumes and brushwork so rapid and undisguised that it would have previously been associated with oil sketches rather than finished works.

Fragonard's masterpiece is the series of large panel paintings commissioned by Madame du Barry, for the château de Louveciennes. While the iconography of the series continues to be debated by scholars, the subjects can generally be described as lovers in various stages of romantic involvement in lush, overgrown gardens full of mythological statuary, and cascading flowers. A dispute with du Barry led to the paintings being returned to him and replaced by another artist. After the French Revolution, he held administrative positions at the Louvre, but his work had fallen from favor and he died in relative obscurity and penniless in 1806.

The Stolen Kiss

His paintings are largely known for the scandal they created. For example, The Swing became an immediate success, not merely for its artistic excellence, but for the scandal behind it. The young nobleman is getting an interesting view up the lady's skirts, not only that, but she is being pushed by her priest-lover, shown in the rear.

The Meeting

In the same spirit are some other famous pictures, The See-Saw, Blindman's Bluff, The Stolen Kiss, and the Meeting. After his marriage in 1769, he began painting children and family scenes and even painted religious subjects. He stopped exhibiting publicly in 1770 and all his later works are commissions from private patrons.

Blindman's Bluff

To me, Fragonard embodies the spirit of the ancien regime on the eve of the revolution. The soft palate and mutes tones, the images of love, courtship, frivolity, coquettish young ladies in voluminous clothes, and frothy flowers in lush gardens. What a wondrous and fantastical place these paintings can take us!

Bisou Mon Amis!

We've spent lots of time talking about how boss the Shield was, and how keen it is that he's returning.

But I bet you've been wondering how a fantastically cool character like The Shield met his end. Was he killed by a villain, like his colleague, the Hangman? Did the company that published him fold?

Well, both, in a sense. He was "killed" by the worst villain in all of comicdom. And not outright. No, he was slowly poisoned by his treacherous foe, evanescing into limbo. And his publisher did fold... to the pressure toward cheap titillation of teenage hormones.

Yes, the Shield was undone by that most terrifying force in the four-color world, the symbol of solipsism, the scion of sensationalism, the shill of thrill, the sultan of the surreal:

ARCHIE ANDREWSEverything's Archie, you know.

Because Magnus knows how to handle Marvel characters.