In The Style Of Fragonard (1732-1806) La Courtisane Amoureuse Sanguine

in the taste of Jean-Honoré FRAGONARD
(Grasse, 1732 - Paris, 1806)
La courtisane amoureuse
Lavis brown ink over pencil lines, on laid paper
H. 20,5cm ;L.14 cm
Stamp (probably forged) from the Portalis collection (historiographer and collector of Fragonard at the end of the 19th century) right
Possibly executed in the 1950s

Provenance : sale at Galerie Charpentier, Paris 8^ème, December 3, 1959, Tableaux collection of Monsieur X, CP Maurice Rheims, Expert Robert Lebel, lot 31, titled, La courtisane amoureuse as Fragonard, reproduced in black and white

Bibliography : L'œuvre dessinée by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Ananoff, catalogued under number 2677

We present this drawing, of rather good quality, as a curiosity and as an interesting piece of art history. It is undoubtedly one of the many Fragonard "forgeries" circulating on the market in the 1950s-1970s on the initiative of Alexandre Ananoff (1910-1992), a specialist in the artist and author of the catalog raisonné L'oeuvre raisonné of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, in four volumes, a reference work that also contains numerous inaccuracies, intentional or otherwise...

Nicknamed "Fragonoff", this astronomer with a scientific profile became, somehow art expert in the mid-1950s, specializing in the French 18th century, particularly Boucher and Fragonard, and was himself a collector.

Our drawing, at the 1959 sale, was part of a set of four, of identical dimensions and techniques, the subject of which was illustrations for La Fontaine's tales. These illustrations are one of the least known and most complex parts of Fragonard's work.

On this subject, a group of 42 black stone drawings (dating probably dating from the early 1760s) is in a private collection; the Petit-Palais conserves a series of 57 proofs of these black stones, enhanced with brown wash by him.