time there and what direction his studies took. Fragonard
pursued an exactly opposite course, being advised thereto by Boucher,
who said to him, "If you take Michelangelo and Raphael seriously, you
are lost." Feeling that the advice was suitable to himself, if not
sound on general principles, Fragonard devoted himself to the lighter
and more sparkling works of Tiepolo and others of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. He also made a tour in South Italy and Sicily with
Hubert Robert, the landscape painter, and the Abbe Saint Non, the latter
of whom published a number of etchings he made after Fragonard's
drawings, under the title of _Voyages de Naples et de Sicile_.

On returning to Paris in 1761 his first success was the large
composition of _Callirhoe and Coresus_, which was exhibited at the Salon
in 1765, and is now in the Louvre. But he soon abandoned the grand
style, chiefly, it is probable, owing to the patronage of the idle or
industrious rich who showered commissions upon him, for smaller and more
sociable pictures with which to adorn and enliven their houses. The
beautiful, but exceedingly improper picture at Hertford House, called
_The Swing_--or in French, _Les Hazards heureux de l'Escarpolette_,
appears to have been commissioned by the Baron de St. Julien, within the
next year or two, for in the memoirs of Cotte a conversation is recorded
which shows that the Baron had asked another painter, Doyen, to paint
it. "Who would have believed," says the indignant Doyen, "that within a
few days of my picture of Ste. Genevieve being exhibited at the Salon, a
nobleman would have sent for me to order a picture on a subject like
this." He then goes on to relate how the Baron explained to him exactly
what he required. We cannot entirely acquit Fragonard of all blame in
accepting such a commission, but he was a young man, just starting as a
professional artist, with the example of Boucher before him, and it
would hardly have seemed wise to begin his career by offending a noble
patron. The whole incident throws a glaring light on the conditions
under which the art of France flourished in the Louis Quinze period,
when Boucher was everybody and Chardin nobody.

For the real Fragonard we may turn to _Le Chiffre d'Amour_, or the "Lady
carving an initial," as the prosaic diction of the Wallace Collection
has it (No. 382). In this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the
painting combine to effect a little masterpiece