The Progress of Love: The Meeting

1771–72

Oil on canvas, 125 × 96 in. The Frick Collection, New York

Madame du Barry ordered these wall-sized garden scenes, then refused them: decoration turned down by its own patron.

Look at

The two figures are kept to the bottom third under a towering statue and tree: a garden with people in it, not a scene with a backdrop.
A white dress and a red coat, on either side of the pedestal, are the strongest notes among the greens and blue.
The foliage is rapid broken touches lit along their edges; the sky is blended smooth.

One of four panels painted from 1771 for a pavilion outside Paris, probably at Louveciennes; installed in 1772, back with the painter by 1773.
In 1790 Fragonard moved the panels to a cousin's villa in Grasse; J. P. Morgan bought them in 1898, Henry Clay Frick in 1915.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain