Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Two studies of cats
No reserve
Lot closes
July 23, 03:37 PM GMT
Estimate
5,000 - 7,000 USD
Current Bid
400 USD
6 Bids
No reserve
Lot Details
Description
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris
Two studies of cats:
A) Le chat emmailloté
B) Le chat étendu
Both red chalk, mounted together;
inscribed in a modern hand on the mount: Les chats de Fragonard
A) 167 by 157 mm; 6½ by 6¼ in.
B) 98 by 164 mm; 3⅞ by 6½ in.
Sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 30 March 1874, lot 74;
Baron de Schwiter;
sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 14 June 1948, lot 5;
sale, Paris, Palais Galliéra, 1962, lot 1331;
sale, New York, Christie's, 28 January 1999, lot 143;
sale, New York, Sotheby's, 25 January 2023, lot 229
A. Ananoff, L'oeuvre dessiné de Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Paris 1970, III, no. 1331-2
Fragonard made several paintings showing cats or dogs dressed in human clothes, including L'éducation fait tout, in the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (inv. MASP.00056), and the Chat émmailloté, known only through a print and a related drawing formerly in the Edmond de Rothschild collection.1 Although the animals being educated in the former painting are dogs, rather than cats, their positioning and 'costume' are rather similar to those seen in the first, upright drawing in the present lot.
The attribution was confirmed by Eunice Williams at the time of the 1999 sale.
1.See Fragonard, exh. cat., Paris, Grand Palais, 1987, pp. 487-8, no. 239 and fig. 1