Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) was a French painter whose late manner is distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. A prolific artist, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings. The J. Paul Getty Museum's Fragonard masterpiece, The Fountain of Love, is part of a series of his most striking works called the Allegories of Love, exquisite paintings that convey an atmosphere of intimacy and eroticism. This lavishly illustrated book compares and analyzes the compositions, iconography, and sources of the Allegories in the context of ancien régime Preromanticism. The author discusses the transcendental aspect of love in the Allegories and the concept of Romantic love and painting on the eve of the French Revolution. The book accompanies Consuming Passion: Fragonard's Allegories of Love, an exhibition of the artist's work that opens at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute on October 28, 2007, and at the J. Paul Getty Museum on February 12, 2008.

Reveals the intriguing story behind the commission, rejection, and rehousing of masterpiece The Progress of Love.

At the time of his death in 1806, the Rococo artist Jean-Honore Fragonard had not painted for two decades. Following a period of huge public success, the painter's reputation fell. Personally secretive, Fragonard created revealing images that undermined a normal sense of space and time. Satish Padiyar investigates the life and work of the last of the libertine painters of the ancien regime, a contemporary of Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and presents dramatic new perspectives on works such as The Progress of Love, painted for Madame du Barry, the infamous The Bolt and the ever-popular The Swing.

A Companion to Impressionism Presenting an expansive view of the study of Impressionism, this pioneering volume breaks new thematic ground while also reconsidering questions concerning the defini­tion, chronology, and membership of the impressionist movement. In 34 original essays from established and emerging scholars, this collection offers a diverse range of developing topics and new critical approaches to the interpretation of impressionist art. Focusing on the 1860s to 1890s, A Companion to Impressionism explores artists who are well-represented in impressionist studies, including Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cassatt, as well as Morisot, Caillebotte, Bazille, and other significant yet lesser-known artists. The essays cover a wide variety of methodologies in addressing such topics as Impressionism’s global predominance at the turn of the 20th century, the relationship between Impressionism and the emergence of new media, the materials and techniques of the Impressionists, as well as the movement’s exhibition and reception history. This innovative volume also includes new discussions of modern identity in Impressionism in the contexts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality and through its explorations of the international reach and influence of Impressionism. Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, this important addition to scholarship in this field stands as the 21st century’s first major and large-scale academic reassessment of Impressionism. Featuring essays by academics, curators, and conservators from around the world, including those from France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Turkey, and Argentina, this is an invaluable text for students and scholars studying Impressionism and late 19th-century European art, Post-Impressionism, modern art, and modern French cultural history.

Eleven stunning stories that explore the most intimate and transforming moments of existence, from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, “one of the foremost practitioners of the short story” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). “Throughout this remarkable collection moments of insight flash from the pages like lightning, not necessarily providing answers—more like showing the way to new questions.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer A divorced woman returns to her childhood home where she confronts the memory of her parents’ confounding yet deep bond. The accidental near-drowning of a child exposes to the shaken mother the fragility between children and parents. A young man, remembering a terrifying childhood incident, wrestles with the responsibility he has always felt for his hapless younger brother. A man brings his lover on a visit to his ex-wife, only to feel unexpectedly closer to his estranged partner. In these and other stories, Alice Munro proves once again a sensitive and compassionate chronicler of our times. Drawing us into the most intimate corners of ordinary lives, she reveals much about ourselves, our choices, and our experiences of love.