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This work is an engraving, which is a type of print,

created by Jean-Honore Fragonard or Fragonard who was a student of Boucher,

and then went on to have an extremely successful career on his own, but

interestingly, coming really into his own about 20 years later than Boucher.

He was able to have an unofficial career.

Which meant that while he had joined the academy

as a student member, he never was fully admitted into the academy,

because he didn't submit the final

work that would have allowed him to be a full member.

And part of the reason for that was that he was able to have a successful career

outside of court circles.

One of the ways that Fragonard is able to have that type of career

is not only through creating really famous paintings like Happy Hazards of the Swing,

which is in the Wallace Collection, but

also by producing a number of prints for the print market,

which was very different than the kinds of people who bought paintings.

Prints were really accessible to a more middle class audience

who did buy prints to hang in their own homes.

Now, as I mentioned when we were upstairs in the paintings gallery,

looking at the Boucher's.

One of the things that was of concern to Enlightenment writers and

critics who are concerned with the moral integrity of society

were those kind of vaguely sexualised

paintings without any sort of ethical conclusion.

That we saw with Boucher's pastoral images.

This design or drawing that was done by Fragonard and

then would have been turned into an engraving by a professional engraver,

although Fragonard himself did do a lot of etching and engraving work on his own,

would have been made with the idea that this would be a narrative print

that had a story that could be understood by audiences

that weren't as well versed in some of the coded references that we saw with Boucher.

Most importantly, this work, which is done around 1778

is a work that can be appreciated by multiple levels of audiences.

So what we have here, this is called The Armoire, is a bedroom scene.

You can see the armoire is the cupboard

that the young man is standing in with the door open.

We have his lover on the left hand side.

The young woman who's looking very sad and upset.

We have her angry parents.

We can read all of this into the scene.

Who have discovered the lover, who was hiding in the armoire.

The bed you can see through this open backdrop space,

it's unmade, they've been doing something in that bed area.

Other people are rushing in through the door to see what's happening,

to enjoy the action and the drama of the scene.

And one of the things that I also really like,

in the right hand side is a little boy and

a little girl who are learning from the scene not to make these kinds of mistakes.

They may not understand the full sexuality of the narrative, but

they understand that these two young people have been caught

doing something that they shouldn't have been doing.

So now how do we read the sexuality of this narrative?

As I said, there is an unmade bed.

There's the rush of the older couple, who we interpret as being the parents, who've

come upon this very sad-looking young man who's been caught, and we see his hat.

Now the hat is the code that connects back up with the Boucher's that we saw earlier.

Now he has got one hand that is very carefully and

obviously holding onto the outside of the armoire.

The other hand you can't see, which is a little bit decorous, but

it's very important that that hat is being held up not obviously by a hand,

perhaps not by a hand at all.

Something else, another part of this young man's body, is holding up that hat.

Now that also is a code because the hat has been known,

the hat that's off the young man's head, has been known as the part,

that opening of the hat, is the part that fits on the head just as

the, see it's always hard to talk decorously about these kinds of things.

But as the hat sits on the head, so the female part of the body and

the male part of the body fit together in a similar way.

There's a lot of erotic literature.

That uses this kind of coded devices that talk about the hat and

how it sits right on the head.

So this is the kind of coded reference that goes straight back to the same kinds

of codes that that we saw with Boucher, but here it has been used in a narrative

that easily read by viewers and it also is connected

to an end of the story which is not quite as positive.

We have remorse at being caught, and we have a young woman

who's very sad at having what is probably lost her virginity in the scene.

So you read it from right to left and seeing the unfolding of the scene,

but really because the figures in the foreground,

you also then read back from left to right.

To understand, you see the sadness, the remorse of the figures,

the rush of the parents, the dog here who's ferreted out the naughty boy.

And the whole scene comes together so we see it as sexuality

that has been consummated and then sexuality that has been reprimanded

because it's outside of marriage and the family.

So we've really come to the end of the Rococo.

Where you see Rococo artists,

18th Century French artists responding to more middle class values and

creating scenes that present a kind of narrative

story to middle class audiences that is easily able to be interpreted but

built into those are still references back to those coded sexual or

erotic motifs that also entertain elite viewers who are familiar

with Boucher's paintings and see a sort of continuity from

the early Rococo stages into its final stages prior to,

about 10 years prior to the revolution.

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4:3 Fragonard: Sex and the Circulation of Popular Culture

Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender

Meet the Instructors