T his extraordinary and freely executed study belongs to the celebrated sequence of bust-length têtes de vieillards that Fragonard produced from the mid-1760s to the early 1770s. He conceived them not as a formal series, but as painterly experiments, of which at least eight examples, most in museum collects ions, survive.¹ Fragonard treated the motif as an exercise in virtuosity, painting with supreme confidence, dynamism, and almost improvisational brushwork. Executed circa 1770, the present painting has long been recognized as an incandescent demonstration of Fragonard’s painterly bravura.²

These head studies mark one of the most brilliant syntheses of artistic influence in eighteenth-century European painting. As Jean-Pierre Cuzin observed, these seemingly casual sketches constitute “a dazzling synthesis of the entire visual culture of the painters of the period: in their t.mes less attire, these figures on the brink of life attain a paradise of painting where Bologna, Venice, and Amsterdam are joyfully reconciled.”³ Their dramatic chiaroscuro, warm tonality, and golden shadows testify to Fragonard’s admiration for Rembrandt, whose tronies he emulates. At the same t.mes , the thick impasto, supremely confident brushwork, and sweeping, almost galloping, strokes recall Rubens, while the subject itself—bearded old men somet.mes s identified as “philosophers”— alludes to the bust-length figures in exotic attire of Giambattista Tiepolo, works Fragonard could certainly have encountered during his 1761 Venetian sojourn.

Unlike his northern European predecessors, however, Fragonard seems less concerned with psychologically introspective modes of depiction, and more with creating dazzling displays of painterly technique. As Pierre Rosenberg noted, “the subordination of subject to technique is pushed to the limit here.”⁴ A frenzy of swirling strokes of pure pigment—acid yellows, vermilions, and stark whites—animate the surface, the paint leaps across the canvas with an effervescence and spontaneity that anticipates the unmodulated colors and expressive handling of Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and the Impressionists more than a century later.

Indeed, the enduring fascination for artists with the present work is underscored by Giorgio de Chirico, who produced an emulative copy in circa 1964 (fig. 1). It is possible that de Chirico encountered the painting when in the collects ion of André Meyer, either in Paris or New York, and took the opportunity to produce a replica—an exceptional test.mes nt to the painting’s t.mes lessness and continued resonance of Fragonard’s pictorial vision.

Rosenberg considered this work to be the latest of all the surviving head studies, dating it to just before 1770, precisely when Fragonard began to paint his “figures de fantaisie”: a celebrated series of rapidly-painted, whimsical portraits of individuals in masquerade dress. The upturned gaze and inspired expression of the figure and the fluid application of paint align it closely with that group, often regarded as a daring departure from the classical confines of the French Royal Academy. Moreover, the scale of the figure and the canvas—which retains later additions along its upper and lower edges, concealed by the current frame and predating the lining—have prompted speculation that it may have originally been trimmed from a larger three-quarter-length depiction and conceived as a transitional work linking the heads studies with the figures de fantaisie.⁵

¹ Musée de Picardie, Amiens (inv. no. 1894-144); Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. no. HK-777); Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris; Musée Chéret, Nice; Ball State University Art Gallery, Muncie (inv. no. 1995.035.126); Private collects ion, sold Christie's New York, 26 January 2011, lot 47; Private collects ion, sold Antoine Petit, Épernay, 26 June 2021, lot 65.

² For the proposed chronology of the series, see Rosenberg 1987, p. 203.

³ Cuzin 1987, p. 134: "Ces pochades désinvoltes constituent en fait l'éblouissante synthèse de toute la culture visuelle des peintres de l'époque: dans leurs accoutrements hors du temps, ces personnages aux frontières de la vie gagnent un paradis de la peinture où Bologne, Venise et Amsterdam se réconcilient joyeusement."

⁴ Rosenberg 1987, p. 203.

⁵ According to Cuzin 1987, p. 131.