The Progress of Love: The Lover Crowned

The Progress of Love: The Lover Crowned is a charming artwork from the career of French Rococo painter, Jean-Honore Fragonard.

Here we find the elements of Fragonard's style that were so common throughout his extensive oeuvre. There are the carefully crafted landscape scenes, where trees would bend perfectly for him to crop and frame the scene. There would be intense collections of bushes and flowers that would cram activity into every corner of his work. There were also sculptural features which added symbolism and interest, as well as helping to differentiate the locations from public spaces to privately owned, landscaped gardens. Our main figures are also draped in light, whilst the rest of the scene is darkened, just as with all of his paintings in this series, and many others besides. The full names of the titles in this series were The Pursuit, The Meeting, The Lover Crowned and The Love Letters.

The Progress of Love was a series of paintings by Jean-Honore Fragonard that marked one of the pinnacles of his career. Each iteration in this series of four were styled similarly, each with their own theme as outlined by their respective titles. All were related to romance, and the idea behind the series was to depict the "four ages of love". They were intended to be displayed together within the commissioner's home but were later purchased by the Frick Collection who now hold possession of them. It is difficult to study the career of Fragonard without coming across these paintings at some point and they continued to underline how the artist considered romance to be an inspiring theme within much of his work.

Henry Clay Frick would purchase and bequeath these items to his own institution and they were given their own purpose-built room in order to be displayed together in a similar way to how Fragonard had originally intended as part of the planned commission. Their collection has continued to grow even after his passing and you can now also enjoy paintings from other notable artists including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, François Boucher, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Jacques Louis David, to name just four. The venue is based in New York and also features an extensive library filled with educational art resources from right across the world.