Portrait of a child, bust-length

This bust-length child portrait by Fragonard captures the fresh, unaffected quality that made his depictions of children so appealing to eighteenth-century French collectors. Fragonard brought the same bravura technique to child portraits that distinguished his fantasy figures of adults. As France's most sought-after painter for aristocratic patrons before the Revolution, he enjoyed nearly unrivalled commercial success until Neoclassicism displaced Rococo taste in the 1780s.

The confident brushwork captures the child's features with economy and freshness, avoiding the stiff formality of academic child portraiture in favor of lively naturalism.