Two girls on a bed playing with their dogs

Two Girls on a Bed Playing with Their Dogs (c. 1769-72), in the Resnick art collection, is one of Fragonard's more provocative genre scenes, depicting an intimate domestic moment with erotic undertones. The playful interaction with dogs and the disheveled bedclothes create a scene of casual sensuality characteristic of Rococo private paintings. Jean Honoré Fragonard, Boucher's most talented student and the last great master of the French Rococo, combined his master's decorative sensibility with a technical facility that went beyond anything Boucher had achieved. His brushwork — rapid, assured, creating the illusion of movement and light through marks that are almost abstract at close range — was one of the technical wonders of the eighteenth century, and his color, warm and iridescent, achieved effects of atmospheric light that anticipate the Impressionists. Working primarily for private aristocratic patrons rather than the state or Church, he created images of amorous pleasure, pastoral reverie, and domestic intimacy that defined the Ancien Régime's visual self-image at its most pleasurable.

The rumpled bed linens and playful dogs create a dynamic, informal composition. Fragonard's loose brushwork and warm flesh tones enhance the scene's sensual atmosphere.