Head of an Old Man

Head of an Old Man (c. 1767-70), in the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University, is a character study from Boucher's late period. Such portrait studies demonstrate Boucher's ability as a naturalistic painter alongside the decorative idealization for which he is primarily known. 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 old man's weathered features are rendered with empathetic naturalism, using warm earth tones and confident brushwork. The unidealized treatment shows Fragonard's observational skills beyond his more fanciful subjects.