Girl with a Marmot

Girl with a Marmot (c. 1775-80), in the Portland Art Museum, is a version of Fragonard's charming subject of a young woman with a pet marmot — the exotic small animal that was a fashionable companion in eighteenth-century France. Portland's European art collection includes this as a significant example of French Rococo painting. Fragonard's figure paintings — his bravura portraits and studies of women and children — demonstrate his extraordinary facility with the brush and his gift for capturing the quality of life and movement in a figure. His "fantasy portraits" — informal figure studies in which the sitter is given costume and attitude but whose status as formal portrait is ambiguous — were among his most original contributions to French eighteenth-century painting, combining the traditions of portraiture, genre painting, and costume study in images of unprecedented liveliness. His technical speed was legendary: some of these studies were reportedly painted in an hour, yet they have a quality of sustained observation that belies their apparent spontaneity.

The girl's direct gaze engages the viewer with characteristic Fragonard warmth, while the marmot adds narrative charm. The soft, warm palette and fluid handling create an appealing genre image.