Artwork Replica Shepherdess, 1750 by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806, France) | WahooArt.com

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (i) - Oil On Canvas (i) - 118 x 161 cm - 1750 - (Milwaukee Art Museum (Milwaukee, United States)) (i) The lighthearted gallantry of Rococo master Jean-Honoré Fragonard often provides elegant dressing for a worldly lesson in courtship and love. The theme of the pastoral tryst offered just such an opportunity: an idyllic, bountiful natural setting filled with blooms, bowers, and willing maidens. Fragonard’s lovely shepherdess is the epitome of feminine beauty. She awaits the arrival of a young shepherd who has gone to retrieve a lost lamb. Resting barefoot on the ground and attended by a faithful member of her flock, she whiles away the minutes playfully weaving garlands, perhaps to adorn her lover. The amorous and often overtly naughty themes symbolically embedded within much 18th-century French genre painting made the canvases attractive to sophisticated aristocratic collectors.