Illustration to Don Quixote

Fragonard, Jean-Honore

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The drawing shows an interior scene with a man, seated at a desk and facing to the right, at the left edge and three female figures engages in taking books of shelves in the back left of the room and throwing them out of a window to the right. The man is wearing papal clothing and has a large book open on the desk in front of him. To the right a woman steps towards the window holding a book high above her head. Behind the desk is a girl wearing a cap and carrying a pile of books, and another girl taking books off the shelf. Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "No. 38 JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD (b. 1732; d. 1806) ILLUSTRATIONS TO DON QUIXOTE British Museum, 1908-4-14-1. From the Denon Collection. Pen outlines over black chalk with sepia wash. 41.6 x 28.2 cm. (16 3/8 x 11 1/8 in.). This masterly drawing, full of action and gesture, with outlines as expressive as they are rapid and summary and washes that model the figures in space with the utmost subtlety and certainty, belongs to a series designed by the master for the illustration of Don Quixote but never engraved in any edition. Nineteen of them, probably all that were ever done, were formerly in the collection of the Barron Vivant Denon, who published small etchings after a certain number. Seven of the series were in the collection of the late M. Groult in Paris; five others, among which that here reproduced is one of the most striking, came lately into the possession of the British Museum. The subject is the destruction of the books of chivalry belonging to the distraught Don by order of the parish priest of La Mancha. S. C."