The Love Letter

In the work of Fragonard, finish is a relative term. Here, over a brown tone, Fragonard shapes the composition in darker shades of brown, drawing and modeling with the tip of the brush and with strokes of varying thickness. Color and white are confined to passages under strong light toward the center of the canvas: the young woman's powdered face, her dress and cap, writing surface and stool, flowers and dog. A famous canvas from the early 1770s, the work should be read not as a portrait but as a genre scene. (Source:The Metropolitan Museum of Art)