Jill Schettini

Field Trip Report

HUM 110
Dr. Kajs
4/19/14







2
I chose French painter, Jean Honre Fragonards (1732- 1806) The Visit to the
Nursery, an oil on canvas painting, c 1775. His other works include, Blind Mans Bluff
1760, The Secret Meeting 1771, The See-Saw 1750-1755, The Musical Contest 1754-
1755, Inspiration 1769, The Bathers c 1765, The Love Letter 1770, A Young Girl Reading
c 1776, The Stolen Kiss late 1780s, Sisters after 1778, The Bolt 1779, The Beloved Child
1790, Portrait of a Man 1770 and The Swing 1767. Many of these works of art are in the
greatest museums in the world. I found it interesting that Disney found inspiration for the
movie; Tangled from Fragonards The Swing, and it is also shown in a scene in
Frozen.
The Visit to the Nursery, is a painting of a couple and an older woman looking at a
baby sleeping in its cradle, while three younger children stand looking at the couple. It is
nighttime, and the room is fairly dark, with the moonlight shining in through the window.
The older lady is sitting in the corner next to the cradle almost in the dark and there is a
cat curled up at her feet. The colors of the painting are dark except for the bright white
dress the younger woman is wearing as well as the light color of the blanket on the
babys cradle. It looks as though the younger couple is the parents of the four children,
and the older lady is their nanny. The little girl seems to be looking angrily at her parents
while the child in the hat seems to be looking longingly at them. It looks as though the
adults are so enthralled with the new baby that they have forgotten about their older
children. Some critics think that the couple is visiting their baby at the home of a wet
nurse, while others think that Fragonards inspiration came from a novel by Jean Francois
de Saint-Lambert where a well bred English girl falls in love with a Scottish farmer,
specifically this passage, I saw them enter a room off the garden, its window open; the
3
went together to a cradle where their fifth child was lying; the two of them knelt by the
cradle, by turn look at their child and at each other, all the while holding hands and
smiling (Ancien Rococo- Jean-Honore Fragonard).
I really like this painting; it caught my eye right away with the brightness of the
womans dress as well as the subject matter. I am a big family person and being the
oldest in my family I can relate to the way the parents nanny/ grandmother is paying
attention to the baby more than the other children. You can see the love in the eyes of the
adults and the sadness/ frustration in the faces of the older children.



4
Works Cited

Ancien Rococo- Jean-Honore Fragonard: Visit to the Nursery. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr.
2014. <http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/his/CoreArt/art/anc_frag_visit.html>.