Jupiter and Danaë

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806)

after 1770

Medium/TechniqueBrush and brown ink on paper

DimensionsSheet: 27 × 39.2 cm (10 5/8 × 15 7/16 in.)

Credit LineGift of Jo-Ann Edinburg Pinkowitz

Accession number2018.3175

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsDrawings

Collections

Provenance1787, possibly Louis-Antoine Auguste Rohan-Chabot (b. 1733 - d. 1807); December 17, 1787, Rohan-Chabot sale, Paris, possibly lot 165, sold for 120 livres to Robert Quesnay, Paris [see note 1]. Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun (b. 1755 - d. 1842), Paris; by descent to her niece, Eugenie Le Brun Tripier-Le Franc (b. 1805 - d. 1872) and her husband, Justin Tripier-Le Franc (b.1805 - d.1883), Paris; June 5-7, 1883, Tripier-LeFranc sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, lot 52, sold for 4,150 fr. [see note 2]. By 1889, Jean Leon Decloux (b. 1840 - d. 1929), Paris; February 14-15, 1898, Decloux sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, lot 63, sold for fr. 16,100 to Kraemer. By 1907, Felix Doistau (b. 1846 - d. 1936); June 9-11, 1909, Doistau sale, Galerie Georges Petit, lot 107, sold for fr. 40,100 to Prolongeau for David David-Weill (b. 1871 - d. 1952), Paris and Neuilly-sur-Seine, France; June 10, 1959, anonymous ("Property of a Gentleman" [David-Weill]) sale, Sotheby's, London, lot 80, sold for £4,000 to Charles E. Slatkin Galleries, New York; by 1968, probably sold by Slatkin to Norton Simon (b. 1907 - d. 1993), Los Angeles [see note 4]; May 8, 1971, Norton Simon sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, lot 208, sold to Dorothy Braude Edinburg (b. 1920 - d. 2015) on behalf of the Harry B. Braude Trust, Boston; 2015, by inheritance to Jo-Ann Edinburg Pinkowitz, Brookline, MA; 2018, gift of Jo-Ann Edinburg Pinkowitz to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 12, 2018)

NOTES:

[1] According to Alexandre Ananoff, L'oeuvre dessiné de Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806) (Paris, 1961), vol. 1, p. 166, cat. 394. Lot 165 was described as Jupiter and Io. There are three very similiar drawings of Jupiter and Danae (or Jupiter and Io) attributed to Fragonard, and it is not possible to distinguish their eighteenth-century histories with certainty.

[2] When the drawing was sold in 1898, it was said to come from the atelier of Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, and to have been included in the Tripier-Lefranc sale, where it was attributed to Vigee-Lebrun herself. Also see Roger Portalis, Honore Fragonard, sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris, 1889), p. 298.

[3] Lent to the Exposition Chardin et Fragonard (Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, June-July, 1907), cat. no. 171.

[4] Lent by Mr. and Mrs. Norton Simon to "Master Drawings from California Collections" (University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, 1968), cat. no. 6, pl. 83.