Invocation to Love (c. 1781): Art, History and Details

Invocation to Love (c. 1781) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Fragonard used gardens as the setting for love and courtship in some of his most important works. One such scene, this drawing depicts a woman pleading for help from a statue of Eros, the god of love. He wears a blindfold, suggesting an uncertain outcome for the woman, as does a Cupid who indifferently leans on an orb nearby. Like other artists in 18th-century France, Fragonard was deeply influenced by historic imagery of the Garden of Love—a pastoral and idyllic contained landscape. He revisited the specific image seen here multiple times, in two oil paintings (Musée du Louvre and private collection, New York) and another drawing (Princeton University Art Museum).

Object facts

• Title: Invocation to Love
• Date: c. 1781
• Creator attribution: Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Brush and brown wash with graphite squaring lines and underdrawing on cream laid paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 33.5 x 41.6 cm (13 3/16 x 16 3/8 in.); Secondary Support: 37.6 x 47.8 cm (14 13/16 x 18 13/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1943.657

A detail from the museum

This drawing contains squaring—a grid underlying the image—suggesting it's a smaller drawn replica of a related oil painting.

Collection credit

Grace Rainey Rogers Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue des tableaux et dessins précieux qui composent le cabinet de M. de Sireul. Paris: Chez M. Boileau, 1791.
• Portalis, Roger. Honoré Fragonard, sa vie et son oeuvre. Paris: J. Rothschild, 1889.
• Notable French Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, Paintings and Drawings...Property of the Estate of the Late Grace Rainey Rogers. New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, 1943.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.