The Swing (1782): Art, History and Details

The Swing (1782) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Nicolas Delaunay (French, 1739–1792); Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806).

The work and its context

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

This large print, based on a painting by Fragonard, symbolizes the pleasure-seeking and frivolous aspects of Rococo art. Unbeknownst to the man pushing the swing, a suitor reclining in the bushes gets a glimpse under the woman's skirts as she flies through the air, losing her shoe. Contemporary viewers would have understood the association of the lost shoe with sexual dalliance, a motif reinforced by other elements within the image, such as the cavorting nude figures on the base of the statue of a cupid who gestures "hush." Delaunay's work is extremely successful in translating the qualities of a painting into the more restricted vocabulary of graphic techniques. He masterfully transposed Fragonard's charming composition, retaining all of the movement and verve of the painting. Using a rich variety of hatchings, cross-hatchings, and dots, Delaunay conveyed the tonal range, lighting, and spatial effects of the painting remarkably well.

Object facts

• Title: The Swing
• Date: 1782
• Creator attribution: Nicolas Delaunay (French, 1739–1792); Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806)
• Culture: France
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1923.580

Collection credit

Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Jackall, Yuriko. "'The Swing' by Jean-Honore Fragonard: New Hypotheses" Burlington Magazine 166, no. 14564 (May 2024): 446-469.

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.