Jean-Honoré Fragonard

In 1770 Jeanne Bécu, better known as Madame du Barry (pictured), the last mistress of the French king Louis XV (r. 1715–74), commissioned Fragonard to decorate the newly built Pavillon de Louveciennes in the Île-de-France. The Neoclassical garden pavilion, built to designs by the architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux, was created for Madame du Barry on the estate belonging to the Château de Louveciennes so that she would have a view of the Seine valley, which the earlier buildings had not afforded. The four large works Fragonard painted for the reception room — the series The Progress of Love, including The Pursuit and The Meeting — were not particularly successful, perhaps because their florid Rococo style did not suit the Neoclassical building.

From the page of The Swing