Art News

Keenly Awaited Book on the Rich Story of Fragonard’s Masterpiece, Progress of Love

NEW YORK, N.Y.- Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Progress of Love is one of the great painted ensembles of French eighteenthcentury art and is considered to be the artist’s masterpiece. For more than seventy-five years, the panels have been a highlight of The Frick Collection. Colin B. Bailey’s keenly awaited and beautifully illustrated book published in September by the museum in association with D. Giles Limited provides an invaluable and engaging resource on the sequence and meaning of the panels in the series. It explores the history of the work from its conception in France to its rediscovery by two great American collectors more than one hundred years later and tells the fascinating story of how the group of canvases found a permanent home in the New York City mansion of Henry Clay Frick, where the museum’s visitors enjoy them today. The tale, however, has resonance and appeal beyond the walls of the instituti