"FRAGONARD"
THE BELOVED CHILD OF GRASSE

From June 19 to October 18, 2026

On the occasion of the centenary of the Fragonard house in Grasse, the Jean-Honoré Fragonard Museum pays tribute to the unique perspective that the “Beloved Child of Grasse” brought to early childhood—its delicacy and vulnerabilities, but also its infinite nuances of tenderness, of which he was one of the most subtle witnesses in the history of painting. Around thirty works, some previously unseen, will be presented to the public, on loan from French and international institutions as well as from private collections. These works will resonate with the Discourse on the Current State of Painting, which in 1785 criticized Fragonard’s choice to turn away “into little-known paths, to create a genre more favorable to the delirium of imagination…”. What could be more fitting than to exhibit them in Grasse itself?

Thirty years before the publication of Émile, or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard was born into a close-knit yet nurturing domestic environment, where the child was cherished by his parents as well as by his aunt and godmother—a small but attentive circle in which this singular mind first awakened to the world.

Recent discoveries in the archives of Grasse and Paris relating to his early childhood reveal the richness of this world, in which women were universal heirs of their father or great-uncle on an equal footing with their brothers, and where a distinctive openness toward women’s choices prevailed. This intimate history contributed to the emergence of the unique perspective that the painter brought to early childhood.