More on Getty Buys: Gérard/Fragonard & Pieter Claesz.
Marguerite Gérard and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, I Was Thinking of You (Je m'occupais de vous) , about 1785-1787. J. Paul Getty Museum The Getty Museum has acquired a scene of 18th-century love by Marguerite Gérard (1761–1837), assisted by her teacher and brother-in-law, Jean-Honoré Fragonard. It becomes the museum's first work by Gérard and only the second painting by Fragonard. The date is almost the same as the Getty's Fountain of Love by Fragonard, though the style is distinct. Dutch genre painting by Gerard ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu was undergoing a revival of popularity in 1780s France. Gérard and Fragonard produced a group of contemporary genre scenes with Leiden fine-painter precision and Rococo prurience. All are of modest dimensions (21-5/8 by 17-11/16 in. in the case of the Getty picture), like their 17th-century models. I Was Thinking of You was in Russian collections from the early 19th century. The Bolsheviks seized it and sent it to the Hermitage...
