The Swing
A young woman swings in a leafy park and kicks off a shoe towards her admirer in the bushes. Playful, sensual and pink – the Rococo in a nutshell.
The old man pushing her swing from the shadows notices nothing.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted The Swing around 1767. The French dramatist Charles Collé described in his memoirs how the picture came about. A nobleman first asked the painter Gabriel-François Doyen for a picture of his mistress on a swing pushed by a bishop, while he himself lay where he could see her legs. Doyen declined and suggested Fragonard. The nobleman’s identity is not known for certain, and in the finished picture it is not a bishop working the swing.
A young woman in a billowing pink dress flies up on a swing in a lush garden. She kicks out one leg, and a little shoe sails through the air. Down on the left a young man lies half hidden in the bushes, reaching out his hand with his hat. He is looking up under her skirts. In the shadows on the right an older man pulls the swing’s ropes. He seems to notice nothing.
All around are details that comment on the action. A statue of Cupid holds a finger to his lips, as if asking for silence. Below are other sculptures of cupids. In the corner a small dog barks. The garden is overgrown and luxuriant, with trees and bushes enclosing the scene like stage scenery.
The composition is built around a diagonal. Light falls like a spotlight on the woman and her dress, while the rest of the picture lies in green half-darkness. Fragonard painted with quick, light brushstrokes. The foliage is sketchy and the fabric gleams. The colours are light and shimmering, typical of the Rococo. The woman’s dress is the brightest area in the picture.
The picture is full of insinuation. The flying shoe has been read as an image of lost innocence, and the motion of the swing as an image of infidelity and desire. The picture was intended for a private audience and was never meant for a church or a public hall. It is an excellent example of how the Rococo played with eroticism and irony.
After the French Revolution the playful painting of the Rococo was seen as decadent, and Fragonard died in 1806 almost forgotten. In the 19th century the picture was bought by the English collector the Marquess of Hertford. Today it belongs to the Wallace Collection in London, which opened to the public in 1900. In 2021 the painting was restored and yellowed varnish was removed. The picture is only just over eighty centimetres high.
The Swing has become one of the best-known pictures of the 18th century and a symbol of the Rococo. It has been quoted in film, fashion and contemporary art. The British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, for example, has made a sculpture in which the woman is headless, as a comment on the fate of the aristocracy during the Revolution.