A gentleman of the court had sent for him shortly after a religious
painting of his had been exhibited in Paris and when Doyen presented himself he found him at his ‘pleasure house’ with his mistress. ‘He started by flattering me with courtesies’, Doyen related, ‘and finished by avowing that he was dying with a desire to have me make a picture, the idea of which he was going to outline. "I should like", he continued, "to have you paint Madame (pointing to his mistress) on a swing that a bishop would set going. You will place me in such a way that I would be able to see the legs of the lovely girl, and better still, if you want to enliven your picture a little more..." I confess, M. Doyen said to me, that this proposition, which I wouldn’t have expected, considering the character of the picture that led to it, perplexed me and left me speechless for a moment. I collected myself, however, enough to say to him almost at once: "Ah Monsieur, it is necessary to add to the essential idea of your picture by making Madame’s shoes fly into the air and having some cupids catch them." ‘Doyen did not accept the commission, however, and passed it on to Fragonard. The identity of the patron is unknown, though he was at one time thought to have been the Baron de Saint- Julien, the Receiver General of the French Clergy, which would have explained the request to include a bishop pushing the swing. This idea as well as that of having himself and his mistress portrayed was evidently dropped by the patron, whoever he may have been. The picture was depersonalized and, due to Fragonard’s extremely sensuous imagination, became a universal image of joyous, carefree sexuality.
The theme is that of love and the rising tide of passion, as intimated by the sculptural group in the lower center of the picture. (Dolphins driven by cupids drawing the water-chariot of Venus symbolize the impatient surge of love.) Beneath the girl on the swing, lying in a great bush, a tangle of flowers and foliage, is the young lover, gasping with anticipation. The bush is, evidently, a private place as it is enclosed by little fences