Suffused with effortless grace, the unknown model in Fragonard’s A Young Girl Reading embodies the cultured lifestyle treasured by high society in prerevolutionary France. She is absorbed in a small book that she holds in her delicately curled right hand—pinky extended—reflecting the vogue for portable novels that flourished among the elite late in the century (such as Voltaire’s satirical Candide, Rousseau’s sentimental Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse, or numerous libertine novels). The young woman’s demure self-assuredness signals the artist’s endorsement of an activity often depicted elsewhere as charged with erotic dangers.
A Young Girl Reading is visually delectable. The model, shown in profile, rests her left arm on a wooden rail and leans back against a plush, oversized cushion. Strong light from above softens the pink of her cheeks (one 19th-century critic compared them to the skin of a peach) and casts a shadow against the cushion and the wall. The fashionable lemon yellow dress, accented with a white ruff and cuffs, stands out brilliantly against the unadorned interior. Lilac ribbons adorn the figure’s bodice, neck, and coiffed hair, echoing the cushion’s purplish tones.
Fragonard’s astounding brushwork is as much the subject of this painting as the young woman reading. He has carefully delineated her face, but her dress, ribbons, and the cushion are loosely brushed in large, vigorous, unblended strokes. The artist’s brio is further conveyed by the summarily sketched book and the edging of the girl’s collar, the latter of which he executed—one imagines in a single, great flourish—with the handle of the brush. The vivid brushwork draws attention to Fragonard’s virtuosity, but it also suggests the mental transport experienced by the figure of the self-contained reader.
Young Girl Reading belongs to a series of Fragonard paintings known as portraits de fantaisie (imaginary portraits) that upended established conventions of portraiture. Executed very quickly—sometimes in an hour—these compositions featured half-length single figures on canvases of identical dimensions. Working feverishly, Fragonard used his models as a springboard for his artistic imagination. Young Girl Reading, for instance, seems to function less as a portrait concerned with accurately capturing the sitter’s likeness or character than as a genre painting (a scene of everyday life), which became immensely popular in 18th-century France.