Fire to the Powder

Fragonard made this oval as the partner of The Chemise Withdrawn, two small bedroom scenes meant to hang side by side. Here a young woman sleeps with her arms thrown back on heaped pillows. Two cupids at the left lift the sheet from her legs, and a third, at the lower right, raises a little burning torch toward her. The French title, Le Feu aux poudres, is the idiom for setting a spark to the gunpowder, and the picture plays on it quite literally. The Louvre can say only that it was painted before 1778. The pair split up long ago. The Chemise reached the museum in 1869 with the La Caze bequest. This one went through a string of Paris sales, the last in 1912 with the collection of the couturier Jacques Doucet, and ended with Carlos de Beistegui, who gave it to the Louvre in 1942 while keeping its use, so it only arrived in 1953. Today the two pendants are in the same museum at opposite ends: The Chemise in the Sully wing, this oval in the Denon wing, in the room that shows the Beistegui gift together.