A Carta de Amor

A young woman in blue silk has turned from her writing table to look at us, a card tucked into the bouquet of flowers before her, addressed to a gentleman we never see. Fragonard painted her around 1770, near the height of a Paris taste for these light, private, faintly flirtatious scenes. He worked fast and left the brushwork loose. You can watch the paint catch the light along her cap, her powdered face, the flowers and the small ruffled dog at her side, a traditional emblem of fidelity. Its French title is simply le billet doux, the love note, and Fragonard never worked the quick, sketchy handling up into a polished finish.