The Fountain of Love

Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Fountain of Love, 1785
By MILES KNIGHT

Painted in 1785 by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Fountain of Love depicts a young pair of lovers leaning toward a fountain preparing to drink water from it. The water will make the young couple fall in love. The "Fountain of Love" was a popular theme in Rococo era paintings and art. Fragonard's paintings often had sexual undertones and played with the feeling of falling in love. Generally, Fragonard painted portraits of wealthy noble people, but this particuarly painting was right before the French Revolution and political tensions were high.

There are two versions of The Fountain of Love, the one pictured above was the original. Fragonard also painted a second, more refined version later the same year. This version actually has two layers, the first layer has the man looking at the woman. Fragonard changed his mind and repainted the two lovers heads giving an interesting look at his artistic process.

Despite the painting being about love, the colors used are quite dark and dull, which is in contrast since most of Fragonard's paintings are quite colorful. The only light is on the lovers and cupids, which brings the focus to them and also creates a contrast between love and hate. The lover's bodies create strong parallel lines giving them swift movement to the left. A line starting at the cupids in the bottom left and running through the woman's right arm gives the painting visual balance.
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The Fountain of Love

Dante Alighieri
Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Fountain of Love, 1785
Oh living soul, who with courtesy and compassion voyage through black air visiting us who stained the world with blood: if heaven’s King bore affection for such as we are, suffering in this wind, then we would pray to him to grant you peace for pitying us in this, our evil end. 
- Inferno, Dante, Canto V

Fragonard’s characters approach the basin with eagerness, a sense of anticipation. Being tempted by the cherubs to drink from the fountain of love, the same fountain from where cupid dips his arrows. One sip of its sweet magic would bind the couple with a desire for one another.

This painting relates to Dante’s Inferno Canto V, through its subject matter. Fragonard creates a dark, soft atmosphere created by the light source and fog, and a gust that tears across the painting, which makes the couple’s presence seem forbidden as they tiptoe along the stone base. This wind adds to the rush of the moment. Her dress being pulled from her as she leans forward, the two of them connected by the beating of their hearts, exhilarated by the enormity of their actions. They seem like the lovers in the second circle of hell spun for eternity in a whirlwind, forever unable to touch each other, even though they are inches apart.

The painting represents a dark period of Fragonard’s life in the later part of his career. In the lead-up to The French Revolution Fragonard began to lose his clientele, for whom he painted the stunning settings and frivolousness of the aristocracy. The Fountain of Love returns to the subject he became most familiar with and the foundation of the majority of his work - desire. While the painting captures the moment of intimacy, he accomplishes it with a simplicity and darkness, unlike the rich colors seen in The Swing. This acts as a farewell, a reflection of his old patrons and the works he made for them.

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