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    Museum collections / Art Institute of Chicago
    The Letter, or The Spanish Conversation
    Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The Letter, or The Spanish Conversation, c. 1778. The Art Institute of Chicago. Public domain (CC0).

    Public collection via the Art Institute of Chicago

    AT-00003012

    The Letter, or The Spanish Conversation

    by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

    View at the Art Institute of Chicago

    Provenance

    Sold, May 31, 1790, Anonymous sale, lot 323. Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun (1748-1813), Paris; sold, April 11, 1791, lot 347. Saint; sold, May 4, 1846, lot 18 [according to New York 1988]. Duc Robert Montesquiou-Fezensac [Paris 1921]. David David-Weill (1871-1952), Paris, by 1913 [New York 1988]; consigned to Wildenstein and Company, New York, 1938 [New York 1938; Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa (New York, 1994), p. 93]. Sold by Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Company, New York, to the Art Institute, 1945.

    Exhibition history

    Paris, Pavillon de Marsan, "Fragonard," 1921, cat. 126. London, Royal Academy of Arts, "French Art, 1200-1900," 1932, p. 395, cat. 808. New York, Wildenstein and Company, "French Eighteenth Century Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings from the David-Weill Collection," 1938, cat. 70. The Art Institute of Chicago, "Drawings Old and New," 1946, p. 13-14, cat. 18 (ill. frontispiece), cat. by Carl O. Schniewind. Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, "Seventy Master Drawings," 1948-1949, cat. 52. The Art Institute of Chicago, "French Drawings: Masterpieces from Seven Centuries," 1955-1956, cat. 81. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "French Drawings in American Collections: Clouet to Matisse," 1958-1959, cat. 49; traveled to Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie and Rotterdam, Museum Boymans. New York, Wildenstein and Company, "Master Drawings from The Art Institute of Chicago," October 17-November 30, 1963, n.p., cat. 60, pl. XX. The Art Institute of Chicago, "A Quarter Century of Collecting: Drawings Given to The Art Institute of Chicago, 1944-1970 by Margaret Day Blake," April 28-June 7, 1970, n.p., cat. 22 (ill.). The Art Institute of Chicago, "Selected Works of 18th Century French Art in the Collections of The Art Institute of Chicago," January 24-March 28, 1976, pp. 66-67, cat. 60 (ill.). Paris, Musée du Louvre, "Dessins français de l’Art Institute de Chicago de Watteau à Picasso," October 15, 1976-January 17, 1977, n.p., cat. 18 (ill.). Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Städtische Galerie im Städelschen Kunstinstitut, "Französische Zeichnungen aus dem Art Institute of Chicago," February 10-April 10, 1977, pp. 44-45, cat. 17 (ill.). Washington, D.C., The National Gallery of Art, "Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections," November 19, 1978-January 21, 1978, p. 114, cat. 43 (ill.), cat. by Eunice Williams; traveled to Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, February 16-April 1, 1979; and New York, the Frick Collection, April 20-June 3, 1979. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Fragonard," February 2-May 8, 1988, pp. 522-523, cat. 266 (ill.). Paris, Musée Luxembourg, "Fragonard Amoureax", September 16, 2015, - January 24, 2016, pp. 186, 187 (ill.), cat. 62.

    Publications

    Roger Portalis, Fragonard (Paris, 1889), p. 300. Société de Reproduction des Dessins de Maîtres (Paris, 1913), no. 5. Georges Wildenstein, "L’Exposition Fragonard au Pavilon de Marsan," La Renaissance de l’Art Français (July 1921), p. 359 (ill.). G. Henriot, Collection David-Weill III (Paris, 1928), p. 117 (ill.). Commemorative Catalogue of the Exhibition of French art, 1200-1900: Royal Academy of Arts, London, January-March 1932 (London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1933), cat. 687, pp. 148-9, pl. 174 (ill.). “Recent Important Acquisitions of American Collections”, The Art Quarterly, IX (1946), pp. 77-78 (ill.). Carl Schniewind, "Chicago Reveals its Master Portfolio," Art News 45 (March 1946), p. 18 (ill.). The Art Institute of Chicago Bulletin 40:3 (March 1946), pp. 26-28 (ill.). "Additions to the Drawing Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago," The Connoisseur 118 (December 1946), p. 124 (ill.). Hans Tietze, European Master Drawings in the United States (New York, 1947), pp. 204-205, no. 102 (ill.). Agnes Mongan, One Hundred Master Drawings (Cambridge, 1949), p. 116 (ill.). Regina Shoolman and Charles Slatkin, Six Centuries of French Master Drawings in America (New York, 1950), p. 90 (ill.). Louis Reau, Fragonard, sa vie et son oeuvre (Brussels, 1956), p. 215 (ill.). C. F. Foerster, J. H. Fragonard (Berlin), no. 10 (ill.). Alexandre Ananoff, L’Oeuvre Dessiné de Jean-Honoré Fragonard I (Paris, 1961), p. 59, no. 74, fig. 32. Harold Joachim and compiled by Sandra Haller Olsen,French Drawings and Sketchbooks of the Eighteenth Century (Chicago, 1977), pp. 26-27, no. 1E2. John Russell, “A Fragonard Festival at the Frick,” The New York Times Magazine (April 15th 1979), p. 30 (ill.). James N. Wood and Sally Ruth May, The Art Institute of Chicago: The Essential Guide (Chicago, 1993), p. 211 (ill.). Suzanne Folds McCullagh, “Drawings in the Art Institute of Chicago,” Master Drawings 38:3 (Fall 2000), pp. 241-248 (ill.). Treasures from The Art Institute of Chicago, selected by James N. Wood, with commentaries by Debra N. Mancoff (Chicago, 2000), p. 140 (ill.). The Essential Guide (Chicago, 2009), p. 299 (ill.). Melissa Percival, Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure (Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, c2012), p. 166, ill. 5.4 (ill.).

    Open-access museum data

    This record comes from the open-access collection data that the Art Institute of Chicago publishes for unrestricted use (Creative Commons Zero). Art Trackers shows a selection of the museum's published fields. The Art Institute of Chicago is not an Art Trackers client and has not reviewed or endorsed this page; the museum's own website is the authoritative record.

    • View this work at the Art Institute of Chicago
    • The Art Institute of Chicago: open-access terms

    Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.

    Quick Overview

    Artist
    Jean-Honoré Fragonard / French, 1732-1806
    Date
    c. 1778
    Medium
    Brush and brown ink and brush and brown wash, with graphite, on ivory laid paper
    Dimensions
    39.9 × 29 cm (15 3/4 × 11 7/16 in.)
    Type
    Drawing
    Classification
    ink or chalk wash
    Place
    France
    Department
    Prints and Drawings
    Credit line
    Margaret Day Blake Collection
    Accession no.
    1945.32

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    Open-access museum record · AT-00003012

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