Jean-Honoré Fragonard (5 April 1732– 22 August 1806) -a French painter with remarkable felicity, exuberance and hedonism....his most important works being genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and velied eroticism. The influence of Fragonard's handling of local colour and expressive, confident brushstroke on the Impressionists (particularly his grand niece, Berthe Morisot, and Renoir) cannot be overestimated.
'The Swing' is one of his most popular works. In this painting, the woman is actively enjoying herself, but she is the man's "object" from four different viewpoints- the painter, Fragonard, the patron, Baron de Saint-Julien, the old cleric pushing the swing and ofcourse the suitor, who is looking up her dress!
Her power, on the other hand, resides in her seductiveness, which is displaced onto her shoe and thus is not as permanent as the man's power. For having been kicked into the air, the shoe must fall. And in doing so, the shoe itself becomes a metaphor for the proverbial 'fallen woman'!
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