The Swing, 1767 Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Jean-Honore Fragonard also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting The Swing is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

After adding your artwork to the shopping cart, you will be able to check the delivery price using the Estimate Shipping and Tax tool.

The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

Suspended in mid-air, a young woman arcs forward on a rope swing, her rose-silk skirts billowing into a bouquet of satin folds. Below her, partly hidden in the flower-strewn undergrowth, a reclining gallant fixes an eager gaze upon the glimpse of garter the accident of movement affords him. In the penumbra behind, an older figure tugs at the ropes, while a stone Cupid, finger raised to his lips, counsels discretion amid the rustling bower of elm and oak. A tiny dog yaps, and a butterfly hovers beside the cascade of silk, as though nature itself colludes in the whispered intrigue.

Fragonard drenches the scene in an iridescent palette of aquamarine, jade and opalescent pinks. Light filters through the foliage in dappled patches, dissolving edges so that flesh, fabric and cloud share a single humid atmosphere. The cool greens temper the ardour of the pink, yet the chromatic dissonance energises the whole, deepening the painting’s erotic undertone without overt declaration.

Close inspection reveals rapid, virtuoso brushwork: opaque highlights sparkle on embroidered ribbons, while vegetation is suggested with loaded, almost calligraphic strokes that refuse botanical specificity in favour of sensual richness. Oil is manipulated as though pastel, yielding feathery transitions and sudden bursts of impasto that catch the light like dew.

Spatially, the picture pivots on diagonals that propel the eye from the lover’s outstretched arm to the girl’s flying slipper, then upward along the taut rope to the obscured pulley, before spiralling back through dark recesses of foliage. This choreography of sight parallels the clandestine narrative: desire propelled, briefly revealed, immediately concealed. The marble Cupid, echoing the lover’s gesture, becomes both witness and accomplice, tightening the thematic weave.

Painted in 1767, the work announced Fragonard’s decisive turn from grand-manner history to intimate cabinet scale. By exploiting the Rococo idiom—its playful asymmetry, its flickering surfaces—he satisfied libertine patrons while quietly interrogating the volatility of pleasure. In hindsight, The Swing reads less as a decorative divertissement than as a sly commentary on a society moments before revolution, its airborne heroine poised, for the blink of an eye, between ecstasy and oblivion.