How does Blind Man's Bluff (Fragonard, 1750) elucidate its Background and content?
The painting is full of deceptions – the girl is looking out from under her blindfold and the game seems to be a pretext leading to seduction; the two figures are in pastoral costume, but may be noble or bourgeois figures playing at being pastoral figures; the background seems to be a wood but could be a stage set. In short, it seems to abolish the boundary between truth and lies, reality and fiction.The Toledo Museum of Art, where the painting is located, describes the work: "Playfully erotic and sensuously painted, Jean-Honoré Fragonard's scene of youthful flirtation fulfils the eighteenth-century aristocratic French taste for romantic pastoral themes. The figures are beautifully dressed in rustic but improbably clean and fashionable clothes; the woman's shoes even have elegant bows on them."The painting was intended to accompany The See-Saw (1750), currently held by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. Both are painted in the style and spirit of Fragonard's master François Boucher. Boucher's training can be seen in the ornamental flourishes of flowers and trees. But Fragonard's own skill may be seen in the brilliant composition. Blindman's bluff can be seen as a metaphor for courtship, while the rocking of the see-saw would clearly be a metaphor for the act of lovemaking itself.
French Toledo Museum of Art Jean-Honoré Fragonard game François Boucher Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum The See-Saw bourgeois