ALEXANDRE - EVARISTE FRAGONARD
Grasse 1780 - Paris 1850

Don Juan And The Statute Of The Commander

Oil On Canvas: 41 x 33 cm (17.08 x 13.75 in)

Signed: A Fragonard

Provenance: France, Private Collection, 1990; New York, Private Collection

Exhibited: New Orleans Museum of Art, New York Stair Sainty Matthiesen, Cincinnati Taft Museum of Art, Romance and Chivalry: Literature and History reflected in early nineteenth century painting, June 1996 – February 1997, no 24, pp. 139-140, 258, illus fig. 102.

The classic Spanish tale of Don Juan, well-known in France through the versions of Molière and Corneille, was given a sensational new form in the late eighteenth century in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, first performed in Prague in 1787 and by the Paris Opera in 1805. Delacroix, among many nineteenth-century enthusiasts, wrote about Don Giovanni in his journal: "What a masterpiece of romanticism! And that in 1785! ... the entry of the specter will always strike a man of imagination." Fragonard, who shared many of Delacroix's literary interests, treated the Don Juan subject on several occasions and in each the central character takes on a different aspect, suggesting that the artist was responding to different versions of the story and most probably to different theatrical productions which served as his immediate inspiration. Here, as in the Don Juan, Zerline and Donna Elvira (Clermont Ferrand, Musée Bargoin), the protagonist is a robust bearded man who has been described as a "musketeer Don Juan."

The scene is the dramatic climax of the story when the unrepentant libertine is confronted by the statue of the Commander come to life. Uttering the famous line common to all versions of the tale - "dammi la mano" (Da Ponte-Mozart), "donne-moi la main (Molière) - the statue holds out a hand before condemning Don Juan to Hell. The torch held by Don Juan illuminates not only the towering stone figure of the Commander, but also two spectral figures hovering in the background. These apparitions suggest that Fragonard's inspiration may have been a version of Molière's play rather than the opera, which did not include the specters. As a master of pictorial effects, Fragonard was particularly drawn to subjects (such as Don Juan and the Commander, Faust and Mephistopheles, and Hamlet and the Ghost) that offered possibilities for dramatic lighting, scale and color. Here the frightening conclusion of Don Juan is captured in a picture of small size but monumental impact.