Honoré Fragonard was born on April 5, 1732 at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, and the son of a merchant. At the age of 6, his family moved from the southern town to the capital, Paris, where, at the age of thirteen he took a job as a clerk in a notary. He worked to help out the family but spent all his spare time drawing and painting. This obsession led his parents to take their son, who was eighteen at the time, to the studio of François Boucher a talented painter who recognized the rare gifts Honoré posessed but decided not to waste his time with one so inexperienced and sent him to the studio of another painter, Chardin. Fragonard studied for six months under Chardin, and then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Boucher was so impressed with his new student that he encouraged him to apply for the Grand Prix for painting, and his winning composition “Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Idols” earned him a permanent place at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Destined for Rome, Fragonard enrolled at the Ecole Royale des Elèves Protégés in 1753. Under the tutelage of Carl van Loo he studied history, geography, mythology - enjoying it so much that when an opening was available in Rome, he petitioned the committee asking to stay apprenticing with van Loo for another three years. In 1756 Fragonard left for the French Academy in Rome. There he studied under Natoire. Although discouraged with the quality of Fragonard's work at first (and especially his lack of decisiveness) he was eventually won over. It was in Rome however that he found the romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces that he conceived the dreams, which he was subsequently to embody in his art. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity of studying in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761.

Fragonard created an uninspired painting for the 1765 Salon entitled High Priest Coresus sacrificing himself for Callirrhoe. It was perfectly suited for the Salon. So much so that he won unanimous admission to the Academy and was bought by the king, but the public was as unimpressed as Fragonard was himself. He realised that he was not cut out for this kind of painting and creating what he thought others would like was torture. He turned his back on academic art, and began doing the discretely erotic pictures, which soon brought him fame and success.

Fragonard was probably the swiftest painter of all time. His success can be partly attributed to fact that he was not constrained by his subjects. Fragonard captures the acceleration of time, the frivolity of the moment and superficiality of his time. Never attempting to moralize or paint a reality, he does indeed paint a portrait of the 18th century with all its decadence. His paintings are very like the society he painted, ever on the move for the next diversion, the next source of entertainment. Such a rush into pleasure could only sustain itself for a short time and with the French Revolution came the end of Fragonard’s popularity, but did not dim his inimitable spirit. The revolution cut short his career and reduced him to poverty. He left Paris in 1793 and found shelter in the house of his friend Maubert at Grasse, which he decorated with the series of decorative panels known as the Roman d'amour de la jeunesse, originally painted for Mme du Barry's pavilion at Louveciennes. The panels eventually came into the possession of J.P. Morgan, who subsequently sold them to Henry Clay Frick. They occupy the walls of the Frick Museum in Manhattan, overlooking 5th Avenue.

Fragonard returned to Paris early in the 19th century, where he died of a stroke on August 22, 1806, neglected and almost forgotten.