Not long after I'd first seen the Frick's Fragonard Room, I was trying to describe the four great canvases of The Progress of Love to a friend. I was struck by how soon the narrative itself had blurred; it was now a mere impression, of gilded animation, surprise and success, only sketchily recalled. What I remembered, overwhelmingly, were the trees. Later, I kept four postcards of the paintings on the shelf above my desk, where they got shifted in and out of sequence, and always it was the trees that caught my eye and seemed, in their huge, almost unearthly forms, to bow and beckon to each other. Back in the room itself, years later, I regained the sense of scale. It is as if we look out into a fantastic parkland that fills the view; the paintings, more than ten feet high and closely spaced, become a frieze of eloquent gestures enacted in a setting of luxuriant strangeness and power. The darting and gesturing young lovers seem wholly unaware of this setting. They live only in and for themselves. But the viewer takes in the whole complex picture. Excerpted from Fragonard's Progress of Love by Alan Hollinghurst, Xavier F. Salomon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
