A pair of pendant paintings by Marguerite Gérard acquired by Washington

12/10/25 - Acquisitions - Washington, National Gallery of Art - The collaboration between Marguerite Gérard and her brother-in-law Jean-Honoré Fragonard is one of the most complex subjects in terms of connoissorship. Carole Blumenfeld’s research [1] would tend to demonstrate that their collaboration is not progressive (the former gradually contributing more and more to Fragonard’s works), but that it begins when she is fully formed as a painter, based of an almost equal collaboration. In certain paintings that she describes as “collaboration by sections”, the two artists each paint clearly identified parts; in others — the “crossed collaborations” — their hands are so interwoven that it is difficult to attribute a given figure to one or the other.

1. Marguerite Gérard…