La Gimblette

La Gimblette is one of the most famous paintings by the French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard and one of the most famous Rococo paintings. Like other paintings by Fragonard, such as The Swing, La Gimblette also has a frivolous component.

"The lovers' paradise in the middle of the 18th century is no longer ours at the end of the 20th century. It is therefore not surprising, that these pictures remain, in some respects, strange to us."

A testimony to the Ancien Régime in several versions
According to auction sales catalogues and further sources, there were several versions of this painting. Three versions of La Gimblette can be traced back to the 18th century, with the help of auction catalogues of that time. Since two of these three versions are considered lost, it cannot be clearly established which was the first version i.e. the original version.

The painting is a testimony to the Ancien Régime period. The composition of the painting is full of symbolism, which changes depending on the version of the painting and must be interpreted accordingly.

Description
The painting shows a girl lying under a canopy in a voluminous bed generously furnished with bed linen and playing with a dog. The subject of the painting is also known by the titles: Young girl in her bed, making her dog dance, Girl playing with a dog and Girl with dog.

The two protagonists, the girl and the dog, differ slightly in their appearance and behaviour in the different versions of the painting. However, this has a significant influence on the interpretation of the scene in the painting. This applies to the way the girl wears her clothes, feeds the dog a gimblette or not, and holds the dog, as well as the dog's position and the dog's breed. In some of the versions the dog looks more like a spaniel and in others more like a pug or a poodle. In the Besenval version, the dog even looks like a poodle with a judge's wig or with the long ceremonial wig of a King's Counsel, which could be seen as a caricature. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt commented accordingly:

"At the end of her feet, a curly poodle with the face of a bewigged counsel; and laughing, she digs the soles of her feet into the dog's hair."

The dog plays a clear role in the composition of the painting, which, however, varies depending on the version of the painting. The role of the dog must then be interpreted accordingly. In the Munich version, the dog also has the role of covering parts of the girl's body.

The best known four versions of La Gimblette
It is unknown how many versions of La Gimblette Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted. There are no records of it. Neither is any of the versions in question signed by Fragonard. However, over time, four versions of La Gimblette have achieved particular fame. These four paintings have been differentiated as follows:

The Walferdin version
It is named after the Walferdin collection. It has been proven, that there were two versions of La Gimblette in this collection. The dimensions of the first one, now called the Walferdin version, are: 35.0 cm x 40.5 cm. It has a provenance dating back to the 18th century.

This version was sold at auction at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris in 1880 in the sale of the Walferdin collection, lot 62, for FRF1,010. This version is considered lost. The second one is the one now known as the Munich version.

The Munich version
It is named after its current location, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. The dimensions are: 89.0 cm x 70.0 cm. It has a provenance dating back to the 18th century.

This version was sold at auction at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris in 1880 in the sale of the Walferdin collection, lot 61, for FRF7,000. The buyer was none other than the expert in painting of the sale himself, Henri Haro (1855–1911). Later, in 1977, this painting was bought by the HypoVereinsbank and has since been made available to the Alte Pinakothek.

The Besenval version
It is named after its former owner, Pierre Victor, Baron de Besenval de Brunstatt. The dimensions are: 70.0 cm x 86.5 cm. It has a provenance dating back to the 18th century. This version is considered lost.

The Mühlbacher version
It is named after M. Georges Mühlbacher in whose collection the painting was at the beginning of the 20th century. The dimensions are: 72.4 cm x 91.0 cm. It has a provenance dating back to the early 20th century.

After the death of M. Georges Mühlbacher in 1906, the painting was sold at auction in Paris between 13 May and 15 May 1907, by the Galerie Georges Petit, in the sale of the Mühlbacher collection, lot 23, offered as painted by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, for FRF31,500. The buyer was none other than one of the experts in painting of the sale himself, Marius Paulme (1863–1928). In the 1907 sales catalogue of the Galerie Georges Petit, the painting was described as follows:

''A young woman lies on a bed, half-naked, a muslin cap tied to her blond hair with a blue ribbon. Her head raised on a large pillow, her legs in the air and half-bent, holding a small white dog on the tips of her feet, she offers him a gimblette. Pink curtains are stretched across the background, to the right and left. In the foreground, on a blue stool, a yellow silk skirt. Canvas, height, 72 cm; width, 90 cm. Old frame, in carved and gilded wood, from the Régence period.''

The Mühlbacher version was sold again at auction on 31 January 2024 by Christie’s in New York, Old Master Sale, lot 67, for US$756,000.

The composition of this painting is known in three versions. In addition to the Mühlbacher version, there is also the Krämer version and the Cailleux version. In the Cailleux version the dog is black. The three versions are of uneven quality.

Further versions
The subject of the painting was very popular in the 18th and 19th century. It is therefore no surprise that the composition was imitated by many artists, including the engravers Augustin-Claude-Simon Legrand (1765–1815) and Niclas Lafrensen.

Many versions of La Gimblette were sold in the 19th and the 20th centuries, painted by different artists. Some of these versions were also sold as painted by Fragonard. Today, it is very difficult to tell them apart as the old descriptions in the sales catalogues were not always accurate and the dimensions were often missing. However, there are considerable differences in the quality of the painting in the different versions, which also provides information about whether the painting in question was painted by a master or not.

The Besenval version and the different versions of its engraving
According to Luc-Vincent Thiéry's description in his guide on the city of Paris, published in 1787, the Baron de Besenval kept his version of La Gimblette in the boudoir in his house on the Rue de Grenelle, the Hôtel de Besenval. After the baron's death in 1791, his heirs sold the entire contents of the Hôtel de Besenval at auction on 10 August 1795. The auctioneer, Alexandre Joseph Paillet, described the painting in the sales catalogue as follows:

''Honoré Fragonard: A young girl lies on her back in a lavishly lined bed and has fun with a pretty spaniel to whom she offers a gimblette; this very appealing and tasteful work of art has a touching lightness; it was engraved under the title « La Gimblette ». H. 26 in. wide. 32.T.''

This painting is considered lost. However, there is an engraving based on the Besenval version of the painting, executed by Charles Bertony in 1783 and dedicated to the Baron de Besenval.

It is possible that the Baron de Besenval bought La Gimblette from Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun. Lebrun is known to have traded paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and the baron was one of his best customers. However, the baron could also have bought the painting directly from Jean-Honoré Fragonard, whom he knew personally.

It is therefore entirely conceivable that the Baron de Besenval's version was the original version of La Gimblette. It was around the time when Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted La Gimblette, that the baron bought his house on the Rue de Grenelle, the Hôtel Chanac de Pompadour, later renamed Hôtel de Besenval, which then needed to be furnished. And the baron spent lavishly on furniture and works of art. Furthermore, the baron had excellent contacts in the art world and also maintained personal contacts with artists. It is therefore not surprising that the baron was made an Honoraire Amateur of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1784.

The engraving of the Besenval version
The engraving of the Besenval version by Charles Bertony, which was announced in the issue of 19 April 1783 of the Journal de Paris and of which a limited edition is dedicated to the Baron de Besenval, is also known by the title La Caroline, as reported in the issue of 10 August 1875 of the L'Intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux. This name is an allusion to women suspected of a certain vice.

There are two versions of the engraving by Charles Bertony: A nude one and a clothed one. The nude version came with the following recommendation for the print dealers: This subject should not be displayed. It can therefore be assumed that even the audience of the Ancien Régime, accustomed to a certain degree of frivolity, viewed this engraving as a scandal.

The name La Gimblette
A gimblette is a type of French pastry that is dry and ring-shaped. The pastry originally comes from Albi, a municipality in the southwest of France. In certain versions of La Gimblette, as in the Mühlbacher version and in both versions of Charles Bertony's engraving, the young girl actually offers such a pastry to the little dog. Since this is the case in Bertony's engraving, it can be assumed that this was also the case in the lost Besenval version. Due to the shape of the pastry and the way it is offered in the context of the composition of the painting, it could also be understood as an ambiguous allusion. However, as can be seen, in the Munich version this is not the case. In this version the girl just plays with the dog.

The composition and the name of the painting must be understood in the spirit of the last decades of the Ancien Régime. The Baron de Besenval aptly summarised this Zeitgeist, that predominated in high society, in his memoirs:

"Men were only busy adding to the list of their mistresses, and women were busy dumping their lovers with great fanfare and publicity."

La Gimblette: An inspiration for the decor of the Baron de Besenval's nymphaeum
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a master at creating suspense with erotic scenes. Several terracotta artworks by Claude Michel were more or less directly inspired by works by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Claude Michel delivered several of his artworks to the Baron de Besenval. Furthermore, he was also responsible for the artistic decoration of the baron's nymphaeum, which the baron had built in 1782 by the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart in the basement of his house, the Hôtel de Besenval. It is therefore quite possible that Claude Michel was also inspired by the works of Fragonard, especially by the painting La Gimblette, when he created the large reliefs with erotic scenes for the baron's nymphaeum, such as the relief titled Pan pursuing Syrinx under the gaze of Cupid, which is now part of the collections of the Louvre.