During his yearlong travels with the financier Jacques Bergeret de Grancourt in 1773-74, Fragonard spent two months in Naples, from 15 April to 12 June 1774. Inspired by the setting and by the local inhabitants, the artist produced some of the finest drawings of his Italian trip. This portrait of an unknown young woman wearing traditional costume is astonishing in its modernity. An abbreviated inscription on the sheet--”Naples 1774 - feme de / Ste. Lucia”--makes reference to the Passeggiata di Santa Lucia, a popular street in Naples. Fragonard produced a full length study of the same woman on a sheet now in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt-am-Main (Inv. No. 1104). His young companion on the trip Francois-Andre Vincent also depicted the same Neapolitan woman in drawings and a painting that emulate Fragonard's style. The question remains whether this striking woman, whose face we can study so closely, was a woman the artist observed on the street or a model who posed for him and Vincent.
Inscribed in pen and brown ink, at lower right, by Fragonard (or Bergeret): "Naples 1774-feme [de]/ S.te Lu[cie]".
Watermark: Crowned shield with horn inside, above "Van der Ley" (see Churchill 321).
Watermark: countermark: Crown above letters "GR".
Bièvres, de, former owner.
Pelletier, Martial, former owner.
Marmontel, former owner.
Féral, former owner.
Stralem, C. I., Mrs., former owner.
Stralem, Donald S., former owner.
Stralem, Donald S., Mrs., former owner.
Thaw, Eugene Victor, former owner.
Thaw, Clare, former owner.
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY, "Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection", 2017. Exh. cat., no. 124, repr.
Denison, Cara D. et al. Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor Thaw. Part II. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1985, no. 11, repr. (also in Thaw III, no. 27)
Denison, Cara D. et al. The Thaw Collection : Master Drawings and New Acquisitions. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1994, no. 27, repr. and p. 259.
Alexandre Ananoff, "L'Oeuvre dessiné de Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1732-1806", 4 vols., Paris, 1961-1970, no. 119, III, fig. 495.
Denison, Cara D. French Master Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1993, no. 72, repr.
Denison, Cara D. et al. From Mantegna to Picasso : Drawings from the Thaw Collection at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. London : Royal Academy of Arts ; New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1996, no. 27, repr. in color.
From Leonardo to Pollock: Master drawings from the Morgan Library. New York: Morgan Library, 2006, cat. no. 82, p. 172-173.
Stein, Perrin, et al. Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant: Works from New York Collections, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016, no. 60.