A Young Blonde Woman With a Garland of Roses Around Her Neck 

Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted this portrait of a young woman adorned with roses sometime in the late 18th century, using oil on canvas. Fragonard was celebrated for his fluid brushwork, and here you can really see how he revels in the texture of the paint. The delicate, layered strokes create a sense of light and movement, particularly in the rendering of the flowers and the woman's ruffled collar. But consider the social context: flowers, particularly roses, were luxury commodities. Their cultivation required extensive labor, and their display signaled wealth and status. Fragonard’s painting thus captures a moment of aristocratic indulgence, where even the representation of nature becomes a symbol of privilege. He does so with remarkable skill, deploying the techniques of painting to evoke a world of beauty and excess, but we can still appreciate the labor involved in the materials’ production.