''Blind Man's Buff'' (French: ''Le collin maillard'') is a painting by the French

Rococo Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...

painter

Jean-Honoré Fragonard Jean-Honoré Fragonard (; 5 April 1732 (birth/baptism certificate) – 22 August 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific ar ...

, produced around 1750 in oil on canvas. It is held by the

Toledo Museum of Art The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art gallery, art museum located in the Old West End District (Toledo, Ohio), Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. It houses a collection of more than 30,000 objects. With 45 galleries, it ...

Toledo, Ohio Toledo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lucas County, Ohio, United States. A major Midwestern United States port city, Toledo is the fourth-most populous city in the state of Ohio, after Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, and accordin ...

, United States, which purchased it with funds from the Libbey Endowment, a gift of the glass manufacturer Edward Libbey who founded the museum in 1901. The artist also produced another work of the same title some time between 1775 and 1780, which is held in the

Samuel H. Kress Collection Samuel Henry Kress (July 23, 1863 – September 22, 1955) was a businessman, philanthropist, and founder of the S. H. Kress & Co. five and ten cent store chain. With his fortune, Kress amassed one of the most significant collections of Italian R ...

. Eighteenth-century

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an i ...

s were produced of both paintings, showing that they may have originally been as much as a foot higher at the top.

Background and content

The painting is full of deceptions – the girl is looking out from under her blindfold and the

game A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (su ...

seems to be a pretext leading to seduction; the two figures are in pastoral costume, but may be noble or

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. Th ...

figures playing at being pastoral figures; the background seems to be a wood but could be a stage set. In short, it seems to abolish the boundary between truth and lies, reality and fiction. Eva-Gesine Baur, «El rococó y el neoclasicismo » in ''Los maestros de la pintura occidental'', Taschen, 2005, page 360, The

, where the painting is located, describes the work: "Playfully erotic and sensuously painted, Jean-Honoré Fragonard's scene of youthful flirtation fulfils the eighteenth-century aristocratic French taste for romantic pastoral themes. The figures are beautifully dressed in rustic but improbably clean and fashionable clothes; the woman's shoes even have elegant bows on them." The painting was intended to accompany ''

The See-Saw ''The See-Saw'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard, created c.1750–1752 during the artist's early career. It is currently in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. The painting forms a pair with another ...

'' (1750), currently held by the

Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum (in Spanish, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (), named after its founder), or simply the Thyssen, is an art museum in Madrid, Spain, located near the Prado Museum on one of the city's main boulevards. ...

in Madrid. Both are painted in the style and spirit of Fragonard's master

François Boucher François Boucher ( , ; ; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories ...

. Boucher's training can be seen in the ornamental flourishes of flowers and trees. But Fragonard's own skill may be seen in the brilliant composition. Blindman's bluff can be seen as a metaphor for courtship, while the rocking of the see-saw would clearly be a metaphor for the act of lovemaking itself.

Notes

{{Jean-Honoré Fragonard 1750s paintings Paintings of children Paintings in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art Paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard