Art Throb # 20: Girl with a Dog (c. 1770) by Jean-Honore Fragonard

Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806), Girl with a Dog (c. 1770)

Oil on canvas, 89 × 70 cm (35 × 27.6 in)

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

For many years 'The Swing' (1767-1768) was the only one of Fragonard's paintings I knew. I first came across it as a pupil in a history book and it made a lasting impression. Luminous and gilded, with lashings of pink silk and lace, for me it summed up the Eighteenth Century in all its lavish beauty.

A tour de force in the depiction of detail, fabric and textures, light and shade, there is still much to admire in 'The Swing' (left). Yet when I look at it now it doesn't really hold the same appeal. Blinded by its prettiness, the naïve nine-year old me was blissfully ignorant of the story in the painting: that the man on the left hiding in the foliage is the woman's lover who is quite obviously looking up her skirt, while her older husband, obscured in the shadows, pushes the swing. The woman's flirtatious kick, flicking her shoe into the air in the direction of cupid, so as to open up her billowing petticoats, is designed on her part to give her lover an eyeful while she has her back to her husband. The swing is clearly a metaphor for her relationship to the two men, while that shoe, suspended in the air, leads the eye in an arc across the canvas, conveying a sense of sweeping movement as the woman, a flying vagina, glides through the sky.

'The Swing' is a great painting. Yet it leaves me uneasy, particularly when viewed within the context of the rest of the artist's oeuvre. According to Wikipedia, Fragonard (even his name sounds rude) was prolific in his portrayal of adult themes and sexual politics, creating over 550 paintings (not counting sketches and etchings). Many of these depict illicit trysts and stolen moments between cheating wives and younger lovers. Frivolous and playful in tone, they take part in aristocratic, idealised worlds where the risk of consequence is overridden by gaiety. But while a cheeky glimpse up a girl's skirt has the touch of the Moulin Rouge about it, for 21st Century eyes Fragonard's risqué love triangles are not only the stuff of soap opera, but have implications for the viewer. Why did he paint such scenes? Who would have wanted them? His vast output suggests a willing audience. It is all too easy to imagine Fragonard as a sort of Benny Hill figure, eyes bulging, tongue salivating. But if the artist is voyeur, Peeping Tom, dirty old man – perv, even – then so too is the viewer.

'Girl with a Dog' (1770) is a case in point. I feel cheap and grubby looking at it, and if this was a photo you'd get locked up for doing so. A young girl, not a woman, lies on a bed with a dog. She can't be more than ten herself – of a similar age to me when I first saw 'The Swing'. Fragonard painted other pictures of girls and women with dogs, yet I am unaware of any as complex and suggestive as this one. The girl is lying on her back with her legs in the air, while the dog's tail protects her modesty. If she were any older, the painting would be classed as pornography. It is the girl's young age which saves it from being so.

There is tenderness here, and a sense of innocence. Those yellow curtains could be read as a large vagina-like opening into a private world. That they are yellow, representing youth and innocence, as opposed to red, saves the painting from cliché and obscenity. Here the parted curtains suggest a growing awareness. It must be morning and the girl's dog has come to greet her. Like the feather pillows and cotton sheets, it too is white – innocence is being emphasised. That the curtains have been drawn back suggests that there is a nanny close by. And so is experience – the red fabric on the floor perhaps hints at an encroaching loss of childhood innocence. Once again the artist displays his almost fetishistic ability to depict opulent fabrics. Those sumptuous curtains, yards of drapery almost kinky in their tactility, must be closed at night. Yet here we are privy to a private, intimate moment, captured in all its fleeting innocence.

Fragonard painted girls and women in various contexts. His oeuvre represents the era in which he lived so definitively that it could be said to be the very definition of rococo. 'A Young Girl Reading' (1776), however, appears to show an evolution in his style, conveying a maturity in subject matter and an almost Vermeeresque tranquillity. It is also said to anticipate Impressionism (Fragonard's grand-niece was the acclaimed Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot).