Young Girl Reading

A young woman in a warm yellow dress reads a small book held before her, her head inclined, her hair pinned and tied with ribbons, one elbow resting on the arm of her chair while the broad cushions rise behind her in rumpled browns and violets. Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted the canvas about 1769, and no figure in his art is more famous for its air of absorbed privacy: the dark olive ground parts just enough to let a shaft of golden light fall on the book, the profile, the white collar, turning a casual moment of reading into a radiant interior portrait. The quick, dry strokes of the dress and the tender handling of the face show the master of the Fête galante at his most intimate. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.