Jeroboam Sacrificing to Idols

This lay well outside the range of light-hearted Rococo scenes of pastoral romance, flirtation and erotic mythology that Fragonard was already developing at the studio of François Boucher.

[5]King Solomon Sacrificing to Idols, under the influence of his foreign wives, was a slightly more popular subject,[6] forming part of the Power of Women group.

Fragonard has adjusted his usual softer style to the requirements of history painting, less close to that of his master Boucher than those of Carle van Loo, with whom Fragonard was now to train, and Jean François de Troy, director of the French Academy in Rome, who had just died there in January 1752.

[7] Images using infrared photography show numerous pentimenti, especially in the area of the split altar in the centre of the painting, with "its ashes poured out", an unusual challenge for the painter to visualize, over which Fragonard evidently took much trouble.

[8] Despite having had a single owner since it was painted, the painting is now very well-travelled, having been included in exhibitions in Rome (1904), Moscow and Leningrad (1978), Kyoto (1980, Malibu (1982–83), Bayonne (1987), New York (1988), Tokyo (1989), Warsaw, Budapest and Bucharest (2004–05), Barcelona and Madrid (2006–07), Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, New Mexico and Naples, Florida (2014–15), as well as many in Paris.