# Mountain Landscape at Sunset [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [FRAGONARD, Jean-Honoré]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Oil on paper, 22 x 33 cm ## Commentary Mountain Landscape at Sunset c. 1765 Oil on paper, 22 x 33 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington This small painting on paper is among the few surviving oil sketches by Fragonard that plausibly could have been painted in the open air. It illuminates a little-known aspect of his practice as landscapist. In the mid-eighteenth century the custom of drawing outdoors was an established part of a young artist's training. Fragonard produced spectacular series of landscape drawings during his early sojourn in Italy from 1756 to 1761, when he was a pensioner at the Académie de France in Rome. He continued to draw from nature throughout his career. Making open-air studies in oils, however, was still relatively unusual during this period. ## Related artworks - [A Boy as Pierrot]() - [A Game of Horse and Rider]() - [A Game of Hot Cockles]() - [A Young Girl Reading]() - [A Young Girl Sleeping]() - [A Young Scholar]() - [Abbé de Saint-Non \(Fanciful Figure\)]() - [Adoration of the Shepherds]() - [Blindman's Buff \(detail\)]() - [Blindman's Buff]() - [Coresus Sacrificing himself to Save Callirhoe]() - [Cypresses in the Garden Avenue of the Villa]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()