Which artist painted the famous Rococo work 'The Swing'?

Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted the famous Rococo work The Swing. Completed around 1767–1768, the oil painting is one of the best-known images of eighteenth-century French art and is now held by the Wallace Collection in London.

The scene shows a fashionably dressed woman soaring on a swing while a young man hidden in the bushes looks up her skirt. An older man, apparently her husband or companion, pushes the swing from the shadows. A flying shoe, playful sculptures, lush foliage, and theatrical movement heighten the painting’s flirtatious, mischievous mood.

The work’s original French title, Les Hasards heureux de l'escarpolette, means The Happy Accidents of the Swing. According to a later account, a courtier first asked Gabriel François Doyen to paint his mistress being pushed by a bishop. Doyen declined the frivolous commission, which was then passed to Fragonard; Fragonard changed the pusher to a layman.

A common mix-up is confusing Fragonard with François Boucher or Jean-Antoine Watteau, two other major French Rococo artists. All three painted aristocratic leisure and romance, but The Swing is specifically Fragonard’s signature work.