Provenance
Possibly William Williams Hope [1802-1855], Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire, and Paris; possibly by gift to Madame Jenny Colon [1808-1842], Paris.[1] Emile [1800-1875] and Isaac [1806-1880] Péreire, Paris, by 1864; (Péreire sale, at their residence by Pillet and Petit, Paris, 6-9 March 1872, no. 60); Frédéric-Alexis-Louis Pillet-Will, comte Pillet [1837-1911], Paris, until at least 1910.[2] (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London), by 1932;[3] Calouste Gulbenkian [1869-1955]; (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London);[4] sold 1942 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[5] gift 1946 to NGA.
[1] For the Hope-Colon provenance, see W. Bürger, "Galerie de MM. Pereire," _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ ser. I, 16 (April 1864): 201.
[2] The painting was lent by Pillet-Will to an exhibition in Berlin in 1910.
[3] The painting was lent by Wildenstein to a 1932 exhibition in London.
[4] Georges Wildenstein's letter of 21 January 1952 to John Walker (NGA curatorial files) confirms Gulbenkian's ownership and the fact "that my father bought [it] back from him."
[5] See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/41.
Accession Number
1946.7.6
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 115.5 x 91.5 cm (45 1/2 x 36 in.) | framed: 144.5 x 121.3 cm (56 7/8 x 47 3/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Samuel H. Kress Collection
Tags
Painting Neoclassical & Romantic (1751–1850) Oil Painting Canvas French
Background & Context
Background Story
A Game of Hot Cockles (c. 1770-1775) depicts one of the most popular parlor games of 18th-century France—a game in which one player kneels with their head in another's lap while the other players strike them, attempting to guess who delivered each blow. The game's combination of physical intimacy, disguised violence, and theatrical display made it a perfect subject for Fragonard, whose art consistently explored the interplay of pleasure and pain, innocence and experience, that defined the Rococo sensibility. The 1770-75 date places this during Fragonard's most productive fête galante period, when he was painting the aristocratic social rituals that would become the Rococo's most enduring visual legacy. His treatment of the game captures the specific quality of Rococo play: the elegant figures, the garden setting, and the underlying erotic tension that the game's physical contact facilitated. The player kneeling with head in lap—vulnerable, receiving blows from unseen hands—embodies the Rococo's characteristic combination of submission and pleasure, vulnerability and amusement. The other players, delivering their disguised blows, embody the Rococo's equally characteristic combination of cruelty and elegance. The painting thus reveals the dark undercurrent that runs through even the most playful Rococo subjects—the violence that pleasure can conceal and the submission that social rituals can require.
Cultural Impact
Fragonard's Hot Cockles painting influenced how the relationship between pleasure and violence was represented in 18th-century art, revealing the dark undercurrent of Rococo play. The painting influenced later artists who similarly explored the interplay of pleasure and pain in social rituals. The game subject influenced how the Rococo's characteristic combination of elegance and cruelty was understood, arguing that amusement can conceal violence.
Why It Matters
This painting matters because it reveals the dark undercurrent that runs through even the most playful Rococo subjects—the game that combines physical intimacy with disguised violence, pleasure with pain, and amusement with cruelty. Fragonard's painting argues that the Rococo's characteristic elegance conceals a capacity for violence that the social rituals of aristocratic amusement both express and disguise.
