Swing (1790). Oil on canvas. 81 x 64. The Swing, also known as The Happy Accidents of the Swing, is an 18th-century oil painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard in the Wallace Collection in London. It is considered to be one of the masterpieces of the Rococo era, and is Fragonard's best known work. The painting depicts an elegant young woman on a swing. A smiling young man, hiding in the bushes on the left, watches her from a vantage point that allows him to see up into her billowing dress, where his arm is pointed with hat in hand. A smiling older man, who is nearly hidden in the shadows on the right, propels the swing with a pair of ropes. The older man appears to be unaware of the young man. As the young lady swings high, she throws her left leg up, allowing her dainty shoe to fly through the air. The lady is wearing a bergère hat. Two statues are present, one of a putto, who watches from above the young man on the left with its finger in front of its lips in a sign of silence, the other of pair of putti, who watch from beside the older man, on the right. There is a small dog shown barking in the lower right hand corner, in front of the older man. According to the memoirs of the dramatist Charles Collé, a courtier asked first Gabriel François Doyen to make this painting of him and his mistress. Not comfortable with this frivolous work, Doyen refused and passed on the commission to Fragonard. The man had requested a portrait of his mistress seated on a swing being pushed by a bishop, but Fragonard painted a layman. This style of frivolous painting soon became the target of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, who demanded a more serious art which would show the nobility of man. The original owner remains unclear. A firm provenance begins only with the tax farmer M.-F. Ménage de Pressigny, who died in 1794, after which it was seized by the revolutionary government. It was possibly later owned by the marquis des Razins de Saint-Marc, and certainly by the duc de Morny. After his death in 1865 it was bought at auction in Paris by Lord Hertford, the main founder of the Wallace Collection. There are two notable copies, neither by Fragonard. One copy, once owned by Edmond James de Rothschild, portrays the woman in a blue dress. The other is a smaller version, owned by Duke Jules de Polignac. This painting became the property of the Grimaldi family in 1930 when Pierre de Polignac married Princess Charlotte, Duchess of Valentinois. In 1966, the Grimaldi & Labeyrie Collection gave it to the city of Versailles, where it is currently exhibited at the Musée Lambinet, attributed to Fragonard's workshop. 1782: Les Hazards Heureux de l'Escarpolettes, etching and engraving by fr:Nicolas de Launay, 62.3 × 45.5 cm. Contrary to the original painting, the lady is facing right and has plumes on her hat because it was drawn after the replica owned by Edmond de Rothschild. 1999: The first act of the ballet Contact: The Musical by Susan Stroman and John Weidman is described as a contact improvisation on the painting. 2001: The Swing, a headless lifesize recreation of Fragonard's model clothed in African fabric, by Yinka Shonibare. 2013: The animated Disney film Frozen displays a version of The Swing in a scene when lead character Anna dances through an art gallery singing For the First Time in Forever.