While Fragonard is sometimes romanticized as an outsider, his artistic pedigree and early success shows that this was far from the case. Fragonard studied with two of the great artists of the preceding generation, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and François Boucher, both of whom strongly influenced the themes, settings, and symbolism that would characterize his work throughout his career.
In 1769, Fragonard married Marie-Anne Gérard, fourteen years his junior. Their marriage was subject to some scrutiny, in part because a daughter, Henriette-Rosalie, was born only several months after the ceremony. There would be, over the course of the marriage and after the death of the couple, rumors of infidelity, though concrete evidence for this has not been found. The pair had a son, Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard, in 1780, who would go on to study with Jacques-Louis David and work as a painter. Marie-Anne Fragonard would work as her husband's treasurer for much of her life, painting a number of canvases that were until recently attributed to her husband.
His best-known work, The Swing, has become iconic and has been widely referenced by contemporary artists, such as Yinka Shonibare and Kent Monkman, interested in drawing upon or querying the European canon. While Fragonard's thematic concerns were long considered outdated, recent interest in gender, the body and the male and female gaze have given his subjects new relevance; and many artists referencing Fragonard's work do so in order to explore the constructed or performative dimensions of sexuality.
Living the sweet life until the very end, Jean-Honoré Fragonard died of a stroke on a park bench on August 22, 1806, while eating ice cream.