Background
Fragonard was born in Grasse as cousin to painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
anatomist university professor
Fragonard was born in Grasse as cousin to painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
There Fragonard began to make his first anatomical exhibits. In 1765 Louis XV initiated a veterinary school in Paris, first resident at rue Sainte Appoline but in 1766 moving to the suburb of Alfort (today the École nationale vétérinaire d"Alfort in Maisons-Alfort). There Fragonard served as the school"s first professor of anatomy for six years, preparing thousands of anatomical pieces, but was expelled in 1771 as a madman.
Fragonard was careful in his dissections and preserved the results via means never divulged, but which may have been based on those of Jean-Joseph Sue.
His pieces were often prepared for theatrical effect rather than scientific exhibition, as can be seen in the surviving pieces in the Musée Fragonard d"Alfort. In this position he collected his work at Alfort for an envisioned Office National d"Anatomie.
But it never materialized and most of his work was dispersed. Despondent, he subsequently was named director of anatomy at the newly created École de Santé de Paris, but died in Charenton on April 5, 1799.
Honoré Fragonard appears in a brief but important role in Susanne Alleyn"s historical mystery novel The Cavalier of the Apocalypse (2009).
Fragonard is the central character of the French novel Le Cousin de Fragonard (2006) by Patrick Roegiers.