When I Was Thinking of You appeared in the Parisian art market in the late 19th century, it sparked immediate debate: was this a rediscovered treasure by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, or a clever pastiche in his style? No contemporary record of the painting’s commission or early provenance has surfaced, and its title itself is a later invention, not found in Fragonard’s own time. Yet the painting’s intimate scale and playful spirit are unmistakably linked to the artist’s celebrated series of romantic fantasies, created for private collectors in the waning years of the Rococo. The scene Fragonard presents is a moment suspended between longing and secrecy. A young woman, half-turned from the viewer, clutches a sealed letter to her chest, her cheeks flushed with anticipation.

The gentle tumble of her curls, the sumptuous fabrics, and the scattering of rose petals at her feet all hint at a clandestine love affair. Light falls softly on the letter, drawing the eye to the object of her devotion and the painting’s emotional core. Unlike the moralizing tone of Greuze or the mythological settings of Boucher, Fragonard’s focus is on private sentiment, rendered with a spontaneity that makes the viewer a silent confidant. The physical journey of I Was Thinking of You remains largely undocumented until its reemergence in the late 1800s, after which it passed through several Parisian collections.

Its attribution to Fragonard is now widely accepted, though the absence of a signature and the unknown medium have kept some scholars cautious. Today, the painting is recognized as part of Fragonard’s late career, when his fortunes had faded with the rise of Neoclassicism, but his brush retained its wit and lightness. It now hangs in a private collection, rarely exhibited, a testament to the enduring allure of secret passions in the Rococo imagination.