Back in Paris Marguerite Gérard, his wife's 14-year-old sister, became his student and assistant in 1778. In 1780, he had a son, Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard (1780–1850), who eventually became a talented painter and sculptor. The French Revolution deprived Fragonard of his private patrons: they were either guillotined or exiled. The neglected painter deemed it prudent to leave Paris in 1790 and found shelter in the house of his cousin Alexandre Maubert at Grasse, which he decorated with the series of decorative panels known as the "Les progrès de l'amour dans le cœur d'une jeune fille", originally painted for Château du Barry.