,

£** aJF
mtf^

aa
•

•%sw

^-.*££
FRANCO IS'BOUCHER
1703 -U70

Francois Boucher (1703-1770), the friend

and protege of Mme de Pompadour, was
the greatest French artist and decorator of
the Rococo period. His prolific oeuvre has
been both lauded and derided, but it is not
until now-in volume accompanying an
this

exhibition held at The Metropolitan Mu-

seum of Art and The Detroit Institute of
Arts-that his art has been fully studied and
appreciated. Alastair Laing, the principal
author of this volume, shows that
Boucher's *- epresents the acme of
French eigntcenui-centurv fine and deco-
rative arts.

With the exception of a trip to Italy in his

mid-twenties to study the work of Renais-

sance masters, Boucher lived and worked
in Paris. His artistic progression, through
religious themes, mythological subjects,
genre painting, landscape, and portraiture,
is thoroughly documented in this cata-
logue. The patronage of Mme de Pom-
padour, mistress of Louis XV, ensured a

large demand for Boucher's work, includ-

ing drawings, prints and paintings, as well
as tapestry and porcelain designs. His art

traveled throughout northern Europe, and

formed the essence of the French Rococo
style sought by patrons and emulated
after

by artists in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Saint

Petersburg, and Munich. A large collection
of these works is illustrated in this volume.

In addition, little-known or misattributed

earlyworks have been brought to light,
showing Boucher's first experiments with
composition and color. His designs re-
produced in tapestry at Beauvais and
Gobelins, and in porcelain at Vincennes and
Sevres, are illuminated in lively discussions
by Edith Standen, Consultant, European
Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metro-
politan Museum of Art, and by Antoinette
Fay-Halle, Conservateur, Musee Nationale
dt- Ceramique, Sevres, and Conservateur,
(Continued on back flap)
 BEL-TIB
759. 4 Boucher 1986
Boucher, Francois,
1703-1770
Francois Boucher,
1703-1770 the :

Metropolitan Museum of

DATE DUE
AUG 18 2 m

Brodart Co. Cai. #55 137 001 Printed in USA

FRANCOIS BOUCHER

I
FRANCOIS

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

February 17-May 4, 1986

The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit

May 27-August 17, 1986
Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Grand Palais, Paris
September 19, 1986-January 5, 1987
BOUCHER
-T
U°3 770
<<y

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The exhibition has been made possible, in part, by the
National Endowment for the Arts. In Detroit support
was received from the Founders Society Detroit
Institute of Arts, the City of Detroit", and the State of
Michigan. In New York the exhibition was sponsored
by The Real Estate Council of The Metropolitan
Museum of Art.

This publication was issued in connection with the exhibition

Francois Boucher held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, February 17, 1986, to May 4, 1986; The Detroit Institute of
Arts,May 27, 1986, to August 17, 1986; and the Reunion des
Musees Nationaux, Grand Palais, Paris, September 19, 1986, to
January 5, 1987.

Copyright £ 1986 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Bradford D. Kelleher, Publisher
John P. O'Neill, Editor in Chief
Katharine Baetjer, Project Coordinator
Margaret Aspinwall, Editor, with the assistance of
Zachary R. Leonard, Ann Lucke, and Jean Wagner
Bruce Campbell, Designer

Translation of "The Mysterious Beginnings of the Young

Boucher" from the French by John Shepley; translation of "The
Influence of Boucher's Art on the Production of the Vincennes-
Sevres Porcelain Manufactory" from the French by Richard Miller.

Type set by Trufont, Hicksville, New York.

Printed in France by Imprimerie Blanchard, Le Plessis-Robinson.

All photography provided by the institutions cited, with the

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data exception of the following:
Boucher, Francois, 1703-1770. Jorg P. Anders, fig. 7; Archives Nationales, Paris, cat. 30, 31,
Francois, Boucher, 1703-1770: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. fig. 129; Art Resource, cat. 8, 25, 29, 32, 47, 63, figs. 53, 102, 206;
New York, February 17, 1986-May 4, 1986, the Detroit Institute Bibhotheque Nationale, Paris, figs. 10, 14, 22, 23, 31, 36, 42, 46,
of Arts, May 27, 1986-August 17, 1986, Reunion des musees
75, 78, 80, 105, 107, 109, 115, 130, 135, 136, 141, 181; British
nationaux, Paris, September 19, 1986-January 5, 1987. Museum, London, figs. 100, ic6, 125, 167; Made) Bronarski/
Exhibition catalog. Zamek Krolewski, figs. 65, 66; Caisse Nationale des Monuments
Bibliography et des Sites, Paris, cat. 77; Mr. Choffet, cat. 7; Prudence Cuming
1. Boucher, Francois, 1703-1770-Exhibitions. I. Metropolitan Association, Ltd., London, figs. 40, 47, 48; Ursula Edelmann, fig.

Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) II. Detroit Institute of Arts. 166;Marc Jeanneteau, fig. 28; Bruce C. Jones, fig. jy; Sidney
III. Reunion des musees nationaux (France) IV. Title. Liswood, cat. 2; Newberry, fig. 43; Photo, Inc., cat. 69;
N6853.B58A4 1986 709'. 2' 4 S5-25956 Photographie Bulloz, cat. 18, 25, 36, 49, 81, figs. 12, 13, 29, 112,

ISBN 0-8109-0743-7 (Abrams) 128, 139; Photographie Giraudon, cat. 8, 21, 32, 47, 63, figs. 53,

93, 102, 172, 174, 187; Eric Pollitzer, figs. 2, 3; Elton

Front cover/jacket: Francois Boucher, The Toilet of Venus Schnellbacher, fig. 12c; Walter Steinkopf, fig. 16; Studio Andre

(cat. 60), detail. Gray, cat. 37; Studio Zoom, cat. 19;Malcolm Varon, cat. 60
Title page: Francois Boucher, The Sacrifice of Noah (cat. 11). (cover); Robert Wallace, cat. 73; Dorothea Zwicker, fig. 86.
Contents

Foreword
Philippe de Montebello, Samuel Sachs II, and Hubert Landais

Preface and Acknowledgments

Alastair Laing, J. Patrice Marandel, and Pierre Rosenberg 9

Lenders to the Exhibition 14

Chronology and Boucher's Prize- Winning Pupils 15

Alastair Laing

The Mysterious Beginnings of the Young Boucher 41

Pierre Rosenberg

Boucher: The Search for an Idiom 56

Alastair Laing

Boucher and Europe 73

J. Patrice Marandel

Explanatory Notes to the Catalogues 89

Catalogue of Paintings 90
Alastair Laing

Boucher as a Tapestry Designer 325

Edith A. Standen

Catalogue of Tapestries 334

Edith A. Standen

The Influence of Boucher's Art on the Production of the

Vincennes-Sevres Porcelain Manufactory 345
Antoinette Fay-Halle

Catalogue of Porcelain 351

Antoinette Fay-Halle

References Cited 376

Scientific Committee For The Exhibition

Philippe de Montebello
Director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alastair Laing

Pierre Rosenberg
Conservateur en chef, Departement des Peintures,
Musee du Louvre, Paris

J.
Patrice Marandel
Curator, European Paintings,
The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
 —

Foreword

It is not by coincidence that, for the past decade, the achievements of the
great French painters of the eighteenth century have been the subject of
monographic exhibitions and of broader surveys on both sides of the
Atlantic. A concerted effort on the part of our museums has allowed an
ever-growing public to consider in depth the careers of a Largillierre or a
Watteau, of a Chardin or an Oudry, to grasp the variety of genres and
styles of the painters of the Age of Louis XIV and of Louis XV or to
witness the radical changes which affected the artists in the later part of
the century, with David as their most genial leader.
The we are presenting is of particular importance in that
exhibition
Francois Boucher, more than any other artist of his time, has epitomized
le gout franqais. Longevity of career and industry made him the most

diverse and productive artist of his generation. The reproductions or

interpretations of his work in other media, tapestries and porcelain in
particular —
an aspect of his activity we have found essential to represent
have contributed to the spreading of a style which, until the neoclassic
upheaval, was the norm throughout Europe.
To fully understand the fortune of the artist, it is necessary to consider
his later years: First Painter to the King, in control of Royal manufacto-
ries, unmoved by the criticisms of a Diderot, the aging artist may have
represented to many not only the ultimate stronghold of establishment but
also the exponent of an archaic, even despised, style from which, insensi-
tive perhaps to the novelty of a younger generation, he never departed. Yet
that style forced the admiration of the staunchest of the radicals and made
David, his one-time pupil, exclaim: "N'est pas Boucher qui veut!"
It is paradoxical that the painterly qualities of his work, his sheer
enjoyment and mastery of the material texture of paint, and the brilliance
of his colors were not "rediscovered" by those nineteenth-century artists
who sought a greater freedom of expression. Perhaps Boucher's choice of
subject matter, the immaterial world of gods and shepherds, stood
between them and the paintings. Boucher's view of nature was subtle and
he was one of the finest landscape painters of the century, both in the early

landscapes executed during or shortly after his trip to Italy and in the
background of many of his mythological compositions. Yet neither the
Romantics nor the Impressionists were able to look at Boucher with an
unprejudiced eye. Among the latter, only Berthe Morisot is known to
have copied his work at the Louvre. Boucher's true rehabilitation began
with the brothers Goncourt. Their studies of the French painters of the
eighteenth century justly led them to rank Boucher among the greatest.
Although their judgment made a strong imprint upon later scholarly
research, it generally failed to change the opinion of the larger public
toward who, by then widely stereotyped as the inventor of
a painter

saccharine images, was seldom considered for his real contribution to art.

Our exhibition proposes to be a true rehabilitation: that of a painter

who in his time and country was considered to be the greatest, and that of
critics, like the Goncourt who, counter to prevalent taste, nonetheless
recognized his genius.
 This exhibition is the occasion for our three museums to cooperate once
again. Initiated by J.
Patrice Marandel, Curator of European Painting at

the Detroit Institute of Arts, the exhibition was brought into existence by
the indefatigable support of the staffs of the three museums, in particular
of the Metropolitan Museum and the Reunion des Musees Nationaux. Mr.
Alastair Laing was contracted by the participating institutions to research
the works in theexhibition and to write the major part of the catalogue.
It is always a pleasure to thank those who have made the exhibition
possible. Its presentation is made possible by grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts, a Federal Agency, and the Founders Society
Detroit Institute of Arts, the State of Michigan, and the City of Detroit.
We are extremely grateful to all collectors and custodians of public
collections who have consented to part with works that grace their homes
or are a vital part of their galleries.

Philippe de Montebello, Director

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Samuel Sachs II, Director

The Detroit Institute of Arts

Hubert Landais
Directeur des Musees de France
Preface and Acknowledgments

For an artist of his importance, Boucher has been curiously ill served by
posterity. There no catalogue raisonne of his work as either a
is still

painter or a draftsman, and there has been no properly representative

exhibition devoted to him.
The monographs Andre Michel and Pierre de Nolhac follow the
of
tradition set by the Goncourt brothers' pioneering essay (itself still
admirable), in yoking catalogues of the artist's work (in the cases of Michel
and de Nolhac, the labors of other hands, and drawn primarily from the
catalogues of past sales) to unrelated texts. The two volumes produced by
Alexandre Ananoff in collaboration with Daniel Wildenstein in 1976,
though invaluable as a compilation of documents, illustrations, and
cullings from the available literature and sales and museum catalogues, are
virtually innocent of authorial comment that might justify either the
corpus of works presented or the chronology adopted for them.
The by Charles Sterling on behalf of the
exhibition catalogued in 1932
Fondation Foch, while assembling more works by Boucher in all the
media that he worked in or was translated into than any before or since,
was as unsystematic as the organization of its catalogue into division by
subject matter would suggest. What is more —
and of crucial disservice to
us now —the catalogue is virtually devoid of illustrations. The exhibition
mounted by the Galerie Cailleux in 1964 was choice in its selection and a
remarkable display by any standards for a private institution to have put
on, but was necessarily composed almost exclusively of loans from
it

French collectors and institutions. The bicentenary of Boucher's death in

—
1970 nowadays normally the almost ritual pretext for a commemorative
exhibition —
was saluted by nothing more extensive than exhibitions by the
Louvre and the Russian museums of their own holdings. In 1973 there was
a pioneering attempt to mount a systematic display of Boucher's drawings,
by Regina Shoolman Slatkin in Washington and Chicago, but again, as the
title makes clear, it was drawn exclusively from North American collec-

tions. Finally, in 1980, Wildenstein in New York mounted an exhibition

devoted to Boucher of which a remarkable proportion of the contents was
drawn from stock or from the collections of its clients in the United
States, as the prelude to a much larger exhibition (swollen by loans from,
above all, French museums) held in 1982 in Tokyo and Kumamoto. The
catalogue is admirably bilingual in Japanese and English, and almost every
exhibit is well illustrated in color, but Japan is regrettably remote from
both the country in which Boucher was born and worked and from the
one in which perhaps the majority of his works is now to be found, few of
whose inhabitants consequently saw it.
Such a preamble might suggest that we regard the exhibition now
presented as making up for the limited scope or deficiencies of all its
predecessors. We are fully aware that it does not —
and cannot do any —
such thing. Rather the reverse, since serious study of Boucher has yet to
begin, with a few notable exceptions in specific areas, such as the work of
Maurice Fenaille and Edith Standen on the tapestries, of Pierrette Jean-
Richard on the engravings, and of Hermann Voss on the early works.
 None of us is an authority on Boucher (can anyone claim to be so?), so
that the object of this exhibition is to explore and propose, rather than to
aspire to some definitive or even wholly comprehensive presentation.
What is more, although we are showing tapestries and porcelain designed
or inspired by Boucher, we have regretfully renounced exhibiting any
drawings or engravings. This is partly because a very proper concern for
conservation means that it is no longer possible show drawings adjacent
to
to the paintings to which they may relate, or even to show them in three
locations, or to move around at all works in one central but neglected
medium in which Boucher worked pastel. Partly also, and more cru- —
cially, because Boucher's graphic output was not only so vast but also so

various (and so much of it an entirely autonomous activity) that to do it

justice would require an exhibition of its own and a large one at that. —
May we even be permitted the hope that the tricentenary of Boucher's
birth may be more gloriously celebrated than the bicentenary of his
death — and how better than by a comprehensive exhibition of his

drawings?
The second and main reason for the present exhibition not being as
representative as we should ideally have liked is one that will, sadly,
prevent there ever being such a thing. It is a curious quirk of fate that the
kind of institutional collection which several of the most important
in

paintings by Boucher are to be found is often debarred by its statutes

from lending. Such collections mostly have a considerable dix-huitieme
component and contain both the major and the minor arts of eighteenth-
century France, which they aim to display together to recapture
something of the flavor of the period that produced them. It is therefore
understandable that provision should have been made against any dis-
ruption of such unity. But it would also appear that a kind of snobbery
has been at work, as each successive collector already often motivated by —
some desire to exist by proxy among the elite of the Ancien Regime has —
emulated his predecessors in the ban upon loans incorporated into the gift
or bequest of his collection. This restriction appears to have originated in
the fear of the former regimental tailor John Jones that the bequest of his
collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum (1882) would be dispersed
through the building as the Sheepshanks gift of paintings had been. It was
then given virtually canonical status for collections of eighteenth-century
French by the interpretation put by the Law Officers
art of the Crown on
the terms of Lady Wallace's bequest of her late husband's collection to the
British Nation (1897) —overcompensating for their failure to build "a
special museum to contain the said collection" by prohibiting either
lending or borrowing, in a way that flew in the face of the quite opposite
policy pursued by Sir Richard Wallace during his lifetime.
It is because of these and similar restrictions that neither we nor anyone
else can borrow the two pairs of masterpieces of Boucher's early and late

maturity — the Rape of Europ a and Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus
to the Nymphs, and the Lever and Coucher du — and neither the Soleil
seated nor the standing Portrait of Mme de Pompadour in a Garden. Nor
indeed, since they seem to have been especially favored in this kind of
collection, so many of the pictures painted for Mme de Pompadour.
Neither — to remain in the field that Boucher so rarely yet so tellingly
graced, that of portraiture —can the unique Portrait of Mme Boucher in

10
 1

the Frick Collection, nor Boucher's only portrait of a child, the young
Philippe-Egalite Waddesdon, be borrowed.
at

Size and fragility prevented the borrowing of other masterpieces: the

great pair of Marches painted for P-J-O. Bergeret in the Boston Museum
of Fine Arts, the enigmatic Pygmalion presented by Falconet on behalf of
Boucher to the Academy of Saint Petersburg, the enchanting picture at
Angers of Les Gerties des Arts (painted, like the Lever and Coucher du
Soleil, as the model for a tapestry intended for Mme de Pompadour),

or more than one of the two large decorative Village Pastorals (see cat. 27)
on extended loan from the Bayerische Landesbank to the Alte Pinakothek.
Other pictures we were precluded from showing by the policy adopted
by the Reunion des Musees Nationaux of not borrowing works of art on
the market. Others again were locked away in private collections so
discreet that we could not even get a sight of them. Yet there were also
refusals — often at the last minute, and curiously, more often from
museums than from private collectors, who might be thought to feel the
temporary absence of their pictures more — that we felt less justified, above
all because, by preventing us from showing the very best of Boucher
together, they make it more difficult to rectify the injustice that the

painter has so long suffered, of being judged by his inferior productions,

when not simply by pictures that have no right to carry his name, and by
outright fakes and pastiches. We know
Boucher was an early victim of
that
the picture cooks of the Pont Notre-Dame, and there can be few other
painters who have been so imitated that their name has become simply a
generic description, rather than a seriously intended ascription.
But enough of regrets and explanations for what we cannot and do not
have —there is more than enough what we do. It would be
to celebrate in
invidious to single out particular pictures or objects, and anyway it is part
of our hopes that the exhibition will above all make visitors exclaim at
Boucher as Gainsborough did at Reynolds: "Damn him, how various he
is!" It is only fair to admit, however, that our choice has particularly gone
to the works of Boucher's youth; we hope, simply from an unthink-
not,
ing acceptance of the prejudice against his late works —
we have tried to
show that, in the best of these Boucher can still give considerable
pleasure— but because it is from his earlier years (which in Boucher's case
means he was almost
until there so many rediscovered
thirty) that are
things to show— and so many potential rediscoveries make, which still to
may be aided by the widest possible showing of the protean productions
of his youth (yet even here, we must regret that it has not been possible to
show any of the small early mythologies).
We have also tried to exhibit —without being excessive— a fair number
of sketches, to show Boucher the peintre-ne; and also some of the best of
his pastorals, in the hope that, by at the same time explaining them in

terms of the kind of theater that inspired them, we can dispel some of the
prejudices against this now despised genre. Above all, we intend the
tapestries and porcelain as far more than a sideshow —even though they
are amere fraction of what might be shown, in that we have restricted our
borrowing to the works of the leading French royal or quasi-royal manu-
factories alone. They are to be seen not only as superb or enchanting
things in their own embodiments of Boucher's enormous
right, but also as
and prodigal fecundity (nor should we forget that whole tracts of his

1
 activity, such as his work for the stage, have disappeared virtually without
trace). We hope that even this limited showing will help to convey how the
felicity and fertility of Boucher's imagination contributed to set his stamp
—arguably to a greater degree than that of any other artist — indelibly
upon the image of his century.
It would not be possible to mount an exhibition such as this without

calling upon the help of numerous other people for information and
advice and assistance. The institutional and private lenders, without whose
cooperation such an exhibition as this could never even be attempted, have
already been thanked in the Foreword. We should like to thank here so
many others whose generosity with their time and information has been of
cardinal importance in running to earth items for exhibition and in the
preparation of this catalogue: Colin Anson, Monika Bachtler, Colin
Bailey,Madeleine Barbin, Joanna Barnes, Christian Baulez, Reinhold
Baumstark, Charles Beddington, A. Bezangon, Fiona Bissett, Anne J.
Blankert, Nicole de Blic, Edgar Peters Bowron, Georges Brunei, Julius
Bryant, Helene Bucaille, Frances Buckland, Duncan Bull, Andre Cariou,
J. de Chaignon, John Chesshyre, the Earl of Chichester, Andrew
Ciechanowiecki, Isabelle Compin, Felix Davoine, Cara D. Denison,
Marie-Anne Dupuy, Judy Egerton, Martin Eidelberg, Jane Farrington,
Christine Fournier, Anne French, Monique Fuchs, Peter Fuhring, Thomas
Gaehtgens, Kate Ganz, Donald Garstang, George Gordon, Luigi Grassi,
Marco Grassi, Richard Green, Rosamund Simone Guillaume, Jan
Griffin,
Heidner, Christoph Heilmann, Francois Heim, Werner Helmberger, Ann
Hoffmann, Viviane Huchard, Peter Hughes, Beverly Schreiber Jacoby,
Christophe Janet, Pierrette Jean-Richard, Christopher Kingzett, David
M. Koetser, Giinter Kowa, J.H. Kraan, Ch. Lassalle, Alain Latreille,
Roger Le Coq, Clare Le Corbeiller, Catherine Legrand, Elizabeth
Llewellyn, Annette Lloyd-Morgan, Richard Lockett, Gerard Mabille,
Suzanne Folds McCullagh, Stefanie Maison, Philip Mansell, Jonathan
Marsden, Jean-Francois Mejanes, James Miller, William P. Miller Jr.,
P. Minns, Christopher Monkhouse, Monique Mosser, Edgar Munhall,

Albrecht Neuhaus, Philippe Nusbaumer, Jaap Nystaad, R. Pardo, Nicole

Parmantier, Nicholas Penny, Ann Percy, Bruno Pons, Elisabeth A. Powis,
Alexandre Pradere, Christian Prevost-Marcilhacy, Franchise Pruner,
Simon de Pury, Robert Raines, John Marianne Roland-Michel,
Rogister,
the Earl and Countess of Rosebery, Kate de Rothschild, A. Rottermund,
Vincent Rousseau, Francis Russell, Jean-Pierre Sainte-Marie, Guy Sainty,
Birgitta Sandstrom, Rosalind Savill, Maria-Christina Prinzessin Sayn-
Wittgenstein, Diana Scarisbrick, Johann-Karl Schmidt, Katie Scott, David
Scrase, Lorenz Seelig, Maurice Segoura, Claude Seillier, Regina Shoolman
Slatkin, Stephen Somerville, Franchise Soulier-Fran^ois, Claude Souviron,
Timothy James Standring, Marion C. Stewart, Julien Stock, Wolfgang
Stolte, Alain Tapie, Gerard Tisserand, Eric Turquin, Horst Vey,
Dominique David Wakefield, Roger Ward, the
Vieville, Jacques Vilain,
late Sir Ellis Waterhouse, Selby Whittingham, Susan Wise, Gretchen

Wold, Richard Wrigley, Walford Wynn-Jones, Eric M. Zafran.

The staffs of the following libraries have also assisted us: the Rijks-
bureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague; the British
Library, the Courtauld Institute, the London Library, the National Art
Library (Victoria and Albert Museum), the Warburg Institute, and the

12
Witt Library, London; the Zentralinstitute fur Kunstgeschichte, Munich;
the Thomas J. Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum and the Frick
Art Reference Library, New York; the Bibliotheque Nationale and the
Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, Paris; the Getty Center for the
History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica; and the Royal Library,
Stockholm.
Alastair Laing

J.
Patrice Marandel
Pierre Rosenberg

Additional Acknowledgments

I should especially like to thank, in the first place, Patrice Marandel and
Pierre Rosenberg for the immensely challenging invitation to become their
collaborator on this exhibition, and for the confidence and support they
have manifested toward me throughout. I should then like to thank all

those whose generosity with information, particularly when it was the

fruit of their own research, and patience with my enquiries have put me
in the possession of much knowledge that I could never have acquired
through unaided efforts. Several are cited individually in the catalogue,
and it is only fair to them to make it clear that the responsibility for any
errors of fact or interpretation is mine alone. Others are thanked above
(and I crave forgiveness for any inadvertent omissions).
I am also most grateful to Celia de la Haye and Kay Hubble for their
success in reducing the palimpsestic confusion of my manuscript to typed
order.
I should further like to give special thanks to Mme Beaumont, Con-
servateur en chef du Cabinet des Estampes de la Bibliotheque Nationale,
and Mile Gazier, Directeur de Plnstitut d'Art et d'Archeologie, for
according me working directly in the book
the inestimable privilege of
stacks of their respective institutions, without which I could never have
accomplished the self-imposed task of consulting (guided by the near-
infallible Lugt) all the catalogues that I could of sales of works of art in

Paris in the eighteenth century.

With great sadness I should like to remember Lucienne Didier and
Colin McMordie, for the shelter and encouragement that they gave me
when I was working in Paris; the loss of each of them is keenly felt.
Finally, it is also usual to thank one's wife for her support and for-
bearance. In my case the gratitude goes far beyond the conventional, since
I am aware that my enthusiasm for the artist, and the need to do so much
in so short a time, have kept me from her in a way reminiscent, not so
much Boucher himself (though we know from Desboulmiers that he
of
habitually worked for more than twelve hours a day), as of another
painter, Uccello, of whom Vasari relates that he would remain in his study
long into the night, working on his diagrams, answering all his wife's pleas
to break off and come to bed only with the exclamation: "Oh what a
sweet thing is this perspective!"

Alastair Laing

n
Lenders to the Exhibition

Amiens, Musee de Picardie Leningrad, The Hermitage Museum Providence, Museum of Art, Rhode
Island School of Design
Barnard Castle, The Bowes Museum London, private' collection
Quimper, Musee des Beaux-Arts
Besancon, Musee des Beaux-Arts et Los Angeles Countv
d'Archeoloeie Museum of Art Sainte-Adresse, Dr. Feray

Bielefeld, private collection Lugano, Thyssen-Bornemisza Saint-Jean-Cap Ferrat, Academic des

Collection Beaux-Arts, Institute de France,
Blois, Musee des Beaux-Arts du Musee Ephrussi de Rothschild
Chateau de Blois Lyon, Musee des Beaux-Arts Jardins et Villa "Ile-de-France"

Boulogne-sur-Mer, Musee des Manchester City Art Galleries Saint-Omer, Musee Sandelin
Beaux-Arts et d'Archeologie
Minneapolis, The Minneapolis Santa Monica, Jean-Luc Bordeaux
Chicago, The Art Institute of Institute of Arts
Chicago Sevres,Musee National de
Moscow, Pushkin Museum Ceramique
Columbia, South Carolina, The
Columbia Museum Munich, Bayerische Hypotheken- South Queensterry, Scotland,
und Wcchsel-Bank (on deposit in the Earl and Countess of Rosebery
Columbus, Ohio, Columbus Alte Pinakothek
Museum of Art Springfield, Massachusetts,
Munich, Bayerische Landesbank (on Museum of Fine Arts
Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts deposit in the Alte Pinakothek)
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum
Edinburgh, National Galleries of Nancy, Musee des Beaux-Arts
Scotland Strasbourg, Musee des Beaux-Arts
New Orleans Museum of Art
Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum Toledo, The Toledo Museum of Art
New York, The Metropolitan
Fort Worth, private collection Museum of Art Tours, Musee des Beaux-Arts

France, private collection Nimes, Musee des Beaux Arts Troves, Musee des Beaux-Arts

Gray, Musee Baron Martin Paris, Archives Nationales Versailles, Cathedrale Saint-Louis

Hallandale, Florida, Mr. and Mrs. Paris, Musee des Arts Decoratifs Washington, D.C., National Gallery
J eft rev E. Horvitz of Art
Paris, Banque de France
Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum Williamstown, Sterling and Francine
Paris, Musee Cognacq-Jay Clark Art Institute
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Paris, Musee du Louvre
Kansas City, The Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art Paris, Mobilier National

Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Princeton, The Art Museum,

Princeton University
Le Mans, Musee du Mans

14
 Chronology
ALASTAIR LAING

1698 February 20 Marriage in the church of Saint-Gervais, between Nicolas Bouche, aged
Paris,
25, "dessignateur," living in the rue Saint-Martin, and Elisabeth Lemesle,
aged 20.
This is the only document in which Boucher's father is referred to as a
dessinateur (draftsman, provider of designs). In every subsequent document
he is called a maitre peintre (master painter), meaning that he had by then
been accepted as a craft painter into the Academie (really the guild) de Saint-
Luc. The later attempts (from Papillon de La Ferte onward) to identify him as
a dessinateur des broderies rest on a confusion between him and Antoine-
Claude Boucher (active 1742-56), successively described as a marchand
d'estampes, selling, inter alia, "toutes sortes de Desseins des plus a la mode,
pour Meubles & Broderies"; as a Maitre-brodeur; and as a brodeur de Roi. It
appears to have been the latter's son Antoine-Fran^ois (d. 1787), who had
formed a partnership with his father in 1750 (A & W
doc. 415), who was the
"Boucher fils" responsible for a plethora of designs for furniture and interiors
published in cahiers from c. 1770 onwards. It was certainly not Francois
Boucher's son, Juste-Nathan. Further confusion is introduced by the
existence of an engraver and "peintre du Roy en mignature" living in the
Gobelins, called Claude- Andre Boucher, who was associated with
ornemanistes such as Pineau, Huquier, and Lajoue.
Elisabeth Lemesle's brother had a daughter, Jeanne-Marguerite, who was
grandmother of the painter Jacques-Louis David, hence the interest that
Francois Boucher took in the beginnings of latter.

1703 September 29 Birth of Francois Boucher, in a house in the rue de la Verrerie.

C.1717-C.1720 Probable apprenticeship to his father.

1720/21 Painted a Judgment of Susannah that encouraged Francois Lemoine to predict

a glowing future for him (Galerie Franqoise, 1771, p. 1) It is doubtful whether
this was the painting measuring 40 pouces by 50 pouces in the [Le Bas] sale of
26 April, postponed to 10 May ff. 1793, since this was, to judge from its

placing and ascription, by a living artist: "BOUCHER, Artiste moderne."

between 1721 Pupilage to Francois Lemoine — for a very short time, according to what
and 1723 Boucher told Mariette. He been required to be
will nonetheless have
registered as the pupil of some member of the Academy, in order to compete
for the Grand Prix: the possible candidates are Lemoine's teacher, Louis
Galloche, of whom both Natoire and he are described as having been pupils
in the Description Historique des Tableaux de I'Eglise de Paris (178 1, p. 7); or
Jean-Baptiste de Troy, who is named as his teacher a propos his copy of the
latter's sketch of Armide visitant Renaud pendant son sommeil dans laforet in

the de Sireul sale (3 Dec. ff. 1781, lot 28).

1723 August 28 First prize for a painting on the theme set by the Academie Royale de
Peinture et de Sculpture for that year, Evilmerodacb, fils et successeur de
Nabucodonosor, qui delivre des cbaines Joachin que son pere avoit tenu captif
depuis dix sept ans [not recorded in the Academy at its dissolution in 1793;
probably one of the 88 already unrecognizable pictures recorded in the garde-
meuble in 1775]. Though winning the first prize normally entitled the
prizewinner to a scholarship of three or more years in Rome, Boucher was

M
 denied this because of the prolongation by the surintendant des Bdtiments,
then the due d'Antin, of his favorites' stay there, leaving no place vacant for a
newcomer (Cochin, 1880, p. 100).

c.i7 2 3 -I 7 2 8 Chiefly employed in making designs for engraving as thesis plates for Jean-
Frangois Cars, who gave him bed, board, and 60 livres a month [this
probably meant making drawings for the engravers, not only after old
masters, but also after paintings of his own, such as the Jacob Uncovering the
Well for Rachel (A & W
32), the Bethuel Welcoming the Servant of Abraham
(cat. 4), and the Martyrdom of the Japanese Jesuits (A & 119)]; also W
apparently for Robert Hecquet —
including the Separation of Jacob and Laban
(?; A & W 35), and Jacob Deceitfully Obtaining Isaacs Blessing (engraved by
Daulle); and then in making etchings after Watteau for Jean de Jullienne.

*7*S Corpus Chnsti Exhibited "several small pictures" in the annual exhibition in the Place
Dauphine.

1726 Engravings by Vallee, Aubert, Brion, Jacob, Haussard, and Jeaurat, published
by the last named, after a set of small pictures of Christ, the Virgin, and the
Apostles, probably painted some years before (A & W 13-27; cf. cat. 1).

November Publication by de Jullienne of the first book of Figures de differents caracteres,

de Paysages, et d'Etudes dessinees d'apres nature par Antoine Watteau . . .
,

with 55 of the 132 plates etched by Boucher (J-R 34-87).

?I726 Carle Vanloo's Mars et Venus [according to Dandre-Bardon, 1765; although

Fontaine-Malherbe, 1768, less plausibly, says 1735]; apparently painted, as it
was published one of the two times that it was engraved (by Jean-Ch.
Levasseur) and thrice sold (20 Mar. ff. 1773, lots 21 and 22; [Verrier sale], 14,
deferred to 18, Nov. ff. 1776, lots 97 and 98; 14-16 April 1784, lot 74), as the
pendant to Boucher's upright Death of Adonis (A & 87; private W
collection, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat), which thus presumably dates from the
same epoch.

1727 December Publication of Boucher's etching of Watteau's Self-Portrait, intended as a

frontispiece for the first book of the Figures de differents caracteres (J-R 33),
and of his engravings after five of the paintings of Watteau, subsequently
gathered into L'Oeuvre d Antoine Watteau (J-R 1 51-158).

1727-28 25 drawings for the third edition of P. Gabriel Daniel's Histoire de France, for
which a prospectus was issued by Denys Mariette and Jacques Rollin in 1727,
and which they published in 1729 (Ruch, 1964 [misdated]).

1728 Feb ruarv Publication of the second book of Figures de differents caracteres, with 64 of
the 218 plates etched by Boucher (J-R 88-150).

end March/early April Sets off for Rome, traveling at his own expense with Carle, Louis-Michel, and
Francois Vanloo, and arriving at the end of May. The director of the French
Academy, Nicolas Vleughels, lodges him in a kind of outbuilding. He
announces the intention of the new arrivals to compete for the prizes for
drawing announced by the Accademia di San Luca, in which two of the
classes were won in December by Carle Vanloo and his nephew Francois. It is
possible that Boucher was prevented from competing by the state of illness
mentioned by Papillon de La Ferte (1776, II) and the Discours sur Vorigine et
I'etat actuelde la peinture (1785).
Papillon de La Ferte also maintained, however, that Boucher had executed
"several exquisite pictures in the Flemish manner" while in Rome, and

16
 drawings show him to have studied in the Pamphilj gallery, the Piazza
Navona, and elsewhere.
A journey to Venice, via Ferrara (cf. J-R 123 1), is highly probable, but
unproven.

1729 Easter His presence in Rome recorded by the stati d'anime (information from
M. Olivier Michel).

173 1 ' ^ not Returns to Paris in time to execute the second book of a dozen etchings of
before Diverses Figures Cbinoises Peintes Par Watteau au Chateau de la Muette
. . .

whole set of thirty of which, by Boucher, Jeaurat, and

(J-R 164-175), the
Aubert, was announced as forthcoming in July, and as published in
November.

August Announcement of a projected new edition of the Oeuvres de Moliere, with

illustrations to be drawn and engraved by "les meilleurs Maitres," to be
published at the end of 1732 [ultimately brought out, by a different publisher,
in I734/35]-

November 24 Agree by the Academy as a peintre d'bistoire.

173* Venus Requesting Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas (cat. 17),
First dated picture, the
one of whole group of large paintings executed for Francois Derbais,
a
the son of the marble mason Jerome Derbais, in order to get himself known.

1733 April Advertisement for the publication of the engravings by Scotin (J-R 1585) and
Aubert (J-R 191) after La naissance and La mort d Adonis [the pictures
themselves evidently having been painted before the journey to Italy].

April 21 Living in rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre [adjacent to the Hotel de Lon-

gueville]; marries, in the church of Saint-Roch, Marie-Jeanne Buseau
(1716-after 1786), daughter of Jean-Baptiste Buseau, bourgeois de Paris.

Designs three vignettes engraved by Laurent Cars for the Satyres et autres
Oeuvres de Regnier, published by Jacob Tonson in London (A & W
figs. 9-1 1 ). Date on Aurora and Cephalus (cat. 18), the pendant to Venus

Requesting Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas.

1734 January 30 Recu by the Academy on presentation of his Renaud et Armide dans les

plaisirs (cat. 26), the same day as his friend Tocque.

June 26 Bernard Lepicie agree by the Academy on presentation of several engravings,

including L Amour moissonneur and U
Amour oiseleur (J-R 1378, 1377) after
two pictures by Boucher belonging to Derbais (see August 1741).

September Announcement of Boucher's own etching of his Andromede, subsequently

gone over with the burin by Pierre Aveline (J-R 203); and of Edme Jeaurat's
engraving after the lost painting of the Paisane des Environs de Ferrare (J-R
123 1), one of a set of six engravings of Costumes de Femmes du peuple de
Rome et des environs, of which the other five were after Vleughels.

Date on the Capriccio View of tbe Farnese Gardens (cat. 23).

Date on La dame allant au bal (art market, London and New York A & W
; 1
1 3).

1734-35 Publication of Jolly's edition of the Oeuvres de Moliere [despite the 1734 on
the title pages, the set was only announced as appearing "aujourd'hui" in May

17
 1735], including 33 illustrations by Boucher, engraved by Cars and Chedel
(J-R 402-452). Earliest designs for the tapestries called the Fetes Italiennes
(cat.86-89) f° r Beauvais, for the new director Oudry, who was appointed on
23 March 1734. The first weaving was in 1736.

J
735 March 24 Birth of his eldest daughter, Jeanne-Elisabeth-Victoire, subsequently the wife
of his pupil Jean-Baptiste Deshays.

April Announcement t>f Aveline's engraving after La belle cuisiniere (cat. 21), which
had been borne off to London, and of Aubert's engraving (J-R 192), of the
lost picture of Venus Endormie, which was then in the collection of the
chevalier de la Roque, the editor of the Mercure de France.

May Announcement by Jolly of a projected duodecimo edition of Racine, with title

pages by Boucher, to be published before the end of the year [never realized].

June Announcement Boucher s set of twelve etchings, the Livre d'Etude d'apres
of
les Desseins Originaux de Blomart (J-R 176-186), combining motifs from his

copies of a number of drawings by Abraham Bloemaert, from a group of

studies, others of which were copied by some of Boucher's fellow students at
the French Academy in Rome. The faintly etched inscription Tonton Boucher
on one of them suggests a student prank.

July 2 Elected adjoint a professeur at the Academy, along with L-M. Vanloo and
Natoire, after showing "four little pieces depicting the four Seasons, with
little women and children" [probably the set of pictures engraved by Aveline,
announced in December 1737 (J-R 208-215)].

Publication of volumes II and III of [the abbe Pluche's] Le Spectacle de la

Nature (1732-51), each with a frontispiece engraved by Cochin after
Boucher: La Vigne plantee dans les Gaules (A & W
fig. 91) and La jonction

de I'Ocean et de la Mediterranee.

commission for the Crown: the four

First grisaille Virtues in the ceiling of the
chambre de la Reine at Versailles.

1736 January Rocaille engraved by Duflos after Boucher (A

still life & W
fig. 42) as the

frontispiece to Gersaint's Catalogue raisonne de Coquilles et autres Curiosites

Naturelles, for a sale held on 30 January ff. [reused, with adjustments to the
wording, for Gersaint's miscellaneous sale of 2 Dec. ff. 1737, and his Bonnier
de la Mosson sale of 8 Mar. ff. 1745].
Announcement of Huquier's engraving after Boucher's Berger et bergere en
conversation (A & W
54) in an ornamental surround, readvertised in April as
Pastorale (J-R 1089).

April Announcement of Huquier's Recueil de Fontaines after Boucher (J-R 1090- 1097).

May Birth of his only son, Juste-Nathan (d. 1782); godparents were Meissonnier
and his future wife, Franchise Petit [a relation of Boucher's early engraver
Gilles-Edme Petit?]. Though subsequently trained and styling himself as
"architecte," Juste-Nathan never practiced as such (other than as an inspecteur
des Bdtiments du Roi, thanks to his brother-in-law, the premier commis de
Bdtiments du Roi, Cuvillier) but specialized in drawings and watercolors of
architectural capricci.

Chasse au tigre [recte leopard] (cat. 29) for the galerie des petits appartements
du Roi at Versailles (paid in full 7 Jan. 1737).

18
 —

Eight sacred scenes, together with frontispieces of three Theological Virtues

and Religion over four locations in Paris, engraved by Le Bas after Boucher
for the Breviaire de Paris (J-R 1323-1333).

First order for three of the set of tapestries known as the Fetes de village a
Vitalienne from Beauvais (cat. 86, 87).

Date on drawing of La Courtisanne Amoureuse (Waddesdon Manor; A & W

fig. 861), the first of four Contes by La Fontaine engraved by de Larmessin

after Boucher [professedly after paintings].

1736/37 Publication in Paris of the Tombeaux des Princes, desGrands Capitaines et

autres Hommes Illustres . . ., which included engravings by Aubert, Beauvais,
Cars, Cochin, Dorigny, Duflos, de Larmessin, Surugue, and Tardieu, after
eight large drawings by Boucher, two by Carle Vanloo, and one by Joseph
Perrot, as half titles (J-R 194, 280, 453-454, 51 1-5 12, 869-871, 1249, 1590,
1593). Owen MacSwiny had announced his publication of the first 8
engravings of tombs alone, from the intended set of 24 allegorical tombs and
titles, in a prospectus reasonably datable to c. 1729. Jombert says that the

whole work was published toward the end of 1736, but while that is the year
found on the first state of Cochin's headpiece for the Eloge of the Earl of
Dorset, and on Nicolas Dorigny's engraving of Carle Vanloo's half title for the
Earl of Cadogan, Dorigny's engraving of Vanloo's half title for George I is
dated 1737 [since the tombs of these last two figures were never engraved, the
Dorigny /Vanloo plates were omitted from the London edition of 1741].

1737 January Ravenet and Dupuis's announcement of their intention to engrave and publish
a group of scenes from Don Quichotte after Parrocel, Boucher, Tremolieres,
and others, and of the publication of the first two, after Coypel.

February Cochin's engraving after Boucher's Retour du marche (cf. cat. 27) as the
central motif in an ornamental design for the leaf of a folding screen, entitled
Tnomphe de Pomone (J-R 517-518).

April Announcement of four scenesfrom Don Quichotte, including Aveline's

engraving after Boucher's Sancho poursuivi par les Marmitons (J-R 207).

May Announcement of Le Bas and Ravenet's dozen Cris de Paris after

set of a
Boucher (J-R 1334-1338, 1516-1521), rapidly imitated by Fessard's three sets of
Cris, elaborated from the comte de Caylus's etchings after Bouchardon (1737-38).

June Publication by Jacob of Fessard's engraving of Ceres endormie (J-R 273) after
a lost painting by Boucher, and of Aveline's Le Printems (J-R 208), the first of
a set of four engravings of the Seasons [probably after the lost pictures that
Boucher showed to the Academy in 1735], of which the remainder were
announced in December (J-R 210-215).

July 6 On Boucher shows at the Academy "three fancy

his election as full professeur,
pictures, of Figures, of Landscapes, and of Animals, done for the King" [the
wording is confusing, but these were most probably two of the four
pictures —referred to as "paysages" but centered on groups of figures
executed this year for Fontainebleau, together with the Chasse au leopard,
whose installation at Versailles had probably been delayed by changes to the
petite galerie].

August 18- First of the revived Salons, in which Boucher exhibited:

September 1 — A pair of small oval paintings of Les quatres saisons [lost].

19
 — Four round-headed pictures of divers sujets champetres. [These last are
described in the Mercure de France as having been painted for the king.
They are thus probably to be identified with the four lost pictures painted
for the petits appartements at Fontainebleau in 1737: two in the petite salle a
manger du Roi— Un concert de deux figures (Pdrawing engraved by Aveline,
J-R 229; ?various copies, including in the Musee Cognacq-Jay) and Une
femme qui tient un pannier, une autre tient du poisson, and two in the
cabinet du Roi —
Une femme coeffee d'un chapeau de paille, un enfant sur
ses genoux, un jeune homme s'amusant a prendre des oiseaux aux filets and
Des petites filles qui entourent des moutons avec des guirlandes de fleurs.]
— De la Tour exhibited a pastel of Mme Boucher.

November 25 Decision to weave a set of six tapestries of the Story of Psyche at Beauvais, for
which it was understood that Oudry would invite Boucher to make the
preparatory paintings.

December Le Printems, PEte, VAutomne, and I'Hyver (J-R 208-215) included among the
titlesof a whole group of engravings after Boucher, Lemoine, N-N. Coypel,
etc., advertised by the print publisher Jacob.

1 73 711. Following the suicide of Lemoine, Boucher was one of those apparently
turned to by J-B. Masse to carry on the task of making his drawings for the
engravers of Le Brun's ceilings in Versailles more painterly.

1737-39 Supplied designs for the Academie Royale de Musique (l'Opera) [but see
below, under 1743].

1738 April Announcement of Aveline's engravings after Boucher of La bonne aventure

(J-R 223; numerous copies), La Fontaine d 'Amour (A & W
fig. 493; original

drawing in private coll., England), and the Jeux d'Enfants: La balanqoire (J-R
225; copy of lost painting sold Christie's, 11 July 1975, lot 149), Pescheurs
(J-R 226), Le retour de chasse (J-R 227), Fete de Baccus (J-R 228) [two of
these may have been after the paintings executed this year for the cabinet de la

Reine at Versailles].

June Announcement of Soubevran's engraving after Bouchers lost painting of La

belle villageoise (J-R 1589; variant in the Norton Simon Collection, A& W
78).

August 18- Exhibition in the Salon of three of Boucher's curvilinear overdoors for the
September 10 Hotel de Soubise:
— Venus, qui descend de son Char soutenue de VAmour pour entrer au Bain
(A & W 163).
— Les Graces qui enchainent VAmour (A & W
trois 162).
— L'education de Amour par Mercure (A & W
I' 164).
An ovoid replica of Les trois Graces, also dated 1738, is in the Calouste
Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (A & W
154). A quite different depiction of
L'Education de I Amour, also dated 1738, in all probability painted as an
overdoor for the Hotel de Mazarin in the rue de Varenne (exh. cat. 1981,
Paris, note by Bruno Pons inadvertently omitted from printed catalogue), is
in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (A & 151). W
A fourth overdoor in the Hotel de Soubise (A & W
158) may have been the
Paisage exhibited ex-catalogue (L.C.D.N., 1738; A& W doc. 107).

Two lost paintings of Jeux d'Enfans for the cabinet de la Reine at Versailles
(possibly two of the compositions engraved bv Aveline, published in
April).

zc
 1

Frontispiece, Qui fecit utraque unum, engraved by Lepicie (J-R 1379), and four
vignettes engraved by Cochin (two illustrated as A & figs. 43, 44) after W
Boucher, for the second edition of Pere Berruyer's Histoire du Peuple de Dieu.

Earliest certain weaving of all four of the first set of the Fetes de village a
Vitalienne at Beauvais: Voperateur, La bohemienne, Les chasseurs, La
pecheuse (cat. 86, 87).

1738-39 La chasse au crocodile (cat. 32) painted for the galerie des petits appartements
du Roi at Versailles [paid in full 8 Apr. 1739, as having been executed the
previous year, but dated 1739].

1739 August 3 Lundberg takes Carl Gustaf, Count Tessin, to visit Boucher in his studio,
only five days after Tessin s arrival in Paris as Swedish envoy.

September 6-30 Exhibits in the Salon:

—A painting
full-scale Beauvais of Psiche conduite par Zephire dans
for le
de Amour
Palais I' woven from
(lost; first in 1741).
— L'Aurore Cephale, dessus de porte pour VHotel de Soubise (A & W
et 161).
— Un Paysage ou paroit un Moulin [possibly the picture engraved by Le Bas
in1747 as Premiere veue de Charenton: in other words Le Moulin de
Quiquengrogne, A & W
167, which appears to bear this date].
— Oudry's tondo of A Rabbit and a Partridge on a white ground, belonging
to Boucher.

Date on painting of Le dejeuner (cat. 33).

From point on Boucher almost invariably appends a date to his signature

this
on paintings, so their chronology is self-explanatory. Listing of them hereafter
will accordingly be selective, as will that of datable engravings after his works.

1740 April 27 Birth of Boucher's second daughter, Marie-Emilie (d. 1784), in his house in
the rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre; successively the wife of his pupil Pierre-
Antoine Baudouin (d. 1769), and of Charles-Etienne-Gabriel Cuvillier,
premier commis des Bdtiments du Roi.

May 18 Signs receipt of 600 livres from president Crozat de Thugny for a landscape,
and for "a little ceiling that he is to do for him in his library" [neither has
been identified, since not in Crozat de Thugny 's posthumous sale in June
175 1, nor subsequently in the collection of his brother, Crozat de Thiers,
despite his having inherited de Thugny's hotel in the Place Vendome and
amalgamating it with his own].

July Announcement by Huquier of P. Aveline's set of six chinoiserie engravings

after Boucher's drawings of the Five Senses.

July 22 Tessin writes ecstatically to Harleman to say that Boucher is painting "une
naissence de Venus" for him.

August 22- Exhibits in the Salon:

September 1 — La naissance de Venus (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; A & W 177).
— Une Foret (cat. 35)
— Un ou Von
Pa'isage, un Moulin voit (cat. 34).

— Aveline's engravings
P. Boucher's chinoiserie drawings L'Eau (J-R 233)
after
and Le Feu (J-R 234), from a set of the Four Elements.

21
 5

Cochin's engraving for the march and-tapissier Blangy of the Foire de

Campagne (J-R 519-522), after his improved drawing of a copy by Francisque
of a sketch by Boucher [which was doubtless his premiere pensee for the
Beauvais tapestry L'operateur].

The comte de Caylus's etching after Boucher of Gersaint's trade card, A la

Pagode.

1740/41 Engravings by-Chedel (J-R 468-478), Cochin, and Duflos after Boucher's
illustrations and ornaments for Tessin's fairy tale, Faumllane, ou Vlnfante
jaune (1741), around which Duclos subsequently composed his Acajou et
Zirphile (1744).

1
74 1 August 1 shipment of pictures back to Sweden, including the Triompbe/
Tessin's first
Naissance de Venus, the Vue de Tivoli (cf. cat. 16), and a pastel portrait of
Mme Boucher.

August Publication of the engravings by Fessard (J-R 962) and Sornique (J-R 1 5 88)
after Boucher's L Amour vendangeur and L Amour nageur, the second pair of
the set of four putto paintings in the collection of Derbais (see June 1734).

September Exhibits nothing in the Salon.

November Publication of Elisabeth Lepicie's engraving after La vie champetre (cat. 9).

The Cabinet des Medailles transported from Versailles to Paris and installed in
the Bibliotheque du Roi, in a room created by Robert de Cotte. Paintings to a
program (the Muses and their protectors) devised by Jules-Robert de Cotte
commissioned from Carle Vanloo and Natoire (three each for the walls), and
Boucher (four overdoors), and the first of the latter painted (Melpomene/La
Tragedie) (A & W
246).

Shipment of 139 overdoor and overmantel pictures commissioned by

Wasserschlebe, the secretary of the Danish Embassy in Paris, for Chris-
tiansborg Castle in Copenhagen, including Boucher's four Poesies, engraved
by Duflos (J-R 925-928).

Painted the first three of some fifteen pictures for Choisy, the chateau
acquired by Louis XV from the princesse de Conti in 1739.

First weaving of three of the Beauvais tapestries of the Story of Psyche.

1742 February 3 Gustaf Lundberg presents the Academy with his portraits of Boucher and
Natoire as his morceaux de reception (Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre).

April 1 Boucher accorded a pension from the Crown of 400 livres per annum, made
available through the death of Martin (raised to 600 livres p. a. in 1744).

July 20 Departure of Count Tessin from Paris, having sent ahead a second
consignment of pictures in June, including the Leda (cat. 40) and the Woman
Fastening Her Garter, with Her Maid (cat. 38).

August 25- Exhibits in the Salon:

September 21 — Un Repos de Diane, sortant du Bain avec une de Compagnes ses (cat. 39).
— Paysage d'apres nature, des environs de Beauvais, same (PHermitage, size
Leningrad; A& W 220, engraved by Le Bas in 1744 as Vue des Environs de
Beauvais).

22
 — Esquisse de Paysage, representant le Hameau d'Isse, qui doit etre execute en
grand pour V Opera (?Alte Pinakothek, Munich; A & W 181) [the opera
had actually already been revived in Nov. 1741].
— 8 Esquisses de differens sujets Cbinois, pour etre executez en Tapisseries a la

Manufacture de Beauvais (including cat. 41-44).

— Leda (art market, New York; autograph replica, cat. 40).
— Un Paysage de la Fable de Frere Luce (Pushkin Museum, Moscow; cat. 45).
— De Larmessin's engraving (J-R 1250) after Boucher's sketch en camaieu
brun of a scene from La Fontaine's tale Le Calendrier des Vieillards (art
market, Paris; A& W 293).
November 29 Received payment for five overdoors and a chimney board painted for Choisy
that year.

December Publication by Huquier of Laurent's engravings after Boucher's overdoors in

the Hotel de Soubise, Le pasteur complaisant and Le paste ur galant (cat. 31,

30), and of his own Livre de cartouches, largely consisting of reductions of the
half titles of the Tombeaux des Princes (J-R 1098-1123), and two Pastorales
(almost certainly J-R 197, 1124).

Publication of [Dezallier d'Argenville], L'Histoire Naturelle eclaircie dans

deux de ses parties prinapales, la Lithologie et la Conch yliologie, with a
frontispiece of rocaille engraved by Chedel after Boucher (J-R 500: second
state, for 1757 edition).

1742-43 Le Bas's engraving after Boucher of a frontispiece to the Memoires de

I'Academte Royale de Chirurgie (1743), promoted by Caylus in place of one
previously obtained from Cochin; preference finally given to the latter after
all, because Louis XV found his own likeness in it superior.

Moves to the rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honore, opposite the rue des Deux Ecus.

1743 May 26 Death of Boucher's father, aged 72, in his lodgings in the rue et place du vieux
Louvre.

August 5-31 Exhibits in the Salon:

— ofPair La naissance de Venus and Venus a
ovals of sortant du sa Toilette
bain market, New York; A & W 243,
(art 245).
— La Muse Clio [dated 1742] and La Muse Melpomene [dated 1741]
(overdoors the Cabinet des Medailles).
for
— Un ou paroit un Moulin a eau; & une Femme donnant a manger a
Paisage,
des Poules [lost; probably the picture engraved by Le Bas in 1744 as the
Seconde vue de Beauvais, J-R 1341; possibly identifiable with a painting,
dated 1743, formerly in the J. Lasalle collection, sold Paris, 16 Dec. 1901, lot 1].
— Son Pendant representfantj une vieille Four, & sur le devant des
Blanchisseuses [lost; probably based on the drawing in the Rijksmuseum
engraved (erroneouslv?) by Chedel as Veue d'une Tour pres de Blois,

—J-R
Autre
494]-
petit Paisage de forme chantournee, representant un vieux Colombier,
&un espece de Pont ruine, sur lequel est une Femme & son Enfant qui
regarde un Pescheur [probably the picture, dated 1743, last recorded in the
collection of John Schiff, New York].
— De Larmessin's engraving after Boucher's illustration of the La Fontaine
tale Le Fleuve Scamandre (J-R 1254).
— Surugue's engraving (J-R 15 91; dated 1742 on plate) after La mort d'Adonis
[probably painted in 1726 — q.v.].

— Gustaf Lundberg's pastel portraits of Boucher and Mme Boucher.

23
 1

August 31 Premiere of L'ambigu de la Folic, ou Le Ballet des Dindons (Favart's parody

of Les Indes Galantes) at the Foire Saint-Laurent, with sets and costumes
designed by Boucher.

Presumed Portrait of Mme Boucher (Frick Collection, New York; A& W 263).
Three oval Pastorales for the marquis de Beringhen, one rectangular (Louvre;
A & W260), and a pair untraced, engraved by Daulle in 1754 as La Musique
Pastorale (J-R 554) and Les Amusemens de la Campagne (J-R 555 — 55 7)-

Earliest version of the Dark-Haired Odalisque (cf. cat. 48), engraved by

Levesque in 1765 as Le Reveil (J-R 1397, 1398).

Lepicie's engraving of Boucher's grisaille after J-B. Lemoyne's tomb of Pierre

Mignard (Marandel, 1975, no. 3).

Cochin's engraving after Boucher of the frontispiece to the Reglement pour

V Opera [this, and the stage design for Isse in 1741, suggest that Boucher's
employment by the Opera may actually have gone on without a break
between 1739 and 1744].

Publication of Boffrand's Description de . . . la figure equestre de Louis XIV

elevee par la Ville de Paris . . ., with a headpiece engraved by Cochin after a
drawing by Boucher (J-R 509, second state, from reuse for Patte's Monuments
eriges en France a la gloire de Louis XV, 1765).

1744 January 1 Boucher presents Ingram's two suites of engravings after his drawings of
Pastoral (J-R 1201-1207) and Chinese (J-R 1208-1215) Figures to the
Academy to secure their copyright.

March 24 Commissioned to paint three pictures for the appartement des bains at
Choisy: L 'Amour qui caresse sa mere and Venus qui desarme son fils (art
market, New York; A& W 242, 241), and Venus qui regarde dormir VAmour
(lost).

August Between now and July 1748 Boucher was paid 5000 livres for designs for the
Opera (but see above under 1743). This employment coincides with the
extravagant management of Lemoinc's former patron, Francois Berger (Mar.
1744-May 1748).

November Harleman to acquire furnishings for the Royal Palace

Arrival in Paris of Carl
in Stockholm. Commissions six overdoors from Boucher, the last of which
were paid for in April 1746 (exh. cat. 1984, Manchester, nos. P4, P5).

Publication of two works by Alexis Piron, with frontispieces engraved by

Duflos after Boucher: the Bdtiment de Saint-Sulpice (J-R 876) and the Deux
tonneaux, poeme allegorique (J-R 877).

First weaving at Beauvais of La danse, from the second group of Fetes

Italiennes.

1744-45 Executed two overdoors for the bibliotheque du Roi at Choisy.

1745 May Harleman returns to Sweden.

August 25- Exhibits in the Salon:

September 24 — Un tableau chantourne, representant un sujet Pastoral [unidentified].

24
 5

— Une Esquisse a gouasse, represent ant Venus sur Eaux engraved by

les (lost;
Daulle
— Plusieurs 1750; J-R
in 550-552).
sous
dessinsmime numero [?the plumbago drawings on vellum
le

for the Moeurs et Usages des Turcs, later included in the sale of J-D.
Lempereur, 24 May ff. 1773, lots 543-48].
— Tardieu's engraving after Boucher of the armorial headpiece (J-R 1594) for
Boff rand's Livre d 'Architecture, published in 1745.
— Le Bas's engravings after the Vue des environs de Beauvais and the Seconde
vue de Beauvais (J-R 1340, 1341; see above, Salons of 1742 and 1743).

August 28 Premiere of Favart s Les vendanges de Tempe at the Foire Saint- Laurent; this
was the inspiration for several pictures by Boucher, including Pensent-ils au
raisin? (cat. 53).

October Commission from Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrica of Sweden for four pictures
depicting the Times of Day, of which only Morning, The Milliner (cat. 5 1),
was ever painted, in 1746.

1746 March Alexis Piron's poetic petition to Lenormant de Tournehem on behalf of

Boucher, for the lodgings in the Louvre rendered vacant by the death of
Coustou in February (Epitres, ij6y, VI).

first half of year Venus demandant a Vulcain forger des armes pour Enee and L'Apotheose
d'Enee commissioned from Boucher for the redecorated apartments of the
Dauphin at Versailles. Cast out by the latter, they were claimed by the king
for his chamhre a coucher at Marly instead. See below, Salons of 1746 and
1747, and 21 February 1748.

August 25- Exhibits in the Salon:

September 2 — L 'Eloquence [generally through transposition with the Muse
called Erato,
of La Poesie amoureuse painted by Carle Vanloo, but properly, Polymnia]
and L'Astronomie [Urania], for the Cabinet des Medailles (A & W
248, 249).
— [An oval picture of Venus qui ordonne a Vulcain des Armes pour Enee was
listed in the livret, but not actually shown until the next Salon].

November 1 Revival of Quinault and Lully's Persee at the Opera, with five sets by Boucher.

Publication of J-A. Guer's Moeurs et Usages des Turcs, with a dozen vignettes
engraved by Duflos after Boucher (J-R 878-898), and the rest after Halle.

1746-47 The vogue some painted by

for jointed cutout dolls, called pantins, in Paris,
Boucher for individuals such as the duchesse de Chartres, others engraved by
Poilly and Cochin, after bodies designed by him, and heads designed by
Natoire.

1747 January 17 Lenormant de Tournehem announces a concours for selected Academicians,

including Boucher.

February 26 Four pictures commissioned from Boucher for the grand cabinet des Jeux at
Choisy, because of the illness of Parrocel. Only two executed (subjects
unknown).

Spring Boucher paints Easter eggs for Louis XV.

August 25- Exhibits in the Salon:

September 24 — L' Enlevement d' Europe (cat. 54).

2 5
 — Les Forges de now announced as for the cbambre a coucher
Vulcain, oval,
du Roi at Marly under 1746] (Louvre; A &
[see 302/306). W
— Two oval Pastorales (?cat. 53 and pendant).
— Grisaille sketch for an allegorical thesis plate dedicated to the Dauphin [not
A& W 308, which is considerably having been
earlier, a variant of it

engraved by Huquier in his Livre de Cartouches (1742; J-R 1122), and for a
different purpose; but for the thesis maintained by the abbe Leopold-
Charles de Choiseul-Stainville on 1 Feb. 1747, for which the plate was
engraved by Laurent Cars].

In response to the unprecedented publication of criticisms of his own and

other artists' exhibits in Boucher designs and Le Bas engraves a
the Salon,
frontispiece to the [abbe Le Ouvrages de
Blanc's] Lettre sur ^Exposition des
Peinture, Sculpture &c. de I'Annee 1747, showing the figure of Painting sitting
gagged before a picture on an easel, which is derided by figures emblematic of
Ignorance, Envy, and Folly (A & fig. jy). W
November 7 Designed set for the first act of a revived production of Quinault and Lully s

opera Atys, showing Sangar's palace.

December Reported to be working on two sketches of scenes from the ballet Les Fetes
Venitiennes, L'amour Saltimbanque and Les Bohemiennes, for the queen of
Poland [see under 1748].

i
74 8 February 21 Received final payment for Venus qui prie Vulcain a forger des armes pour
Enee (Louvre) and L'Apotheose d'Enee (National Museum, Manila) for the
chambre a coucher du Roi at Marly (see under 1746 and 1747).

March 1 Letter from Mme Boucher to Favart in Brussels announcing that her husband
had begun making the designs [?for the frontispieces and vignettes of Les
Nymphes de Diane (which had to be redrawn by Cochin) and Cythere
assiegee (J-R 524) that Favart was staging for the marechal de Saxe] and had
found a good engraver (PChedel).

July Replaced by Perronet as stage designer at the Opera [no doubt because of the
appointment of Trefontaine as director, in place of the deceased Berger].

August 25- Exhibits in the Salon:

September 24 — An oval painting of Un qui montre a joker de
Berger, Flute a Bergere la sa
(A & W National Gallery of
311; Melbourne).
Victoria,
— A small square painting of La Nativite [lost].

— De Larmessin's engraving the Portrait du marechal de Woldemar de

after
Lowendal (J-R 1256), which had already been advertised in May.

Received payment for a curvilinear picture of Deux Nymphes de Diane au

retour de la chasse for the salle a manger du Roi at Fontainebleau [possibly
the picture in the ninth catalogue of the Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris, 1905, no.
61, last recorded in the collection of Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs, Baltimore].

Reported as having shown sketches, and to have begun working on pictures,

of thetwo scenes inspired by the ballet (see December 1747), now said to be
taken from the Fetes de Thalie and the Fetes Venitiennes, and to be intended
as the models for a pair of tapestries for La Muette, in a room with two
overdoors also to be painted by him (see cat. 55, 56).

Publication of J-C. Francois's Nouveau livre de Principes de Dessein recueilli

des etudes des meilleurs Maitres, tant anciens que modernes, including the

26
 Head of a Woman (J-R1019) after Boucher's study for Venus and Vulcan (cat. 17).

Itwas probably in this year that Boucher, like Carle Vanloo before him,
refused Boyer d'Argens's offer to become first painter to the king of Prussia
(Boyer d'Argens, 1768, p. 160).

1749 August 23 Date on a drawing by Boucher for Le petit jardinier (Savill, 1982, fig. 1),
modeled by Blondeau as Le jeune suppliant: the first evidence of Boucher's
designs for porcelain figures produced by Vincennes.

September 3 Invoice for Arion and Vertumnus and Pomona (cat. 55, 56), the first two of
four intended pictures representing the Elements for La Muette.

November Invoice for a picture of Apollo and Isse (cat. 58), painted at the behest of the
directeur general des Bdtiments, but bypassing the premier Peintre.

Ariane et Bacchus, the first and most popular of the new tapestries after
Boucher to be woven at Beauvais, known collectively as Les Amours des
Dieux, the first sets of which were woven in 1750.

1750 March Mme de Pompadour writes to her brother in Italy, promising to send a copy
by Boucher then in progress (cf. cat. 59), which she does
of a portrait of her
on 26 April, while sending the original itself on 15 June.

August 25- Exhibits in the Salon:

September 24 — Une Nativite, ou Adoration des Bergers for the chapel of the Chateau de
Bellevue (cat. 57).

— Four oval Le Sommeil d'une Bergere, a laquelle un Rustaud

Pastorales:
apporte des Fleurs de la part de son Berger and Un
Berger qui montre a
jouer de la Flute a sa Bergere (A & W
320, 311; National Gallery of
Victoria, Melbourne, both dated 1748), Un Berger accordant sa Musette
pres de sa Bergere (A & W
319; Major John Mills, Hampshire; dated 1748),
and Deux Amans surpris dans les Bleds (A & W
341; lost) [the first two
were inspired by Favart's Les vendanges de Tempe].
— A pair of Paysages, ornes de Figures sur le devant, approximately 1V1 feet
[high], belonging to M. Langlois [lost].
— Daulle's engravings after Boucher's sketch of Naissance et triomphe de
Venus (J-R 550) and Les Amours en gayete (J-R 553).

1750/51 Moves to the rue de Richelieu, "la sixieme porte cochere apres le Palais
Royal" [underneath the Cabinet de Medailles in the former Hotel deNevers?].

i75i February Announcement of Duflos's engravings after La toillette pastorale and Les
confidences pastorales (cat. 50).

February-July Wasserschlebe's correspondence with Bernstorff about obtaining overdoors

from Boucher and other artists for Moltke's palace in Copenhagen, later the
Amalienborg, which were not finally dispatched until 1755.

May Announcement of Duflos's engravings after Erigone vaincue and the Retour
de chasse de Diane (cat. 49).

August 25- Exhibits nothing in the Salon himself. De Larmessin exhibits a Frontispice
September 24 allegonque after Boucher.

October Boucher proposes eight subjects to the Gobelins for a set of tapestries of the
Aventures de Renaud et Armide; his suggestion is not taken up, and he

27
 instead supplies a design of the Sommeil de Renaud to Beauvais, which is

woven the next year as the first of a set of Fragments d'Opera.

Designs coverings for a set of seat furniture ordered from the Gobelins for
Mme de Pompadour, which depicted children (probablv the Amours nus,
representing the Arts).

175* March Following the death of J-F. de Troy, the director of the French Academv in
Rome, his pension of 1000 livres per annum is awarded to Boucher, while
Natoire succeeds him in the directorship.

June Following the death of Charles- Antoine Coypel, premier peintre du Roi,
Boucher obtains his lodgings in the Louvre, but (for reasons of economy) no
successor is appointed.

June 30 Revival of the Opera-Comique at the Foire Saint-Laurent, in a theater built

for Jean Monnet in 37 days, with an interior and sets designed entirely by
Boucher.

July 29 Elected adjoint a recteur by the Academv.

December Announcement of Duflos's engraving (J-R 923) after L 'Enlevement d'Europe

(cat. 54).

The earliest weaving of the first pair of the Fragments d'Opera at Beauvais:
Renaud endormi and Venus et les Amours.

1753 April 2 Blondeau was paid 384 livres for eight models of Enfants for Vincennes, after
drawings by Boucher.

May 1 Commissioned to execute paintings for the ceiling of the cabinet du Conseil at
Fontainebleau: Le Soleil qui commence son cours et chasse la Nuit, surrounded
by four pictures of the Saisons figures par des enfants (A & 417-421). W
Reported as "working without respite" on them in July; the four smaller
pictures were exhibited in the Salon at the end of August, and the whole
ceiling completed by September.

July Guillaume Coustou II and Louis-Claude Vasse selected to execute the

remaining two of the first four pierre de Tonnerre statues of Enfants to
drawings by Boucher for Mme de Pompadour's dairy at Crecy (the first two
sculptors chosen were Allegrain and Falconet). Boucher made seven such
designs in all, which were also modeled by de Fernex and Suzanne in porcelain
for Vincennes.

August Announcement of Chedel's engraving after Le devot hermite (Frere Luce,

cat. 45).

August 25- Exhibits in the Salon:

September 25 — Le Lever du Soleil and Le Coucher du Soleil (A & W 422, 423; Wallace
Collection), intended as models for a pair of tapestries to be woven at the
Gobelins [for Mme de Pompadour, like the pictures themselves].
— Four pictures of the figurees par des Enfans, for the
Saisons, of the ceiling
[cabinet] du Conseil
salle Fontainebleau.
at

— Two overdoors for Bellevue [oblong variants of two upright

Pastorales, as
pictures of 1750, A& W 363, 364, to judge by their late inclusion,
Laugier's descriptions, and the sketches by Saint-Aubin of the pair of
drawings in the marquis de Calviere's sale].

28
 — Roslin's Portrait de Mme
Boucher en habit de hal [untraced].
— Aveline's engravings after the Naissance de Bacchus and Enlevement
d'Europe (J-R 247, 248), [already advertised in June 1748].

December Announcement of Duflos's engravings after four infant compositions by

Boucher: Ee Berger, Ee Pecheur, Ee Souffleur, and Ee Poete (J-R 933-937).
The two recur as inserts in the set of decorative panels reputedly from
latter
Crecy [but if done for Mme de Pompadour at all, then more probably from
Bellevue] made into a room in the Frick Collection, New York (A & W
365-374

1754 April 7 De Fernex paid by the porcelain manufactory at Vincennes for four models
after Boucher.

April 27 De La Rue paid by Vincennes for two models of groups of three children
after Boucher.

June Premiere of Noverre s ballet Ees Fetes Chinoises at the Foire Saint-Laurent,
with sets designed by Boucher.

July 2 De Fernex paid by Vincennes for two further models after Boucher.

July 21 De Fernex paid for two additional models.

September 4 De La Rue paid by Vincennes for two further models of groups of three
children after Boucher.

December Announcement Boucher s pair of lost paintings of

of Daulle's engravings after
1743 for the marquis de Beringhen, La Musique Pastorale and Ees Amusemens
de la Campagne (J-R 554, 555).

December 31 Received payment of 300 livres by Vincennes, for all the designs that he had
supplied up until that date.

Date on Le Bas s engraving after Boucher of the frontispiece to Favart s Ee

Caprice Amoureux on Ninette a la Cour (J-R 1349), whose premiere was not
until 12 February 1755 [the depiction of Ninette leaning on her rake is
identified as a portrayal of Mme Favart in the role she created by a note added
to a copy of the engraving in the Collection Edmond de Rothschild in the
Louvre].

Date on La Live de Jully's etchings of Ninette and La queteuse du grand

chemin (J-R 1242, 1243).

1755 February 1 De Fernex paid for supplying to Vincennes two further models after drawings
by Boucher.

March Boucher accuses Duflos in the Mercure de France of using drawings

surreptitiously made from his paintings by his least competent pupils as the
basis for a recent set of engravings, thus damaging his reputation [these can
only have been the infant compositions, published in Dec. 1753 and Aug.
1754]. Duflos does not engrave anything further after Boucher.

May Announcement Rene Gaillard's first engraving after Boucher, La

of
marchande de modes (cf. cat. 51), to which he added an engraving after
Hubert Gravelot's Ee lecteur, which was owned by Boucher, as a pendant in
January 1756.

29
 5

May 27 Appointed inspecteur sur les ouvrages de

Manufacture des Gobelins in
la

succession to the deceased Oudry Boucher

agreed to sever all connection
with the rival manufactory at Beauvais, which began this year to weave from
the last set of cartoons designed by him, La Xoble Pastorale.

August-September Does not exhibit in the Salon, reportedly from pique at the pamphlets
reviewing the Salon the previous years. Other exhibits include:
— Laurent Cars's engraving after Cochin's medallion drawing of Boucher
[already advertised in April].
— Daulle's engravingsafter La Musique Pastorale and Les Amusemens de la
Campagne (J-R 554, 555).
— J
-J.
Flipart's six petits Morceaux after Boucher and Cochin.

November Boucher commissioned toproduce seven pictures as models for Gobelins

tapestries for the king's new apartment at Compiegne [never executed].

December 31 Suzanne paid for supplying seventeen models after drawings by Boucher to
Vincennes.

First weavings from Boucher's last set of tapestries for Beauvais, La Noble
Pastorale.

1756 April 8 Boucher received payment of 485 livres for the drawings that he had supplied
to Vincennes in 1755.

April 22 Boucher commissioned to produce four overdoors of Landscapes, measuring

approximately 2 feet by 4, for the petit cabinet of the Dauphin at Versailles,
with instructions to start working on them immediately. It would appear that
he only painted two, for which payment was still outstanding at the
Dauphin's death in 1765, and that they were never installed, since one of
them, described as "un tableau de pavsage representant des pecheurs," was
stored in the Hotel de la Surintendance in 1760 (Engerand, 1900, p. 637). This
was evidently the landscape etched by Saint-Non in 1777 with the (by that
date impossible) location "dans l'appartement de Monsieur le Dauphin a
Versailles" (J-R 581). The other might have been The Mill of Quiquengrogne
1

at Charenton (cat. 69), painted as a cabinet picture rather than an overdoor, to

deduce from a pairing of copies of these two subjects (S. T Fee sale,
Christie's, New York, 9 May 1985, lots 15 A, 15B), and the mention of a Vue
d'un moulin de Charenton, sequestered from Choisy in 1792 (Engerand,
1900, p. 45).

October Announcement of Daulle's engravings after two pictures belonging to Mme de

Pompadour, La Muse Clio and La Muse Erato [}-R 558, 560, wrongly
correcting these designations to Terpsichore and Polymnia because of the two
pictures with these latter titles in Mme de Pompadour's posthumous sale. The
pictures in the sale either must have been misidentified or were two further
pictures from a set of Muses, of which others still are known].

December Announcement of Ryland's engraving of Boucher's drawing of Les Graces au

Bain (J-R 1549) under the direct supervision of the artist.

1756/57 Seven putti pictures emblematic of the Arts (five overdoors and two
overmantels) commissioned from Boucher on behalf of Count Adam Gottlob
von Moltke and installed in his palace in Copenhagen, now the Amalienborg
(A & W
467-473)-

1757 May 1 Louis XV authorizes Marignv to commission a picture each from Boucher,

3°
 Carle Vanloo, Pierre, and Vien for a set of Gobelins tapestries that were to be
known as Les Amours des Dieux (cf. cat. 65-67).

August-September Exhibits in the Salon:

— Les Forges de the model
Vulcain, for a Gobelins tapestry (cat. 67).
— Portraitde Mme de Pompadour (cat. 64).
— Le Repos sur Fuite en Egypte
la (cat. 68).

— Fessard'sengraving of Les Bergers a la fontaine (J-R 995; already advertised

inNov. 1756).
— Daulle's engraving of Les charmes de la vie champetre (J-R 571).

November Delafosse and Magny's first engraving en maniere de crayon, after a drawing
of the Head of an Old Oriental by Boucher belonging to the sculptor Cayeux.

Further designs for statuettes of children supplied by Boucher to what was

now the porcelain manufactory of Sevres (moved from Vincennes in 1756), as
recorded in two books of engravings by Tardieu after drawings of them made
by Falconet fils and published by Joullain in 1761 (J-R 1233-1236, 1597; exh.
cat. 1984, Manchester, no. E24). Some of the designs appear in fact to have
been supplied earlier than 1757.

Date on Francois's pioneering engraving en maniere de crayon after a drawing

by Boucher of 1753 of Two Cupids Asleep on a Sheaf of Corn (J-R 1023).

1758 March Date on Francois's pioneering engraving en maniere de lavis after a drawing
for an overdoor by Boucher (J-R 1021).

April 8 Double wedding of Boucher's daughters to two of his pupils: of the elder,
Jeanne-Elisabeth-Victoire, to Jean-Baptiste Deshays; and of the younger,
Marie-Emilie, to Pierre-Antoine Baudouin.

July 29 Maurice Jacques paid by the Gobelins for two oil sketches of ornamental
surrounds, containing medallions inserted by Boucher and his studio
(cf. cat. 92).

August Announcement of Ryland's engraving of Jupiter et Leda (J-R 153 5- 15 39),

after the painting belonging to Aranc de Presle (art market, New York; cf.

cat. 40).

Boucher paid by the Gobelins for Les Jeux de VAmour (Louvre;

a painting of
A& W 480) intended to be woven as an accompaniment to Les Forges de
Vulcain.

Date on Blondel d'Azaincourt's engravings en maniere de crayon after

Boucher's drawings of La bonne mere villageoise and La villageoise (J-R 305,
307); Papillon de La Ferte's set of 46 etchings of Divers Paysages, of which 14
purport to be after paintings by Boucher (J-R 956-961, plus A & figs. W
1 145, 1 148, 772, and 1
1
50-1 1 54);
Le Vasseur's engravings after Boucher's
sketches of Les Differents Genies de la Sculpture and L Amour sur les Eaux
(J-R 1388, 1389); and Saint-Non's etching after Boucher's drawing of a
farmyard (J-R 1574).

Publication of F-M. Anatomiques, with

Didier's Tableaux a frontispiece
engraved by Etienne Charpentier after Boucher (J-R 464).

weaving of the second pair of Fragments d'Opera

Earliest at Beauvais:
Vertumne et Pomone and Le Sommeil dTsse.

1
3
1759 August-September Exhibits in the Salon:
— Le Silence [very plausibly a picture painted for Mme de Pompadour and
now in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow; A& W 498].
October Gilles Demarteau's engraving after Boucher's drawing of
farmyard (J-R 597).
a
This is number 1 of Demarteau's numbered series of engravings en maniere
1

de crayon, which only commenced after the perfection of the technique in the
sixth Livre de Lecon d'Ornement, published earlier in the year. The fruitful
collaboration between the painter and the engraver, 266 of whose 560 plates
were after Boucher, began with number 3, of the head of an old man (J-R
590). Number 11 is dedicated to Blondel d'Azaincourt, who, like his brother-
in-law Charles-Marin de la Haye, was to lend Demarteau quantities of
drawings by Boucher from his collection to be engraved, and who this same
year himself engraved a different farmyard scene en maniere de crayon after a
Boucher drawing (J-R 308), as well as another engraving after virtually the
same composition as Daulle's L'Oiseau Cheri (J-R 310).

November/December Boucher completes heads for Caroline Luise, Margravine of

a pair of pastel
Baden, and offers to paint a pair of Pastorales for her (cat. 71, 72).

This year also found as the date on Henriquez's pair of engravings after
Boucher drawings of La Bergere, ou U Image du Bonbeur and
oh Le Flore,
Doux Loisir (J-R, 504, 505); Fessard's engraving after Boucher's Etude of a
female nude done in 1755 belonging to M. de Sireul (J-R 996); Hoiiel's
etchings after two Boucher landscape drawings, dedicated to Blondel
d'Azaincourt and his wife (J-R 1078, 1081), the first from Blondel
d'Azaincourt's collection; and G. F. Schmidt's engraving en maniere de
crayon, done in Saint Petersburg, after Boucher's drawing of the head of a
child G-R 1583).

Publication of Dumurtous's Histoire des Conquetes de Louis XV, with a

frontispiece engraved by L-S. Lempereur after a Boucher drawing
(J-R 1364)-

Date of Boucher's drawing of act 5, scene 4 in Corneille's Rodogune, which

was etched by Mme de Pompadour with unacknowledged assistance from
Boucher, retouched by Cochin, and used as the frontispiece to the edition of
the play printed the next year on a press temporarily installed "Au Nord"
[i.e., in her apartments in the north wing of the palace of Versailles] (J-R

1 5 14).

1760 April Completion and dispatch of the first of Boucher's pair of Pastorales for
Caroline Luise of Baden (cat. 71), along with two more pastel heads.

June Completion and dispatch of its pendant (cat. 72), together with two prints.

August Announcement of Gaillard's engraving (J-R 1052) after the Jupiter et Calisto
(cat. 70).

December Mme de Pompadour obtains a set of tapestries of Enfants Jardiniers [for seat
furniture, cf. the set woven for the Earl of Jersey at Osterley], in exchange for
returning those of the Lever and Coucher du Soleil to the Gobelins.

Publication of Poullain de Saint-Foix's Catalogue des Chevaliers, Comman-

deurs et Officiers de I'Ordre du Saint-Esprit, with a frontispiece engraved by
Laurent Cars (J-R 460) after a grisaille by Boucher (Musee des Beaux- Arts,
Lille; A& W 359).

32
iy6i April Fessard publishes and obtains copyright protection from the Academy for
engravings after two paintings by Boucher belonging to Mme de Pompadour,
La Lumiere du Monde (cat. 57) and L 'Amour desarme (J-R 999; oval picture
last recorded in the Randolph Hearst collection, New York, A & 375). W
first half-year Executes Les Genies des Arts (Musees d'Angers; A& W 545) as the model for
a tapestry woven for Mme de Pompadour.

August Appointed Rector of the Academy.

August-September Exhibits in the Salon:

— An unspecified number of Pastorales and Paysages, including a Jupiter and
and Sleeping Bacchantes Observed by Satyrs that belonged to the
Callisto
due de Deux-Ponts (A & W
533, 534; MacDonald Collection, on loan to
the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and Feather collection,
Woking), a Shepherd and Shepherdess Gathering Roses (A & 543; W
Wallace Collection; cf. cat. 71), the Rest of the Voyagers in its original form
(A & W
660; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and two smaller Landscapes
(unidentified).
— Boucher and Mme Boucher (A & W
Roslin's portraits of figs. 130, 131;

Musee de and present whereabouts unknown).

Versailles,
— Cars engraving the frontispiece of the Catalogue de VOrdre du
s of . . .

Saint-Esprit under
(see 1760).
— Moitte's engraving the Venus sur eaux painted Tessin [already
of les for
advertised in June 1760].

October 3 Emmanuel-Salvador Carmona received by the Academy on the strength of his

engravings of portraits of Boucher (after Roslin; Slatkin, i97i[a], fig. 5) and
Collin de Vermont.

October Announcement of the publication by Joullain of the two sets of Tardieu's

engravings after Falconet fils's drawings of the children designed by Boucher
for Sevres (see under 1757).

November 3 Revival of Quinault and Lully's Armide et Renaud with the backdrop of the
Salvator Rosa-like wilderness in the third act designed by Boucher and with
the set for the fifth act, showing the enchanted palace of Armida, designed by
him and his son.

Publication of volume 2 of Saverien's Histoire des Philosophes modernes,

containing an Allegorie de Shaftesbury engraved by Francois after a drawing
by Boucher (J-R 1022).

1762 August Announcement two engravings by Floding after Boucher in a new maniere
of
de lavis: Apollo and Daphne and a Guardroom, dedicated to the brothers
Carl Fredrik and Ulrik Scheffer, past and serving Swedish ambassadors to
France.

October Announcement of Gaillard's engraving of Syhie Delivre par Aminte

(cat. 62).

1763 August-September Exhibits in the Salon:

— Le Sommeil de V Enfant Jesus [lost].
— La bergere prevoyante but engraved by Aliamet (J-R
[lost; 187)].
— "Une partie de Paysage" [unidentified].
— Pajou's pierre de Tonnerre statue of Un Amour [mange ant des
life-size
raisins], from Boucher's collection.

33
1764 January 24 Revival of Gentil Bernard and Rameau's Castor et Pollux, with sets designed
by Boucher.

April 1 Death of Boucher's most influential patron, Mme de Pompadour.

August Boucher's son, Juste-Nathan, sets off for three years at the French Academy
in Rome, where Marigny had to create a special place for him by suppressing
the architectural students' fourth year, since Juste-Nathan never won the first

prize for architecture at the Academy (which would have entitled him to go
automatically), but only the second (in 1761 and 1763).

October Boucher selected as one of the four Generous

artists invited to paint the
Actions of Rulers in the gallery of Choisy Reputedly too busy to participate,
he was replaced by Halle or Lagrenee, but when the king ejected the
completed pictures two years later, Boucher was chosen to paint all four
replacements, with a brush "conducted by the Graces." Since no funds were
ever advanced to him, he never embarked on the project, which was finally
undertaken by Pierre, his successor as premier Peintre, who did not need the
money.

December 1 Elected to occupy the post of dessinateur du Cabinet du Roi by the Academy,
but declined the honor because of his health.

1765-66 Johann Christian [von] Mannlich placed in Boucher's studio by Duke

Christian IV of Zweibrikken (the due de Deux-Ponts).

1765 February 10 Death of Boucher's son-in-law J-B. Deshays.

May Presents Charles Rogers with a drawing of The Trinity for his Collection of
Prints in Imitation of Drawings (1778, vol. II).

August 8 Appointed premier peintre du Roi in place of the deceased Carle Vanloo.

August 23 Elected Director of the Academy in place of Vanloo.

August-September Despite illness earlier in the year, exhibits eleven pictures in the Salon, some
of which, however, had been painted before the previous Salon in 1763:
— Two Pastorales (dated 1761 and 1762, from a set of three painted for
Marchal de Syncy; Showering collection, England; A & W 554, 555).
—Jupiter and Callisto and Angelica and Medoro, from the collection of
[Nicolas-Joseph] Bergeret de Grancourt [uncle of the more celebrated
collector of this name] (Linsky Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New
York; A& W 575, 576).
— Two and two rectangular
oval Mme Geoffrin]
Pastorales [for
(cf. cat. 78).
— Pastorale picture of Shepherdess Crowning a Shepherd].
[lost oval a
— Une jeune femme attachant une au d'un Pigeon lettre col [lost].
— Un Paysage ou Von un Moulin a eau (Ed. Jonas
voit collection, Paris;
A& W 600).
December 10 Record of reception by the Gobelins of four pictures that were to be
employed as oval medallions in the Tentures de Boucher:
— Vertumne et Pomone (1763) and L'Aurore et Cephale (1764), both now in
the Louvre.
— Les Amours de Neptune d'Amymone (1764) and Venus aux forges de
et
Vulcain (undated), both now in the salon des nobles de la Reine at
Versailles.

34
 December 13 Revival of Quinauk and Lully's Thesee at the Opera, with sets designed by
Boucher in the second and third acts (Medea's artificial desert, and smiling
countryside).

Date on Levesque's engraving after a lost version of The Dark-Haired

Odalisque (cat. 48), entitled Le reveil (J-R 1397); and on Augustin de Saint-
Aubin's engravings after Vertumnus and Pomona (cat. 56) and Arion (cat. 55),
though the latter was only finished by Pasquier in 1766 (J-R 1443- 1446).

1765/66 Boucher's grisaille sketch in oils on paper (Metropolitan Museum, New York;
A& W 614) for the masonic Loge d'Amitie in Bordeaux [made at the behest
of the due de Richelieu?], done in 1765, according to the engraving by
Choffard dated 1766 (J-R 507).

1766 Journey to the Low

Countries with the receveur general des Finances and
great collector of his works, Randon de Boisset [this is the year given for the
journey by de Sireul in the memoir that he contributed to the catalogue of
Randon de Boisset's posthumous sale; but since in 1766 Boucher was not only
premier Peintre but also Director of the Academy and seems never to have
been absent from Paris for more than a month, one should perhaps lend
greater credence to de Sireul's original assertion, as communicated for use in
the Almanack Historique in 1777, that the two went to Flanders only a little
time after Randon de Boisset's return from Italy in 1763/64].

January Mme Geoff rin commissions a picture of The Continence of Scipio on behalf of
King Stanislas Augustus of Poland. Still only ehauche at the end of 1767, it
was finally abandoned by Boucher the next year, because of Mme Geoffrin's
constant interference.

April 28 Beginning of the partial sale of Mme de Pompadour's pictures, including ten
paintings by Boucher.

November 18 Revival of Laujon's ballet Sylvie, with new music by Berton and
and Trial,
sets designed by Boucher for the prologue (Vulcan's cave) and the second act
(rocks, hills, and mountains).

Received payment for a further picture used in the Tentures de Boucher, an

oval Venus sortant des eaux (North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh;
A& W 637/638).
Date on Saint-Non's etchings after Boucher's drawings of A Country Child
Being Taught to Read, Bacchantes at Rest, and A Group of Nereids and
Tritons (J-R 1 5 76- 1 5 79), the first of which is additionally inscribed with the
location "Henonville," the property of Roslin d'lvry (cf. cat. 79, 80).

Publication of the abbe Millot's Histoire philosophique de I'Homme, with a

frontispiece of Adam and Eve, illustrating Lucretius's De Natura Rerum
5.937-38, engraved by Moreau le jeune after Boucher (A & W
fig. 170).

1767 May 18 Announcement of Bonnet's first engraving aux trois crayons, the Bust of a
Young Girl after a drawing by Boucher in the collection of M. de Selle
(J-R 339). The original printing in three colors was expanded to five in
October, when it was announced as the first engraving au pastel.

May 25 Announcement of Demarteau's first engraving a plusieurs crayons, after

Boucher's drawing of of an Old Man in the collection of Mme [Blondel]
Head
d'Azaincourt (J-R 719), along with four other heads in the like imitation of

35
 red and black chalk (J-R 720-723), three of them from the same collection,
one of which was a study for the old woman in La Lumiere du Monde (cat. 57).

August-September Exhibits nothing in the Salon.

The beginning Le Mire and Basan's edition of the abbe

of the publication of
Banier s translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, whose illustrations include four
engravings by Le Mire himself after drawings by Boucher (J-R 1362; A & W
figs. 422, 719),* five by Augustin de Saint-Aubin and his collaborator Le Veau

(J-R 1 5 56-1 567), and one by Massard (cf. exh. cat. 1973-74, Washington,
no. 92).

1768 July Resigns as Director of the Academy, where he is replaced by J-B. Lemoyne.

August Boucher and Vien forced to write a letter, published in the Annee Litteraire
and the Mercure, retracting certificates that they had written for certain old-
master paintings.

The year printed on Pasquier's engravings after Boucher's paintings De trois

choses en ferez-vous une? (cf. cat. 19) and Elle mord a la grappe (J-R 1449).

Grisaille [lost] painted for Desormeaux's Histoire de la Maison de Bourbon,

engraved by Augustin de Saint-Aubin in 1772 (J-R 1568).

Painting of an unknown subject commissioned by Prince Galitzin from

Boucher on behalf of the Czarina Catherine II [not executed; see Diderot's
letter to Falconet of 6 Sept. 1768].

1769 July Announcement of Bonnet's engraving of a Tete de Flore after a pastel by

Boucher of 1757, traditionally supposed to represent his daughter Mme
Baudouin (J-R 380).

August 25- Exhibits in the Salon:

September 25 — Une Marcbe de Bobemiens, on Caravanne dans le gout de Benedetto di
Castiglione (from the collection of P-J-O. Bergeret; now Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston; A& W 661).
— Beauvarlet's preparatory drawings for his engravings of two Pastorales after
paintings by Boucher [Le depart du courier (cat. 78) and L'arrivee du
courier].

November Chosen by the Academy to fulfill the place of corresponding member of the
Academy acknowledgment of which he may have sent
of Saint Petersburg [in
the huge uneven picture of Pygmalion, A & W
240, which was patently
begun much earlier, and over the exact date of whose presentation by Falconet
on his behalf confusion reigns].

December 15 Death of his son-in-law Pierre- Antoine Baudouin.

Publication of Meusnier de Querlon's Les Graces, illustrated with an

engraving by Simonet (J-R 1587) after Boucher [it is probable that the neither
signed nor dated sketch in the Louvre is a derivative of the lost original,
which was not necessarily a painting].

177c January 10 Received payment for an oval painting of Jupiter et Calypso [no doubt really
Calisto] by the prince de Conde, who apparently used it as a model for one of
the medallions in the Tentures de Boucher that he commissioned for the
winter hanging of the bedchamber in the Palais Bourbon.

36
 Spring Made designs for the decoration of the staircase of L'Archeveche (the palace
of the archbishop of Paris, next to Notre-Dame), which was altered by Pierre
Desmaisons in 1770. Two drawings for this, of Hope and Religion, were
described as the last that Boucher undertook in his final illness, when they
were included in the [Duquesne] sale of 19 December 1771. Other drawings
for which a similar claim was made include two of a Standing Shepherd in
Boucher's posthumous sale (one of which may have reappeared in Eugene
Feral's sale in 1901), and the drawing of Mausolee engraved by Demarteau

(J-R 793). He left his last painting, which was of an unspecified subject and
unfinished, to his doctor and friend M. Poissonnier Vaine.

May 30 Death of Francois Boucher in his apartment in the Louvre.

May 31 Burial in Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois in the presence of his son Juste-Nathan,

and Charles-Etienne-Gabriel Cuvillier, premier commis des Bdtiments du Roi,
the future husband of his widowed daughter, Mme Baudouin, with as additional
witnesses Pierre (his successor as premier peintre du Roi), the painters Vien
and [L-M.] Vanloo, Montucla (also premier commis), and the cure Chapeau.

July 25 Pension of 1,200 livres accorded to his widow.

September Obituary by Desboulmiers [J- A. Jullien des Boulmiers] in the Mercure de

France.

U7i February 18 Beginning of the sale of Boucher's collections, which realized the considerable
sum of 120,844 livres 17 sous.

December 23 Beginning of a sale of drawings held by the painter-turned-dealer J-B-P Le

Brun, including 73 (mostly multiple) lots with drawings by Boucher and
Deshays. [Le Brun was a former pupil of Deshays, and it seems very likely
that this was largely a resale of drawings either acquired in their posthumous
sales (and Baudouin's), or directly from their estates.]

l 77* November 9 Beginning of the posthumous sale of the engraver-publisher Gabriel Huquier
Vaine, containing 55 (mostly multiple) lots of drawings by Boucher. Huquier
had already started to hold sales from his collections, including a considerable
number of Bouchers, in his own lifetime, in Amsterdam on 14 September ff.
1 76 1, and in Paris on 1 July ff. 1771.

l
771 April 24 P-J-O. Bergeret constitutes an annuity of 3000 livres in favor of Mme Boucher.

October 19 Beginning of the sale of the jeweler and echevin J-D. Lempereur, containing
43 (mostly multiple) lots of drawings by Boucher, including the Annonce aux
Bergers (J-R 1363) and Le Puits etched by his son, J-B-D. Lempereur.

l
777 Feb ruary 27 Beginning of the posthumous sale of the receveur general des Finances,
Randon de Boisset, with whom Boucher had made his journey to the Low
Countries in 1766. The catalogue, which was prefaced with a memoir of the
collector by de Sireul, contains 18 paintings by Boucher, a pastel of the Bust
of a Boy Holding a Parsnip (cf. cat. 28), and 41 lots of framed and 16 lots of,
unframed drawings by the artist.

1779 March 29 Beginning of the anonymous sale of the fermier general Vassal de Saint-
Hubert, containing 39 lots of framed and 7 lots of unframed drawings by
Boucher (the sale must have represented a change of taste or commercial
calculation on the part of the owner, since his posthumous sale on 24 April ff.

1783 contained virtually nothing by the artist).

37
1781 December 3
Beginning of the sale of Boucher's friend M. de Sireul, who is related to have
spent hours watching the artist at work, and after his death collected anything
he could by him, particularly drawings, so that his collection was known as
"le porte-feuille de M. Boucher." The catalogue contains 16 paintings, 4
pastels, and no less than 173 lots of drawings by Boucher.

1782 January 17 Death of Juste-Nathan Boucher.

March 3
Beginning oi t-he posthumous sale of Mme
de Pompadour's brother, by this
time known as the marquis de Menars. Most of the items in it had been
inherited from his sister, and it is in the catalogue of this sale, rather than in
that of her own exiguous posthumous sale, that most of her Bouchers are to
be found. It includes 16 paintings, 3 pastels, and 13 lots of drawings
significantly, virtually all colored —
by Boucher.

1783 Feb ruarv ic Beginning of the most extensive of the sales held anonymously bv B-A.
Blondel d'Azaincourt (1719-1794) in his own lifetime, containing 1
paintings, 2 pastels, and 107 (often multiple) lots of drawings bv Boucher.
Though numerous, there were considerably less than the 50c or so estimated
by Hebert in 1766. Son of the noted collector Blondel de Gagny, d'Azaincourt
had inherited many of the items in the sale from him; but not the
contemporary paintings, sketches, and drawings, which he had collected to
demonstrate his own taste. Brother-in-law of Charles-Marin de la Have and
J-Fr. Bergeret de Frouville, and himself an early exponent of engraving a la
maniere de crayon, d'Azaincourt, like de la Have, had lent quantities of his
Boucher drawings to be engraved in this manner bv Demarteau.

1786 April 24 Beginning of the posthumous one of Boucher's two most considerable
sale of
patrons toward the end of his life, Fragonard's former employer as recorder of

his travels, Pierre-Jacques-Onesyme Bergeret (de Grancourt). This included

47 paintings, 3 pastels, and 45 lots of drawings by Boucher. Among the

paintings were all ten of Boucher's sketches for the chinoiserie tapestries
woven by Beauvais (cf. cat. 41-44), the two enormous Marches in the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts (A & W
660, 661), and the Anon and \ertumnus and
Pomona (cat. 55, 56).

1789 April 29 Beginning of the last auction in the eighteenth century to contain a significant
number of Bouchers, the posthumous sale of the discreet collector and
econome general du Clerge, Marchal de Syncy Saincy The 17 paintings bv
Boucher included the Lever and Coucher du Soleil from Mme de Pompadour's
sale, now in the Wallace Collection.

38
Boucher's Prize- Winning Pupils

In the present state of research,it is impossible to draw up a complete list of

Boucher's pupils. This table therefore restricts itself to those of whom we can
be most certain, who won one of the Grand Prix awarded annually by the
Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Certain of Boucher's foreign
pupils are named in J. Patrice Marandel's essay "Boucher and Europe." Some
of the indigenous ones achieved celebrity even without winning a prize, e.g.,
Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (whose own pupil, Jean-Baptiste Huet, became one of
Boucher's closest imitators), his son-in-law Pierre-Antoine Baudouin, and
Nicolas-Guy Brenet.

Charles-Michel-Ange Challe (2
e
prix 1738 and 1740; i er prix 1741)
Pierre-Charles Le Mettay (i
er
prix 1748— held over from 1747)
Jean-Baptiste Hutin (i prix 1748)
er

Charles-Franqois de La Traverse (shared 2 e prix 1748)

Joseph Melling prix 1749; i er prix 1750)
(2
e

Jean-Baptiste Deshays (2 e prix 1750; i er prix 1751)

Jean-Honore Fragonard (i er prix 1752)
Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin (2 e prix 1753)
Jacques-Philippe-Joseph de Saint-Quentin (i er prix 1762)
Franc,ois-Guillaume Menageot (2 e prix 1765; i er prix 1766)

39
 The Mysterious Beginnings of
the Young Boucher
PIERRE ROSENBERG To the memory of Hermann Voss
(1884-1969), who was the first to dwell
on the works of Boucher's youth.

"J'avais bien aime, dans votre Coup de barre cette

phrase: 'Tout ce que Von peut dire sur une barre c'est
"
que c'est une barre.'
"Ah! out."
"Je trouve que c'est une bonne facon de tordre le

cou aux critiques d'art."

(Bernard Frank, Les Rats [1953], 1985, p. 392:

"I really liked this sentence in your Coup de barre:
'All you can say about a bar is that it's a bar.'
"Right!"
"I think it's a good way of wringing the necks of
art critics.")

There are artists whose careers end in obscurity. Fragonard, for instance.
We know next to nothing, not so much of his official activities, but about
the paintings he did during the last twenty years of his life. There are
artists whose beginnings still remain shrouded in mystery. Francois
Boucher, born in 1703, is one of them. And this despite a series of articles
devoted to the question, following in the wake of those by Voss (1953 and
!954)-
Let us marshal the facts: "Born in poverty" (according to a letter of
Pierre, Boucher's successor as premier peintre du Roi, written in 1788),' of

a father "who designed for embroiderers," 2

who was "a mediocre
draftsman scarcely favored by fortune" (according to the author of the
entry on Boucher in the Galerie Franqoise, published in 1771), 3 and who
was a master painter belonging to the Academie de Saint-Luc, 4 Francois
Boucher is nowhere mentioned before 1723. On 28 August, his painting
1. Furcy-Raynaud, i9o6[a], p. 236 (the letter Evilmerodach Releasing Jehoiachin from Prison, unfortunately still un-
is dated 25 May 1788).
2. Papillon de La Ferte, 1776, pp. 657-62
traced (see cat. 5), "won first prize." 5

[but see Chronology for the possible unre- We know, however, that before 1723 Nicolas Boucher had placed his son
liability of this information]. in the studio of Francois Lemoine, a fact confirmed by all eighteenth-
3. Galene Franqoise, 1771. The author of the
century biographers. At what date? Let us go back to the text of the
life of Boucher remains mysterious. It

cannot in any case have been Jean-Bernard Galerie Franqoise: "A painting representing The Judgment of Susannah
Restout, who merely supervised the en- [the painting is likewise untraced], which he did at the age of seventeen
gravers of the portraits of the "famous [i.e., in 1720/21], won praise from le Moine, who thought he could
men."
foresee a great future for him." 6 How long was he there? If we consult
For his part, Papillon de La Ferte [see
note 2] wrote that Nicolas Boucher Mariette: "M. Boucher assures me that he stayed no more than three
"placed him [his son Francois], when he months with M. Le Moyne." Mariette added the ironic observation, since
was scarcely out of his childhood, in the
for him the imprint of Lemoine's style on Boucher's was flagrant: "Whose
school of the famous Francois Lemoine."
4. Georges Wildenstein, 1926, p. 60.
disciple is he then? Boucher told me in 1767 [i.e., three years before
. . .

5. Proces-verbaux, IV, 1881, pp. 360-62. his death] that although it was true that he had studied under Le
. . .

6. Galerie Franqoise, 1771.

Moyne, he had not profited much from a teacher who paid little attention
7. Mariette, I, 1851-53, pp. 165-66.
Mariette's text was written between 1767 to his pupils and with whom he had not stayed for very long." 7 This
and 1770. sentence is contradicted by Caylus in his biography of Lemoine, read

4i
 ' —

before the Academie Royale on 6 July 1748: "Nevertheless ... he was

kind to his pupils, liked them, corrected them in a friendly manner, and
showed them affection and an interest that he truly have no fear that
S*- Jl
£^* the pupils he left behind and who today make up
felt; I

a part of your Academy

would deny it."
8
True, Caylus added another touch to his apology for
Lemoine, in specifying that he was of a "satirical and perhaps envious"
nature. Do we have here the explanation for Boucher's abrupt departure?
Sw*
jM ** j^yS* ^v^^H In any case, his stay with Lemoine — which was decisive, as we shall see

^
came before the latter s trip to Italy (1723-24), at a time when Paris was

mT*m playing host to more peripatetic foreign painters than ever before,

^^^^^m1 ^Mte.
&
"^H
particularly Venetians.
There may have been
spent only a few
a more material explanation for Boucher's having
months in Lemoine's studio: he had to make a living.
Boucher was to do so by devoting himself to making drawings to be
engraved and reproductive engravings. The artist's activity in these fields,
Fig. i. Francois Lemoine, 7~^e 7?<z/?e of Europa
Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
before his departure for Italy, was immense and merits further research.
(1725).
Let us sum up what we know today. Mariette wrote that Boucher "went to
live with the father of Cars, the engraver [i.e., Jean-Frangois (1661-1730),
father of Laurent (1699-1771)], who dealt in theses who employed him
and
in producing designs for plates that he then had engraved. He gave him
board, lodging, and 60 livres a month, which to Boucher at the time
seemed like a fortune." 9 Mariette then mentioned "26 illustrations and
vignettes" for the Histoire de France by Father Gabriel Daniel, which
were engraved by Maurice Baquoy 1675-1747) and C. Mathey. He
(c.

dated them to 1721, and maintained that the book appeared the following
year. It is well known that these drawings, bound in an album belonging
to the Cabinet des Dessins in the Louvre, were published in the Inventaire
General under the name of Pierre-Jacques Cazes (1676-1754), Chardin's
teacher, until John Ruch restored them to Boucher in 1964.'° Alastair
Laing presents below (see cat. 8) the reasons that lead him to doubt the
date put forward by Mariette, whose uncle had been responsible for
publishing editions of the work in both 1722 and 1729. Let us content
ourselves with reproducing here two unpublished studies for these
vignettes sheltering under an attribution to Fragonard in the Ian Woodner

'>

'>t

'**

Fig. 2. Francois Boucher, here attributed, Fig. 3. Francois Boucher, here attributed,
Alarme dans le camp de Chilperic. Ian Wood- L'arcbiduc fit son hommage entre les mains du
ner Family Collection. Chancelier de France. Ian Woodner Family Collection.

4*
 8. Caylus, 1910, p. 46. collection, which show Boucher's freedom as a young draftsman
stylistic
9. Mariette, I, 1851-53, pp. 165-66. and that inventiveness and feeling for composition that were to serve him
10. Ruch, 1964, pp. 496-500.
1 1. Exhibited at the Este Gallery, New York,
so well throughout his career (figs. 2, 3)."

as by Boucher in 1953, when their reattri- To return to Mariette: "He was not long in making the acquaintance of
bution to Fragonard was suggested anony- M. de who, wishing to have the drawings of Watteau engraved,
Julienne,
mously in Connoisseur, August 1953,
distributed several of them to Boucher, who acquitted himself perfectly.
p. 69.
12. Mariette, 1851-53, pp. 165-66.
I, His deft, agile manipulation of the needle seemed made for such work.
13. J-R, p. 33. See also Herold & Vuaflart, M. de Julienne gave him 24 livres a day, and both were satisfied, since
1929, I, pp. 177-78 (who ascribe only 105
Boucher worked very quickly, etching being child's play for him." 12 It is
pieces from the Figures de differents carac-
teres to Boucher). worth remembering that of all the artists hired by de Jullienne for the
14. For another version of this drawing, see Figures de differents caracteres (two volumes, published in 1726 and 1728),
exh. cat. 1985, Paris, no. 2, illus.
itwas Boucher who engraved the largest number of Watteau's drawings,
15. Campardon, 1880, pp. 19-20.
16. Herold & Vuaflart, 1929, I, pp. 91-92.
no less than 119, according to Pierrette Jean-Richard, out of a total of
See also J-R, and Dussieux, 1876,
p. 74; 351.
13 It is likewise worth noting that it is an etching by Boucher, The
p. 312, which states that Nicolas Dorigny own drawings
Graces at the Tomb of Watteau, based on one of his
"returned to France in 1724. In 1725, he
was commissioned by the English to have a
(Windsor), '•*
that opens the second volume of the work. Finally, it should
rather considerable series of allegorical be mentioned that before his departure for Rome, Boucher undertook a
compositions designed by French painters number of engravings for the Recueil Jullienne (twenty-one in all,
in honor of the great men of England.
although some of them were only published after his return in 1731).
These drawings . . . were executed by
Carle Vanloo and Boucher." It is not clear, But the list of works by Boucher the draftsman and engraver does not
however, where Dussieux got his informa- end here. He assisted in some unspecified way in the splendid set of
tion about the role played by Dorigny and
engravings by Jean-Baptiste Masse reproducing the decoration painted by
the date. Dorigny only engraved the two
half titles designed bv Carle Vanloo (which
Le Brun in the grande galerie "and the two Salons that adjoin it" at

indeed onlv appear in the French edition Versailles, which was finally published in 1753. "I owe part of the success
of c. 1736/37). When MacSwiny issued a
[of this volume]," wrote Masse, "to the obliging efforts of MM. Galoche,
prospectus for the Tombeaux, at a point
Boucher, Natoire, and Bouchardon, and especially of the late M. Le
datable to c. 1729/30 thanks to the dates of
completion of the paintings of the tombs, Moyne." 15 It was also then that he was supposed to have supplied
he claimed only that eight of the tombs drawings for the French edition, purportedly due to Nicolas Dorigny, of
themselves had been engraved; the half
MacSwiny 's compilation, the Tombeaux des Princes, des Grands Capitaines
titles (by Boucher and Vanloo) had yet to
be commissioned or engraved, and such as et autres Hommes Illustres qui ont fleuri dans la Grande-Bretagne l6 .

are datable, stem only from 1736/37, Lastly, he drew —

probably drew a lot —
and painted. He participated in
which is what their style would also
the Corpus Christi exhibition in the Place Dauphine in 1725 ("It was a
suggest.
great pleasure to see several small paintings by M^ Bouchet [sic], pupil of
Mr Lemoine, painted with an excellent sense of color, which make one

Fig. 4. Francois Boucher, here attributed, Fig. 5. Francois Boucher, here attributed.
Biblical Scene. Museum of Fine Arts, Biblical Scene. Private collection, Paris.
Budapest.

43
Fig. 6. Francois Boucher, here attributed, Fig. j. Francois Boucher, here attributed,
Da:- id Threatened by Saul uhile Playing the St. John the Baptist Preaching. Staatliche Mu-
Harp. Private collection, Paris. seen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstich-
kabinett, Berlin.

hope that this young man will be capable of excelling in his Art" :
"). He
painted to a moderate degree. But let us leave it to Alastair Laing to
comment on this point (cat. i-ii).

In 1728, Boucher went to Italy. His Grand Prix of 1723 was supposed to
open the doors of the Academie de France in Rome to him. But it did
nothing of the kind. How and thanks to whom was he able to go?
Alexandre Ananoff, in the Classici dell'arte volume devoted to Boucher,
suggests that he made the journey "thanks to the generosity of some
collector, perhaps the due d'Antin" (Ananoff & Wildenstein, 1980, p. 83).
But it was most certainly not the surintendant des Bdtiments du Roi who
supplied the young artist with the funds necessary for his trip and for his
stay in Rome. Cochin ruled this out when he wrote: "M. le due d'Antin
dispensed much patronage, and as frequently happens with the great, even
his valets dispensed patronage around him. Excellent pupils, such as

Fig •
I rinqois Boucher, here attributed, Fig. 9. Francois Boucher, here attributed,
Christ Healing the Man Blind from Birth. Christ before Caiaphas. Musee du Louvre,
Private collection, Paris. Cabinet des Dessins. Paris.

44
 Fig. 10. Francois Boucher, here attributed,
Shepherd Driving His Flock. Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris.

Vanloo, Boucher, and others, were left without being sent to Rome, while
scholarships were given to untalented pupils recommended by those who
18
approached the great man."
I prefer to go along with Papillon de La Ferte,
19
who maintained that
Boucher went to Italy "at his own expense." Very likely he was able to
make the journey with the savings accumulated by his extensive work as a

draftsman and engraver. He left Paris at the end of March or the beginning
of April 1728 in the company, Dandre-Bardon and the Correspondance des
Directeurs tell us, of the three Vanloo, Carle (1705-1765) and his nephews
20
the brothers Louis-Michel (1707-1765) and Francois (1708-1732). Carle
Vanloo had won the Grand Prix in 1724 (one year before Louis-Michel)
and had been able to put a little money aside thanks to his "portrait
drawings." "These works, which he did with surprising facility, earned
him good takings." 21

Two letters of 27 May

June 1728 from the painter Nicolas
and 3
Vleughels (1668-1737), director of the Academie de France in Rome, to
the due d'Antin, the surintendant, confirm Boucher's arrival at the
Palazzo Mancini. 22 They have often been quoted: "With Messrs. Vanloo
comes ... a young man who has plenty of talent; since he is French and
17. Mercure de France, June 1725, 1402.
18. Cochin, 1880, p. 100.
p.
very promising, it will be my pleasure to try to serve him as I shall do the
19. Papillon de La Ferte, 1776. others . . ."; and again: "There is also someone named Boucher, a simple
20. Dandre-Bardon, 1765, pp. 13-14, added: boy and with a good deal of ability; in a virtual outbuilding there is a little
"He thus procures the means to travel hole of a room, and I have stuck him in there. ." In the days that . .

comfortably to Rome and to maintain

himself there for a few years in order to
followed, Vleughels presented the new students to Cardinal de Polignac,
study"; see also Correspondance, VII, the French ambassador to the pope, and set them to work. But Boucher's
1897, PP- 4 o8 > 4°9- name does not appear again in the Correspondance exchanged by the
21. Dandre-Bardon, 1765, pp. 13-14.
director of the Academie and the surintendant, copious as it is, until
22. Correspondance, VII, 1897, PP- 4 20 4 2 3- >

See also Lapauze, 1924, I, pp. 201-02. 14 August 1732, a date by which Boucher was back in France. During
23. This statement can now be qualified, since these few years his name does not appear anywhere, so far as we know,
M. Olivier Michel kindly informs me that
either in the Italian archives or in writings of the period. -^
Boucher's name occurs in the Roman
registers of Easter communicants in 1729
What happened to him? Again, according to Mariette: "He made the
(the Liber stati animarum). Italian journey but it was rather to satisfy his curiosity than to derive any

45
24. Mariette, I, 1851-53, pp. 165-66. advantage from it. Therefore he did not stay in that country very long." 24
25. Ingrams, 1970, p. 26.
But Bachaumont Italy." 25
in 1750 claimed that he spent "a long time in
26. This illness is confirmed by a passage in
the Discours sur I'origine, les progres, et
This is an apparent contradiction, on which a seldom cited yet quite

Vetat actuel de la peinture, Paris, 1785, important passage from Papillon de La Ferte (1776) sheds new light:
p. 7: Boucher stayed only "a few months "During the time he [Boucher] spent there [in Italy], the poor state of his
in Italv, in a permanent state of illness
health prevented him from pursuing all the studies that he wished to do." 26
that did not allow him to apply himself
to anything." "He was not even able to work on the subject that had been assigned to
27. Papillon de La Ferte, 1776, pp. 657-62. the young artists competing for the grand prize awarded by the pope at
28. Dandre-Bardon, 1765, pp. 15-16. Natoire
the Capitol." 27 This prize, "despite the large number of very skillful rivals,
had won the same prize in 1725.
29. Papillon de La Ferte, 1776, pp. 657-62. most of them Italian," was carried off by Carle Vanloo in the autumn of
30. But he was not in Rome over Easter, since their arrival in Rome "crowned by a unanimous voice" and "to the sound
his name does not appear in the register of
of the acclamations of all."
28
Easter communicants for that year, M.
Olivier Michel kindlv informs me.
"After staying eighteen months in that superb metropolis of the Arts, he
31. Papillon de La Ferte, 1776, pp. 657-62. [Boucher] returned to Paris in 173 1 . .
." (Papillon de La Ferte). 29 That
32. Boucher's drawings after Italian old mas- would mean that Boucher, having arrived in Rome in May 1728, would
ters can help us to follow the young artist's

An example
have left the city in two drawings of Tivoli, now in
November 1729. Yet
movements in Italy. is the
drawing that was in Mariette's posthumous the respective print rooms of the Stadel and the Rijksmuseum, signed and
sale, lot 1
1 54: "The Virgin holding the dated Roma 17JO, reveal that Boucher was still in Rome at that date.' Was
Christ Child, and at her feet several saints
in the act of worship: this drawing, done
it really in Rome that he painted those "exquisite small pictures in the

in pen and bister wash with all possible Flemish style" of which Papillon de La Ferte spoke? 5 '
How far are we to
art, is not of Boucher's own composition believe the assertions of eighteenth-century sale catalogues declaring that
but after Cavedone's painting in Bologna."
this or that painting had been "done in Italy" or "done in Rome"? Did he
It is

made
interesting to note that Tremolieres
a red-chalk drawing after the same
travel? Did he stop along the way to Rome or on the return trip — as is

work (fig. 11; exh. cat. 1973, Cholet, sometimes stated without proof — in Florence, Parma, Ferrara, Genoa,
drawing no. 12, pp. 97-98, and pi. Win). Bologna? Did he go to Naples? Did he follow the advice of Vleughels,
52

who recommended his students (the letter is of 13 February 1727) to stop

over in Venice on their return?: "There is a quite skillful painter named
Sebastien Richi, who volunteers to look after pupils."" We do not know.
In any case, Boucher roughed out an overdoor in the Palazzo Mancini;
it, too, has disappeared, and we do not even know the subject. 54 We

know that he kept the drawings from this period of his career, since on
13 September 1757, Cochin was to suggest to Mangny that he ask

Boucher, along with other artists (Bouchardon, Slodtz, Pierre, and Vien),
if he would agree "to lend what [he has] kept of the fine studies he [did] in
Italy," so that they could be engraved. 55 Was it at this juncture that Jean-
Baptiste Hutin (1726-1786) published his Recueil de differents caracteres
de tetes tires de la colonne Trajane?
It seems certain that Boucher (because of his illness?) did not retain a

fond memory of the time spent in Italy. In 1766, he advised the German
painter Christian Mannlich (1740-1822) " 'not to spend a lot of time in

Fig. 11. Pierre-Charles Tremolieres, after Rome and to study above all Albani 56 and Guido Reni. Raphael, despite
Giacomo Cavedone, St. Aid and St. Petronio his great reputation, is a very depressing painter, and Michelangelo is
Adoring the Virgin and Child. Private collec-
frightening,' he told me. 'Believe in them, but don't attempt to imitate
tion, Paris.
them, or you will become as chilling as ice.' "' 7
Boucher nevertheless made a great impression on Vleughels. On
14 August 1732, he placed him, along with the Vanloo, Natoire, Adam,
and Bouchardon, among the "subjects with much promise."' 8
On 24 November 173 1, 39 Boucher was agree by the Academic In 1732,
he painted his Venus Requesting Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas (cat. 17;
Louvre), his first masterpiece. He presented his reception piece, Rinaldo
and Armida (cat. 26; Louvre), on 30 January 1734 40 and entered the

46
33- Correspondance, VII, 1897, p. 311. Academie as a history painter. Meanwhile he had gotten married. From
Correspondance, XVI, 1907, p. 442, listing
34.
now on the painter's career was to unfold in broad daylight.
among the objects noted in the inventory
of the Palazzo Mancini taken at the Revo-
But it would still take time for him to emerge as the leading artist of his
lution, in abedchamber: "two overdoors: generation. What had he retained of the art of his French and Italian
one only roughed out by M. Bouche [sic] seniors? How did he carve out a place for himself among his contempo-
the other by Louis Vanloo Both with — raries? How did he acquire that "style," at first so admired and later just
their frames."

35. Furcy-Raynaud, 1903, p. 131. as violently decried?

36. In the memoir of Boucher in the Galerie Put like this, Boucher's rise might seem both rapid and irresistible.
Franqoise in 1771 [see note 3], the author
Actually it was nothing of the kind. It was slow and for a long time
cites Albani as a comparison. He also
mentions "Pierre de Cortonne" [sic] and uncertain.
Lanfranco: "As a general rule, the first To begin with, here are two observations out of many that one might
pictures that he painted on returning from
make, of widely differing weight, which will nonetheless help to identify
Italy show the effects of the time he spent
there, and are filled with the vigorous and the issue. Boucher's earliest paintings, the first in the chronological order
manly beauties of the great masters. Their adopted in this exhibition, have often borne — until quite recently — the
coloris true, local, and harmonious, but
most varied assortment of names. Today their attribution to Boucher can
always striking; the heads and figures have
all the expressiveness that it is possible to
no longer be questioned, both for the documentary reasons set out in the
register on canvas." entries and on stylistic grounds. It is nevertheless interesting to recall that
37. Mannlich, 1948, pp. 285-86. these paintings have been variously sold or published over the last ten
38. Correspondance, VIII, 1898, p. 360.
years as works by Sebastiano Ricci, Pellegrini, Subleyras, Dumont le
Alastair Laing kindly points out that
there is a further reference, which can only Romain, Dandre-Bardon, and even Lemoine or Carle Vanloo. The same is
refer to Boucher, in a previous letter from true of the drawings of Boucher's youth, which have in their turn been
Vleughels to d'Antin (p. 306): "I can
attributed to Cazes; to Gaspare Diziani; to Gian Antonio Guardi; to
assure you that C. Vanloo is an able man,
and that no one more gifted has passed Carle, Jean-Baptiste, or Francois Vanloo; to Cellony; and even to
through this Academy, with the possible Fragonard.
exception of a poor lad who, with your
One can see from this that the works of Boucher's youth are easily
indulgence, spent some time at the Acad-
emy and has since returned to Paris very
confused (or were easily confused until the present exhibition), both with
able." those of older masters and also with those of his contemporaries belonging
39. Proces-verbanx V, 1883, pp. 95, 136. to the "generation of 1700."
40. Proces-verbaux, V, 1883, pp. 95, 136.
For those who visit the Hotel de Rohan, the present Archives
Nationales — and this is the second observation — comparison between
Boucher's overdoors and those of Restout, Tremolieres, Carle Vanloo, or
Natoire by no means always results in a judgment in our painter's favor.
We know that this ensemble, among the finest to be seen in Paris, was

Fig. 12. Pierre-Charles Tremolieres, Minerva Fig. 13. Francois Lemoine, The Continence of
Teaching a Nymph to Weave Tapestry (1737). Scipio (1727). Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nancy.
Archives Nationales, Paris.

47
 Fig. 14. Paisane des Environs de Ferrare, Fig. 15. Nicolas Vleughels, Rebecca and Elie-
engraved by Edme Jeaurat after Boucher zer. Private collection, Paris.
(I734)-

4i. Bordeaux, 1985.

42. Hercenberg, 1975.
43. Nor did the works of Lemoine's rival, executed between 1735 and 1740. At that epoch, the game was not yet won
Jean-Francois de Troy, born in 1679, leave for Boucher; but, as we shall see, he held a winning hand. If we are to
Boucher indifferent. Their brio
use of color were to attract him, as were
and bold
understand the reasons for this triumph — a fleeting triumph and perhaps
the genre scenes that he imitated and less obvious to the eyes of his contemporaries than to ours — we must
whose subjects he repeated. Alastair Laing reconsider the early struggles of the young Boucher.
informs me that the de Sireul sale of 3 Dec.
ff. 1781 even contained (lot 28): "Armida
In the first part of this essay I have listed the names of a certain number
visiting Rinaldo asleep in the forest. This of older artists admiredby Boucher. From Lemoine, he was to retain, to
picture is a sketch copied by M. Boucher repeat what has been said by others before me, the striking, light tonality;
from M. Detrov, during the time that he
the noble, elegantly articulated figures; the fluency of effortless, natural-
was in his school." There exist two
sketches of this subject, both attributed to
seeming compositions. 41 But are these qualities present in Boucher's early
J-F. de Troy (figs. 17, 18). One, recently works, or are they not rather to be found in the works painted after 1737?
acquired by the Musee de Lille, was That was the year in which Lemoine, by then premier peintre du Roi,
published by Jacques Vilain (1971, pp.
353-56); the other is in an English private
committed suicide, after executing that uniquely grandiose work in the

collection (exh. cat. 1980, Albuquerque, history of eighteenth-century French painting, against which Boucher
no. 63). Could one of these be by surely dreamed of measuring himself, but either never dared to or never
Boucher?
would
It is difficult to decide, but
rather incline toward the one in
I
had the opportunity — the ceiling of the Salon d'Hercule at Versailles. The
Lille.

Fig. 17. Jean-Francois de Troy or Francois Fig. 18. Jean-Francois de Troy or Francois
Boucher(?j,Armida Struck with Love for Boucher(?j, Armida Struck with Love
Rinaldo when about to Kill Him. Musee des for Rinaldo when about to Kill Him.
Beaux-Arts, Lille. A. S. Ciechanowiecki collection, on extended
Fig. 16. Jean-Francois de Troy, Le dejeuner New
loan to the University of Mexico Art
(1723J. Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kultur- Museum, Albuquerque.
besitz, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin.

48
 death of Lemoine, Boucher's senior by fifteen years, while it did not leave
him absolute master of the field, rid him of a formidable rival.
— —
The same year but in Rome Vleughels died. 42 There is no question
but that the two artists had known each other in Italy (Boucher had
contributed one of the six small pictures representing women from the
environs of Rome to the set painted by Vleughels, engraved in 1734 by
Edme Jeaurat), and we have already noted that the director of the
Academie de France in Rome considered Boucher one of the most
promising students of his generation. But am convinced that the two
I

artists had met before Vleughels's departure for Rome (1724). Not only
did Vleughels contribute two illustrations to the 1722 edition of Father
Daniel's Histoire de France; not only did he handle themes — the Fortune-
Teller, La Fontaine's Contes, and numerous mythological subjects — dear to
Boucher; but also and above all the first works of Boucher attest his

admiration for the complex compositions, meticulous yet delectable

Fig. 19. Francois Boucher, The Graces at the handling, and studied chromatic effects practiced by Vleughels. ^
Tomb of Watteau, etching. Musee du Louvre, Vleughels's name evokes that of Watteau, whose friend he was, and with
Collection Edmond de Rothschild, Paris.
whose landscape drawings Boucher's have so long and so often been
confused. We do not know if Boucher ever knew Watteau. The portrait he
drew of Watteau shows him as young and handsome, but Watteau was
—
never alas! —
old, and passed for handsome in the eyes of his admirers.
Boucher was one of those who eagerly engraved so many of his drawings.
The aims of the two artists had nothing in common, Watteau being the
very example of the introverted painter, and Boucher the extrovert par
excellence. Nor is there much that is comparable in their works (though
Boucher was also in his youth to depict a Fortune-Teller); and yet Boucher
learned something from the older artist: not simply that he would never
paint the Enseigne de Gersaint, but a technique and a certain way of
approaching painting. He could not or did not want to imitate Watteau,
but he knew his secrets and testified to his admiration for the draftsman,
to the point that certain — am thinking of the
drawings by Boucher I

Landscape in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, the subject of

in a

recent article by Beverly Schreiber Jacoby — were quite recently being

44

Fig. 20. Antoine Watteau, Pittoni a Parigi

exhibited under Watteau's name. 45
Broccantor da Quadri. . . . Fondazione Cini, Even before his departure for Italy, Boucher was sensitive to the
Venice.
examples of Venetian painting that he had before his eyes in Paris: the
visits of Sebastiano Ricci and Rosalba Carriera, the ceiling of the Hotel
Law (alias the Banque Royale, or Banque de by G. A. Mississipi)
Pellegrini, could not leave indifferent an ambitious young artist who
aspired to be utterly up-to-date. There is nothing particularly new about
this last observation —
I simply wish to dwell for a moment on a

suggestion that has perhaps not received sufficient attention. The

Fondazione Cini in Venice owns a now-dismantled album of drawings,
which is attributed to Anton Maria Zanetti (1680-1767). 46 I have
44. Jacoby, 1979, pp. 261-72. previously reattributed one of the drawings in this album to Watteau, an
45. Other artists, such as Cazes, or Jean-
Baptiste and Frangois Vanloo (the last died
attribution that now seems to be unanimously accepted (fig. 20). 47 Now
prematurely in 1732 at the age of twenty- this drawing bears an inscription in ink identifying its subject as: Pittoni a
four, but sorrte of his
drawings are known), Parigi Broccantor da Quadri Pittore, ed Amico del Zanetti. Franca Zava
ought likewise to be mentioned here.
Boccazzi, 48 the leading specialist on G. B. Pittoni (1687-1767), is aware of
46. Exh. cat. 1969, Venice.
47. Revue de TArt, no. 9, 1970, p. 92, fig. 2.
thisdrawing but discards the notion of a visit to Paris by her artist. Yet it
48. Zava Boccazzi, 1977, p. 104. seems to me that Boucher's early works display such affinities with those

49
 of Pittoni— mouvementees, "dejetees," complex compositions,
willfully
executed with saturated brushstrokes, and enlivened by judiciously
small,
distributed highlights — contact between the two men
that before in Paris

Boucher's Italian journey seems difficult to exclude. 49

To return for a moment to Boucher's visit to Italy: his illness would not
have prevented him from looking at works of art in that country, even if

he did not greatly admire them. What is interesting is that his own work
shows so little influence of them, and that it is difficult — once one has
cited the names of Castiglione (less often mentioned in connection with
Boucher in the eighteenth century than it is today) and Albani (which by
contrast recurs constantly in the writings of his contemporaries) 50 — to
pinpoint that influence. To be sure, the names of certain Italian artists are

mentioned in eighteenth-century sale catalogues; Boucher himself, a

m discerning collector, owned — as the catalogue of his posthumous sale

demonstrates — a fine selection of Italian drawings; and Boucher's biog-
raphers never fail to allude to a certain number of Italian painters and to
evoke their influence, 5 '
but up until now no one has tried to define this
more precisely or analyze the specific traces of it. That may be because
this influence is hard to pinpoint exactly, but it may also be because it is

not easy to define.

I would not go so far as to claim that Boucher left for Italy perfectly
formed, nor even that he was not sensitive to Italian models (or northern
ones in some cases, as will be seen below in relation to Subleyras), still less

that his style did not undergo a succession of developments, transforma-

tions, and mutations (although this process is a tricky thing to follow
and has yet to be grasped in all its do not think it is
complexity), but I

necessary to go searching at all costs through the works of Boucher's

youth for what —
as he himself admitted as we learned from Mariette

Fig. 21. Michel-Francois Dandre-Bardon, here

at the beginning of this essay —
he made no attempt to assimilate. We are
attributed, Sepelire mortuos (before 1725).
accustomed to study dead artists by trying to discern the influences of
Musee du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, Paris. their predecessors in their paintings. But the work of some painters

Fig. 22. Sepelire mortuos, engraved by Laurent Fig. 23. Jacques Dumont, called Le Romain,
Cars after M-F. Dandre-Bardon. Bibliotheque Hagar Visited by the Angel (1726). Biblio-
Nationale, Paris. theque Nationale, Paris.

50
 -
-

Fig. 24. Jacques Dumont, called Le Romain, Fig. 25. Francois Vanloo, Moses. Musee Fig. 26. Francois Vanloo, St. John
Hercules in Thrall to Omphale (1728). Musee Paul Arbaud, Aix-en-Provence. the Evangelist. Musee Paul Arbaud,
des Beaux-Arts, Tours. Aix-en-Provence.

and Boucher is one of them — does not lend itself to this favorite and
now all-too-automatic tactic of the art historian. Do we not run the risk
of seeing influence where there is only fortuitous resemblance, thereby
forcing and falsifying reality?
Let us now turn to the "generation of 1700." But first a reminder of the
birth dates of this group of whose achievement was to establish
artists, the
dominance of French art in Europe: Bouchardon (1698); Chardin,
Subleyras, and Etienne Jeaurat (1699); Dandre-Bardon, Natoire, and
Adam (1700); Frontier, Louis-Gabriel Blanchet, and Dumont le Romain
(1701);Aved (1702); Boucher and Tremolieres (1703); La Tour (1704); Carle
Vanloo and Michel-Ange Slodtz (1705). Some of the more important of
them follow on one another's heels in winning the accolade of the Grand
Prix bestowed by the Academie: Natoire was awarded it in 1721, the
following year it was Bouchardon's turn (as a sculptor, of course), Boucher
(beating Quillard, the ape of Watteau) in 1723, Carle Vanloo the next year
49. For Zava Boccazzi, the person in Watteau's

drawing is too old to be G. B. Pittoni.

(and Slodtz for sculpture), Louis-Michel Vanloo in 1725 (beating Dandre-
Besides, the latter seems to have been in Bardon), Subleyras in 1727 (beating Blanchet; in 1726, Tremolieres had
Venice in August 1720. According to her, only won second prize), and Frontier in 1728. Despite the intervals
the drawing may show Pittoni's uncle,
Francesco, who was also a painter and an
between their awards, the times of a number of them in Rome were to

art dealer. Might it not be in that case, that coincide: if Boucher's stay there only overlapped that of Natoire, Etienne
Francesco Pittoni had introduced his Jeaurat, and Nicolas Delobel, not only were his traveling companions, the
nephew's works to Paris and that they had
three Vanloo, there the whole time that he must have been, but so also
made a powerful impression on the young
Boucher? were the painters Dandre-Bardon, Pierre Bernard, Tremolieres, Subleyras,
50. The abbe de Fontenai in his Dictionnaire and Louis-Gabriel Blanchet, the sculptors Michel-Ange Slodtz, Edme
des Artistes, published in 1776, calls
Bouchardon, and Lambert-Sigisbert Adam, and the architects Etienne
Boucher "the Albani of France."
51. The best perspective on Boucher and Italy
Le Bon and Etienne Derizet.
is to be found in Slatkin, 97i[b], p. 402,
1 Beginning with the Tremolieres exhibition at Cholet in 1973, 52 which
nn. 1-3. See also Jacoby, 1979, p. 269. was the first of its kind to draw attention to this ambitious and triumphant
52. Preface by Pierre Rosenberg. The major
portion of the catalogue is by Jean-Fran-
generation, its leading members have successively been the object of

cois Mejanes. serious study. Natoire received his due from an exhibition held in Troves,
53. Catalogue by Isabelle Julia, Lise Duclaux, Nimes, and Rome in 1977, 53 as did Carle Vanloo from one held the same
Georges Brunei, Patrick Violette, and
year in Nice, Clermont-Ferrand, and Nancy 54 Soon Subleyras, who is
Pierre Rosenberg.
54. Preface by Pierre Rosenberg. Catalogue by shortly to be the object of an exhibition at the Villa Medici in Rome and
Marie-Catherine Sahut. the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris, which will be followed up by a

5i
Fig. 27. Jean-Baptiste Vanloo, The Raising of Fig. 28. Jean-Baptiste Vanloo, The Raising of
Lazarus. Private collection, United States. Lazarus. Private collection, Paris.

55. This catalogue and book are being written monograph, 55 and Dandre-Bardon 56 will in their turn be better known.
by Pierre Rosenberg and Olivier Michel. These surveys, copiously illustrated with the artists' works, have greatly
56. By Pierre Rosenberg and Elisabeth Foucart
facilitated the tasks of distinguishing these figures from one another and of
Walter.

57. It should be noted, however, that Char- attempting to define their styles. They have been of special help in the
posthumous inventory contained "A
din's study of their beginnings, which were sometimes brilliant (as in the case of
Boucher landscape, by Le Bas" no doubt — Carle Vanloo), and sometimes awkward (as with Chardin — whose only
the very engraving of the Seconde vue de
Beauvais dedicated to him by the owner of connection with Boucher, however, is that Fragonard was passed as a pupil
itspendant, Le Noir (J-R 1 34 ). The 1 from one to the other, and we cannot even be sure of that). 57 Have these
absence from this inventory (see G. Wil-
investigations given us a better idea of Boucher s place among the artists of
denstein, 1933, PP- I 44~5°) °f anv OI tne
pictures or drawings by Boucher found in this generation and made it easier to understand his exact role and define
Chardin's posthumous sale promotes the his character as an artist?
suspicion that these were introduced by
We might begin by noting that Boucher was personally acquainted with
the auctioneers.
58. No. 4 in exh. cat. 1977, Troyes.
all the artists of this generation. He had already collaborated with some of
59. Rosenberg, 1970, pp. 133-38. them in Paris few years was in the company of others in Rome.
and for a
60. Slatkin, 1976, pp. 247-60. Boucher was But we do not know which ones were his friends, which ones he envied,
not alone in copying Bloemaert's drawings;
today we know of seven similar copies
or which ones were jealous of him. At the deaths of Natoire and Dandre-
bearing the old inscription in pen:
P. Subleyras. Alastair Laing thinks it not
impossible that at least one of these, with
studies of two seated women, from the
d'Orsay collection in the Louvre (exh. cat.

1983, Paris, no. 99), may actually be by

Natoire.
61. A& W 171. The painting is today in the
Louvre (Rosenberg, in the catalogue Musee
du Louvre. Nouvelles acquisitions du De-
partement des Peintures [1980-1982], pp.
53-55)-
62. We do not know what role the
still

instruction given by the Academie played

in the development of this style. It should
be noted that no painter of the "generation
of 1700" was asked to participate in the
1727 competition.
63. Rosenberg, 1977, pp. 29-42.

Fig. 29. Charles-Joseph Natoire, Christ Expel-

ling the Money Changers from the Temple
(1727-28). Saint-Medard, Paris.

5
2
 Bardon, which occurred well after Boucher's own (1770), some of his
works appear in their posthumous sales. But there has never been any
proof that one of these artists dominated or set the tone for the rest.
The question is nevertheless of some importance. It is generally agreed,
as we have noted, that there is an air of kinship among the juvenilia of the
artists of this generation. A picture such as Christ Expelling the Money
Changers from the Temple (fig. 29), painted in Rome by Natoire in

1727-28 for Cardinal de Polignac (today in the church of Saint-Medard in

Paris), and which I have written about elsewhere, 58

or Carle Vanloo's
sketches for the Good Samaritan (1723, Musee Fabre, Montpellier) or the
Apotheosis of St. Isidore (fig. Hamburg), ? or even
30; 1729, Kunsthalle, 5

the earliest works of Tremolieres, Dumont le Romain, and Dandre-

—
Bardon how did they strike the young Boucher?
To take another example: Subleyras and Boucher must have known each
other. They copied —
but was it in Rome or while both were still in
Paris? — drawings by Bloemaert (figs. 32, 112, ii4); 6c they treated the same
subjects (La Fontaine's Contes); and one of the finest portraits by
Subleyras (fig. 33), of which the Louvre is now the fortunate possessor,
Fig. 30. Carle Vanloo, The Apotheosis of was until recently catalogued under the name of Boucher, 61 while
St. Isidore (1729). Kunsthalle, Hamburg. number 1 in the present catalogue was once thought to be by Subleyras.
Both of them, in their early works, like most of the artists we have
mentioned, were fond of over-elongated figures with tiny heads, skinny
bodies enveloped in large cloaks and ample drapery, and long hands with
knobbly fingers. But who evolved these mannerisms, which Boucher was
to adopt, only to abandon such exaggerations and distortions not long
after his return to France? We still have no certain answers. 62
Finally, we need to ask why it should have been Boucher who
ultimately triumphed. Chance played its part: the deaths of Francois
Vanloo in 1732, Noel-Nicolas Coypel in 1734 (connoisseurs had consid-
ered him the real winner of the competition of 1727), 6 ^ and Tremolieres in
1739, together with the fact that Subleyras and Blanchet chose to settle in

Rome, to which Jean-Francois de Troy and Natoire were successively sent

as directors of the French Academy in 1738 and 1750 respectively, removed

M^
Fig. 31. Mars and Venus, engraved bv Simon- Fig. 32. Pierre Sublevras,Study of a Seated
Francois Ravenet after Carle Vanloo. Biblio- Con-herd. Private collection, Paris.
theque Nationale, Paris.

53
 some formidable rivals. There remained a few older artists, such as Jean
Restout, who was to specialize in ecclesiastical paintings, or Charles-
Antoine Coypel (1694-175 2), without an equal for paintings inspired by
the theater, but otherwise notoriously unproductive. More seriously, there
were Carle Vanloo, who was younger than Boucher yet his senior in the
Academy and who was to be preferred over him for the post of premier
peintre du Roi in 1760; or (while he remained in Paris) Natoire, whom
Voltaire ranked equally with Boucher in 1757. 64 The standing of both
Vanloo and Natoire in the eyes of their contemporaries was by no means
negligible, and they were rated among the great painters of their time. But
even if Boucher's triumph was less absolute than we see it as nowadays,
the fact nevertheless remains that from around 1740 Boucher occupied the
limelight, and symbolized in his own person a new and original style that

Presumed Portrait of
had broken with the past, rather as Simon Vouet had done in the previous
Fig. 33. Pierre Subleyras,
Giuseppe Baretti. Musee du Louvre, Paris. century.
Boucher owed this position above all to his extraordinary capacity for
work, which impressed his contemporaries and ought to scotch the still
prevalent image of a frivolous and sybaritic man. "Constant work for
more than twelve hours a day, from the moment in his childhood when he
first took up his pencils to the very end of his life, did not cause his

64. "Your idea, my dear niece [Mme de Fon- imagination to run dry." 6 "M. Boucher hardly ever went out, and his
'

taine], of having copies of the beautiful

sorties were limited to Versailles, to the Gobelins, of which he was the
nudes of Natoire and Boucher painted to
enliven my old age shows a tender spirit" director, to the Opera, where he was likewise head of the department of
(Voltaire, XXXIX, 1880, p. 221. The sets and costumes, and to visit naturalists and lovers of natural history.
names of Boucher and Natoire are also . . He placed himself in front of his easel in his studio, where he painted
.

associated in a letter from Mariette to

even the meanest utensils from nature. ." 66
Gabburri of 28 January 1732 (Bottari & . .

Ticozzi, 1822, II, p. 331). He also owed this position to the experiments of his youth, to the
65. Mercure de France, September 1770, technique and tricks he had mastered during his apprenticeship: he
pp. 181-89.
engraved more quickly and skillfully than the professional engravers; he
66. Mannlich, 1948, p. 216.
67. Diderot, 1983, p. 238. drew from from imagination as though for enjoyment; he painted
life as

68. Diderot, 1975, p. 205. with disconcerting abundance and facility. For more than ten years,

Fig. 34. Noel-Nicolas Coypel, The Rape of

Europa. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

54
Boucher had been obliged to copy, recopy, imitate, and engrave; he had
cast himself in the mold of a new manner of painting that fitted him easily,

the better to be able to manipulate this to his advantage and gain

acceptance as the master of this new idiom.
We often forget that Diderot was at first an unconditional admirer
of this early manner. "The Boucher whom I have just relegated to
fashionable levees and the company of courtesans, painted on his return
from Rome some pictures that ought to be seen. ." 67 "This man, when
. .

he had just returned from Italy, did some very fine things; his coloring
was vigorous but true; his composition was well planned, yet full of fire;
his handling was broad and bold. I am familiar with some of his earliest
pieces, which he now calls daubs and would buy back if he could in order
to burn them. He has old portfolios stuffed with admirable things. " 68 . .

Diderot, waving the standard of the return to nature and of truth (but
what exactly did he mean by these two expressions?), was one of the
mature Boucher's fiercest critics. He upbraided him, perhaps justly, for his

excessive facility; he also scolded him for his lack of naturalness and for
his artificiality. And yet it was this very artificiality that he so much
admired works painted immediately after the artist's return from
in the
Rome. Indeed, what Diderot criticized in Boucher is what constitutes the
very essence of his genius — his inventiveness, his verve, and his endlessly
fertile imagination.
Scorned and swiftly forgotten, then once again adulated and popular,
Boucher, like Renoir, currently seems to suffer from his excessive
celebrity. His deliberately make-believe world, those goddesses, nymphs,
and shepherdesses so far removed from everyday reality, and yet so
delightfully and carnally present, need to be looked at with fresh eyes.

55
 —

Boucher: The Search for an Idiom

ALASTAIR LAING

Ce n 'etoit point un peintre, mais la peinture elle-

meme.
(Journal Encyclopedique, i October 1757, p. 101: He
was not a painter, but painting itself.)

Cet bomme a tout — excepte la verite.

(Diderot, Salon de 1761: That man is capable of

everything — except the truth.)

N'est pas Boucher qui veut.

(David, before going to Italy, as quoted in Le
Pausanias Francais, 1806, p. 147: Wishing does not
make a Boucher.)

1. Mariette, I, 1851-53, p. 166. Thesis Boucher is inseparable from his reputation. Adulated by his contempo-
plates are the engravings published to
raries, excoriated by immediately succeeding generations, the idol of
celebrate the successful maintenance of a
doctoral thesis, generally in theology.
collectors of eighteenth-century French art in the nineteenth century, and
They consist of a lower part giving the now mostly the object of grudging or apologetic admiration, the artist has
text of the arguments maintained and the consistently been praised or denounced as much for what he stood for, as
details of the occasion, and an oblong
for what he actually did. In this respect he presents a contrast to an artist
upper plate illustrating some scriptural
generally Old Testament — episode em- such as his former master, Lemoine, whose ceilings in Saint-Sulpice, Saint-
bodying the theme, which would nor- Thomas d'Aquin (the "Jacobins"), or the Salon d'Hercule were insepara-
mally have been supplied from stock.
ble from any serious assessment of him, or to his contemporaries Natoire
and Carle Vanloo, whose decoration of the Chapelle des Enfants-Trouves
and cycle of paintings in the church of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires (the
"Petits Augustins") respectively never failed to be cited in any extended
consideration of these artists and their oeuvres.
This celebration of Boucher as a phenomenon began in his own lifetime,

a few years after his return from Italy, and it would almost appear that it

was something that he consciously set out to achieve. Rather than seeking
a major commission that would have occupied him for several years, in the

hope that it might make his fame overnight upon its unveiling, he seems to
have been determined to demonstrate his diversity and fecundity all at

once. In a way, he may have been compelled to, since — after the false
beginnings of the Judgment of Susannah, painted at the age of seventeen,
which so impressed Lemoine, and the Evilmerodach Releasing J ehoiachin
from Prison, which won him the first prize at the Academy in 1723 he —
was a late starter. The denial of the journey to Rome that should have
accompanied the prize meant that he had to earn his living by engraving
Watteau's drawings for de Jullienne, and by providing what the Augsburg

Fig. 35. Thesis plate incorporating Jepbthah

artists called Delineations-Sachen — compositions for engraver-publishers

Bewailing the Sight of His Daughter, engraved

to have thesis plates scraped from: 1
no basis for a reputation as a painter.

by P-F. Basan after a lost painting by Boucher. Having probably made enough money by this means to finance the
Employed here on a thesis sustained by J-P. journey to Rome himself, he appears to have been unmoved by what he
Ravette in 1789, but previously employed on
saw there, and also possibly prevented by illness from either succeeding in
another sustained by Henri Agasse in 1769,

and very probably upon others before that. the Concorso Clementino or working on anything to be sent back to
2
Published by Robert Hecquet. France.

56
 —

Thus, when Boucher arrived back in Paris in 173 1, he was already

twenty-eight, and with very little show for it. This helps to illuminate
to
Mariette's statement that the Rape of Eur op a now in the Wallace
Collection (which he significantly regarded as having been painted by
Boucher "dans showing how late in Boucher's career his so-
sa jeunesse,"
called juvenilia persisted) "was one of a number of large pictures that he
had painted for a marble mason called Dorbay, who had furnished his
whole house with them, which was perfectly easy for him to do, since
Boucher, not seeking to do anything but make a name for himself at that
period, would, I believe, have done them for nothing rather than pass up
the opportunity."}
Fig. 36. The Encounter of Jacob and Rachel,
Thanks Georges Brunei's discovery of the posthumous inventory of
to
thesis plate after a lost painting by Boucher,
published by Laurent Cars.
the lawyer Francois Derbais (who was actually the son of the marble
mason Jerome Derbais, who had died around 171
5
— too early to have
himself been the client in question), which am exceedingly grateful to
I

him for having communicated to me, we now have a much fuller idea of
what these pictures may have been (the absence of artists' names makes
certain identification impossible). In addition to the four large putti
pictures L 'Amour nageur, L'Amour vendangeur, VAmour moissonneur,
and L Amour oiseleur (see cat. 15) — proclaimed as belonging to Derbais
by the engravings them, and the Rape of Eur op a (see cat. 25) and its
after
pendant, Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs of Nysa
(fig. 39), which could be assumed to have belonged to him on the strength
of Mariette's statement in the Ahecedario, he also evidently owned the
Venus and Vulcan of 1732 (cat. 17) and the Aurora and Cephalus of 1733
(cat. 18), as well as, in all probability, another overdoor of Amours 4 and a

large Birth of Venus,'' same salle de billard as the

both of which were in the
four last. The four putti pictures were on the stairs, and it is very possible
2. Papillon de La Ferte, 1776, II, p. 657;
A & W doc. 1 140. The "plusieurs ta- that there were other pictures by Boucher scattered about the house,
bleaux precieux, a la maniere des Fla- including Moses before the Burning Bush (cat. 14) in the salle a manger.
mands" that Papillon de La Ferte says he Did he also paint a large room in another house with episodes from Ovid's
did produce in Rome were presumably
for a local clientele, since there is not
Metamorphoses, 6 as stated by Papillon de La Ferte, or is this a confused
much trace of anv such pictures in French reference to the miscellany of pictures in Derbais's salle de billard?
collections. The pictures that Boucher did for Derbais reveal a new ambitiousness:
3. Mariette, I, 1851-53, p. 165: "faisoit
on the one hand, he painted the same kind of mythologies that he had
partie du nombre de grands tableaux qu'il

avoit fait pour un sculpteur marbrier

nomme Dorbay qui en avoit garni toute
sa maison, ce qui lui avoit ete tres-facile,

car Boucher, ne cherchant alors qu'a se

faire connoitre, les auroit, je crois, fairs

pour rien, plus tost que d'en laisser

manquer l'occasion."
4. Possibly the Bacchanal formerly in the
CI. Riche collection, Voss, 1953, fig. 57.

5. Almost certainly the picture last recorded

in the collection of the comtesse de
Behague, Fenaille, 1925, p. 55 and pi.

p.51.
6. Could the house have been that of Crozat
de Thiers, for whose cabinet the memoir
published in the Galerie Francoise (1771, Fig. 37. Studies of Two Women (after the Fig. 38. Study of Bernini's Fontana
no. V, p. 1) Boucher painted a
says Bassanos' Return of the Prodigal in the Gal- del Moro. Formerlv in Huquier's
number of pictures before he went to leria Doria-Pamphilj. Rome). Albertina, sale, Amsterdam, September 1761,
Rome? We have no further knowledge of Vienna. and subsequentlv with
them in either case. Pardo, Paris.

57
 Fig. 39. Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus
to the Nymphs of Nysa. Wallace Collection,
London.

done before going to Italy, 7 but on a monumental scale and with a new
mastery of anatomy; and on the other, he created a new kind of putto
picture on the same large scale. In all of them, there is also a roughness of
facture and coloring —
taken to extremes in Moses before the Burning Bush
— underlining an overt virtuosity in the handling of paint, that broke
entirely with the smooth handling, warm Italianate palette, and delicate
glazes of the tradition embodied by Galloche, Lemoine, and J-F. de Troy.
Not that this radical break, both with the then exemplars of the French
School and with his own past, was not also indebted to Italian models, but
this indebtedness bespoke a novel choice of paradigms: Sebastiano Ricci
and — above — Castiglione.
all

two pairs of Caravanes

Significantly, Derbais's collection itself included
— the archetypal Castiglione subject. Were these by Benedetto himself or
an imitator —
or were they pastiches by Boucher? Obituaries and sale
catalogue entries about Boucher and his works frequently refer to
Castiglione as a yardstick of comparison, but generally only on this rather
superficial level of subject matter. It is, as usual, Mariette who goes
beyond this to the manner, rather than the matter, of the artist's works;
not in the entry on Boucher himself, where he implicitly confesses himself
somewhat baffled by the homegrown sources of the artist's style, but in
the entry on his son-in-law Deshays. Contrary to the critical consensus,
he did not see Deshays as having really assimilated anything from Italy
into his style: "he seems only to have been affected by that of Castiglione;
and in any case this very free kind of handling is sufficiently evident in
that of Mr. Boucher, of which Deshays was full, and never attempted to
8
rid himself."

The influence of Castiglione — or "le Benedette," as he was most

commonly known — on French eighteenth-century painted and graphic art

is a chapter in the history of art that cries out to be written. There is no

room to do so here (but I should like to acknowledge the benefit of
conversations and correspondence with Ann Percy and Timothy J.

58
 —

7. E.g., the Birth and Death of Adonis, only Standring on the topic, in expanding my ideas as to what works by the
now engraved by Scotin and Aubert,
artist might have been accessible to Boucher in Italy). In a curious lapse,
A& W 38, 39; the Death of Adonis
Dumont
Mariette 9 even claims that that least painterly of artists, le
(private coll., Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat), ap-
parently painted as a pendant to Carle Romain, actually studied in Rome under Benedetto Castiglione (d. 1665 in
Vanloo's Mars and Venus of i/26(?) and Mantua! Presumably he intended to say Benedetto Luti). Boucher's
engraved bv Surugue and Le Vasseur; and
indebtedness to Castiglione was twofold: to his subject matter, in opening
the Selene and Endymion from the prince
de Conti's collection, exh. cat. 1982, New his eyes to nature, and to his technique, in liberating his facility with the
York, no. 5. brush.
8. Mariette, 1853-54, p. 95: "c'etoit
II,
It is clear from their frequent occurrence in French sales 10 and from
seulement celle du Benedette dont il avoit
paru affecte; aussi cette maniere libertine those cited in Paris collections by Dezallier d'Argenville, 11
that there must
rentre-t-il assez dans celle de M. Boucher, have been a number of paintings by Castiglione to be seen in France in the
dont s'etoit rempli Deshays,
chercha jamais a se defaire."
et dont il ne
eighteenth-century — though how many of them were already present in
Mariette,
the first quarter of the century is less easy to establish. Nevertheless, it is
9. II, 1853-54, p. 132.
10. The listings in D. Wildenstein, 1982, probable that, since Boucher's original response was to the subject matter
p. 20, are by no means complete teste
rather than to themanner of Castiglione's paintings, his initial exposure to
the omission of the [Viallis] sales of 28
Dec. 78 1 et seq., which contained no
them was in the form of prints. There is an intriguing and little-known
1

less than eleven. wash drawing by Boucher, which is not only indebted to one of
11. Dezallier, 1752, pp. 22, yj, 211, 302; and Castiglione's most celebrated etchings, The Genius of Castiglione but also ,

'757> PP- 130. I

3I -

uses it to express his own artistic credo (fig. 40).

I2
Where Castiglione's
12. Lorck, 1967.
13. A& W 35; drawing recently acquired by slouching, dandified, and epicene youth is at the center of a Testa-like
the Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre; dream-confusion of nature and symbol, Boucher's less bizarre figure in the
exh. cat. 1984, Paris, Cabinet des Des-
same pose is confronted with the choice — like a kind of artistic Hercules
sins,

14. In a letter
no. 78.
of 13 Feb. 1727, Vleughels
at the Crossroads — between the Antique and Nature: the latter being
reported that Ricci had offered his ser- symbolized by sunrise over a Castiglionesque Marche to which cupids
vices as a mentor to students from the beckon him away.
French Academy in Rome sojourning in

Venice (Hercenberg, 1975, p. 16). Al-

From its style and subject, this drawing would appear to date from just
though Vleughels recommended against before Boucher went to Rome, or from his first few months there; the
acceptance, he probably still gave his absence of any identifiable piece of Antique sculpture rather suggests the
charges introductions to Ricci.
former. Whichever is the case, at this point Castiglione seems to have
15. Haskell, 1971, pp. 266-67, 3 12 -

16. J-R 1454.

represented for Boucher essentially the resort to nature for subject matter,
as embodied in the caravans of people and animals that he had already

introduced into the Separation of Laban from Jacob, La vie champetre 1

)

(cat. 9), or the two pictures of Noah painted for de Jullienne (cat. 10, 11).

It was only with extensive exposure to Castiglione's paintings them-

selves —aided, perhaps, by advice from Sebastiano Ricci in Venice 14 that —

Boucher transformed the actual way in which he painted. There would
certainly have been some paintings by Castiglione to be seen in Rome,
including in the Pamphilj collection, where we know that Boucher
studied, from the evidence of his drawings (fig. 37). It would, however,
probably have needed more than an isolated picture here or there to have
made an impression on him. Thanks above all to the final dissolution of
theMantuan ducal collections, considerable quantities of both paintings
and drawings by Castiglione were to be found in Venice, 15 and it was
surely there that he studied them. Their impact is particularly overwhelm-
ing in the pictures that would appear to have been painted for Derbais
immediately after Boucher's return to Paris, and in other pictures
evidently from this epoch, such as Putti Playing with Birds (cat. 15), or Le
repos deDiane (see cat. 14), which survives in mutilated form at
l6

Montlu^on.
Fig. 40.The Genius of the Artist Torn between
Nature and the Antique, wash drawing. What makes Boucher's development hard to establish even at this stage,
Whereabouts unknown. —
however before he had gotten into the habit of dating his works — is that

59
 he was prepared to try his hand at anything, before finding his winning
As Mariette said of him: "Boucher was born a painter; there are few
veins.
who surpass him in facility. One could say that he was born with a brush
in his hand."' 7

After mythologies and putti pictures of the kind that he painted for
Derbais, the field that beckoned most obviously was landscape. It was one
in which there were no distinguished practitioners, only uninspired
exponents of- the fag end of the Claudian and Poussinian traditions, such
as Domenchin de Chavannes and the third "Francisque" (Joseph-Francois

Millet), or history painters who made only the most occasional forays into
the genre, such as de Largilliere or Lemoine. Even a decade later Mariette
could complain of the dearth of practitioners of landscape throughout
Europe: "Our best Masters rarely devote themselves to this kind of study:
they regard the pieces of Landscape that they deign to chance to spend a
few moments on, as an amusement and distraction. ." l8 By that time, . .

—
Boucher himself must have been somewhat unjustly in Mariette s mind —
as one of these negligent "best Masters," while Oudry, despite Mariette's
admiration of him, was evidently simply left out of account, as by
avocation a practitioner of the inferior branch of animal painting.

17 Mariette, I, 1851-53, p. 165: "Boucher Nonetheless, Oudry had been keeping a sketchbook of landscape studies
est ne peintre; il en est peu qui le since 1714' 9 and had been painting landscapes from the 1720s, including his
surpassent en facilite. On peut dire qu'il
earliest-known in 1722 and a whole set for the marquis de Beringhen in
est ne le pinceau a la main."
i8 Gersaint, 1744, 198: "Rarement nos
1727."
p.

meilleurs Maitres s'appliqucnt-ils a cette It is it —

was Oudry who was certainly the leader of
very possible that
etude: ils ne regardent que comme un the sketching expeditions to Arcueil, and who procured the services of
&
amusement,
ceaux de Paysage, auxquels
un delaissement,
1 Is
les

veulent
mor-
Boucher as a designer of tapestries for Beauvais who encouraged —
bien par hazard passer quelques Boucher to employ French motifs in his landscapes (see cat. 34, 35). Yet
momens. . .
."
one should not forget either the likely lead that Boucher had been given in
'9 Exh. cat. 1982-83, Paris, nos. 22-25.
Rome by Vleughels, who had himself previously sketched motifs in
20. Opperman, 1977, I, pp. 65-66, and cat.
nos. P583-89. France, 2 or Watteau's advice to Lancret 22 and the stimulus afforded by his
'

21 Hercenberg, 1975, cat. no. 324, pp. studies of the stream of the Gobelins, the Bievre, some of which Boucher
152-53, and fig. 174; exh. cat. 1984, New had engraved, 2i and which inspired both Lemoine 24 and Boucher himself 25
York, P.M.L., no. 34.
22, Ballot de Sovot, 1873, 1 ^-
to use thesame motif in paintings.
P-
See J-R 43 - Nevertheless, it was not landscapes based upon picturesque locations
Bordeaux, 1985, pp. 56, 132. around Paris that Boucher began to paint after his return, but idealized
^5 [Trouard] sale, 22 Feb. ff. 1779, lot 33 —
probably the oval version of Les villageois
depictions of Italy. The earliest of these appear to have been "arranged"
a la peche that reappears in the [Morel] views of celebrated sites in Rome and its environs (e.g., cat. 16, 23); but
sale, 3 May ff. 1786, lot 154 (AA 627); these gave way to scenes that were entirely the product of Boucher's
and the Choiseul-Praslin sale, 18 Jan. ff.
imagination, combining the classical ruins of Rome with distant views of
1793, lot 168.
26. J-R 1033-1035. the Veneto, inspired (via Watteau) by the woodcuts of Campagnola (e.g.,
2-7- A& W 52. Le moineau apprivoise, fig. 100, 26 and Le pont de bois, fig. 41 27 ). One of
A & W doc. 224; see Watelet & Le-
the most distinctive features of both these kinds of idealized landscape was
vesque, sub voce.
*9- Papillon de La Ferte, 1776, II, p.
the contrastingly rustic character of the figures with which Boucher
657.
30. Sotheby's, London, 5 July 1984, lot 369; peopled them — variously employing reminiscences of Castiglionesque
now in a private collection in Germany. Marches (cat. 16), by Abraham Bloemaert that he
the figure studies
31 Cayeux sale, 8 Jan. ff. 1770, lot 50.
himself etched (cat. 23), and his own drawings from life. This combination
-

3^. [Dujarry] sale, 4-5 July 1783, lot 34.

33' A& W78. of idealized landscape and rustic protagonists was one that he was to take
34- See also A& W 76. over into his large decorative compositions of the second half of the
3J'
36.
Exh.
A&
cat. 1979, Paris, pp.

W 90, recently acquired by the

1 8/ff.
1730s — both in such large, ornamental paintings as those purported to
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. have come from the Hotel de Richelieu (see cat. 27) and in his first set of
37' J-R 542-549- tapestries for Beauvais, the so-called Fetes Italiennes (see cat. 86-89).

60
 Le pont de bois (oblong version).
Fig. 41.
Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.

This use of peasants as staffage in his landscapes dovetailed quite

naturally with pictures in which they were the focus of interest what —
Boucher's contemporaries referred to as bambocbades. 1 * This was a kind
of subject that he had painted before going to Italy and possibly while he
was there, if Papillon de La Ferte's reference to the "plusieurs tableaux
precieux, a la maniere des Flamands" 29 that he did in Rome can be
believed (see cat. 9, and Le repas champetre> z ). But when he returned,
such subjects were given a new scale and amplitude, thanks to the wide
Italianate landscapes in which they were set and the studies that he must
have made for each individual figure (e.g., cat. 23).
A related field with which Boucher experimented was that of genre
scenes in domestic interiors, in the Dutch tradition. However, although he
did make what sound like straight pastiches of Dutch pictures, such as
L'estaminet, in the "gout de Teniers,'^ or Le cabaret,* 1 Boucher's few
1

surviving pictures of the kind dwell with more involvement on their

protagonists, whether the setting be a kitchen (La belle cuisiniere, cat. 21;
and La belle village oise y>) or an artist's studio (cat. 22). u
was not a genre
It

in which Boucher persisted, and the reason for this may have been that
Chardin was extending his range into the same kind of subject matter in
these very years, '^ and that the latter could accommodate himself more
easily to the degree of finish expected by the potential Dutch-oriented
collectors of such works.
Despite the attention lavished on the details of the kitchen in La belle
cuisiniere, the focus of the scene is the amorous encounter. This was the
vein that Boucher also began to exploit in a series of half-length pictures
with more or less life-size protagonists (e.g., cat. 28), many of them oval
(e.g., the adult version of La marchande d'oeufs;* 6
De trois choses en ferez-
vous une?, and the four slightly later pictures engraved by
cat. 19;

Daulle,^ including one with the same title as the Hartford picture, fig.

Fig. 42.La Marchande d'Oeufs, engraved by

42). In these lay the germ of one of Boucher's most successful specialties,

Jean Daulle after a lost painting by Boucher. the pastoral — but of that anon.

61
 ;

In the same kind of format, he also painted three pictures of single

women of the leisured class in occupations characteristic of the Times of
Day. 58 One of these is apparently dated 1734 39 another may only have
existed in the form of a grisaille that Count Tessin sent back to Sweden in

1741, which has since disappeared, 40 although a related oval picture exists 41
that may also have belonged to Tessin (fig. 43);
42 while the third is known
only from Petit's engraving. 45 These herald more elaborate pictures of
similar subjects, for which the obvious paragons are the paintings of
socially more elevated protagonists by J-F. de Troy: Le dejeuner (cat. 33)
of 1739, Woman Fastening Her Garter, with Her Maid (cat. 38) of 1742,
and The Milliner (cat. 51) of 1746, the only picture to be executed from
another projected Times of Day for Crown Princess Lovisa
set of the

Ulrica of Sweden. The exquisite quality of all three pictures sometimes

makes it seem as if Boucher, in failing to complete the set or to paint any
Fig. 43. Woman Applying a Mouche. Formerly
in the collection of Count Carl Gustaf Tessin(?), further pictures of the kind, betrayed his own gifts, but from the new
currently on the London art market. evidence of Scheffer's letters (see cat. 51) it would appear instead that it
was around this epoch that the deficiencies in his eyesight first began to
manifest themselves, and that these consisted not only of a loss of
discrimination toward the red end of the spectrum, 44 but of a blurring of
vision that made minute finishing difficult as well. A possible explanation
for this is that Boucher may have suffered from a progressive cataract. 4 '

The remarkable versatility evident in Boucher's ability to master these

diverse branches of painting, not to mention all the other expertises that
he deployed in an ancillary capacity, is suggested by the enumeration of
his gifts, additional to those of a history painter, set out in the list of
Academicians prepared for the Direction des Batiments in 1745 : "he excels
likewise in landscape, in bambochades, and in grotesques and ornament in

the style of Watteau. He is equally competent in doing flowers, fruit,

animals, architecture, little galant and society subjects, etc." 46 This makes
38. J-R 1456-1458-
A& W 113.
two of the major and most profitable branches
his initial failure to tackle
39.
40. Sander, 1872, p. 57, no. 88 and p. 63. of his art, altarpieces and portraiture, all the more conspicuous. The
41. London art market; exh. cat. 1980, avoidance of portraiture may be accounted for by his acknowledged
London, Agnew's, no. 28.
difficulty in capturing a likeness, 47 and by the fact that there was no dearth
42. See Granberg, II, 1930, p. 238; Sander,
1872, p. 66. Tessin's posthumous in- of specialists in the field. What is more, as the career of a Nattier or a J-B.
ventory and sale contain a picture, which Vanloo tended to demonstrate, once designated as a portrait painter, one
does not appear in the bills of lading of
became chained to that specialty. The failure to paint altarpieces, or any of
1741/42, showing: "The bust of a
woman, sitting in a chair, fastening her
the other large paintings required by religious institutions, is more
eyes on the portrait of a. man that she difficult to account for, particularly in view of Boucher's professed search
holds in her hands, painted by Boucher."
for opportunities to paint on a large scale. 48
But for the exact direction of her gaze,
this corresponds with the picture ex-
The problem may partly have been artistic, in that another of Boucher's
hibited in 1980. acknowledged difficulties was in creating plausible male physiognomies
43. J-R 1456. and in making them emotionally convincing. Yet the two Exotic Hunts
44. Galerie Franqoise, 1771, p.
45. Trevor- Roper, 1970, pp. 86-91.
5.
(cat. 29, 32) surely demonstrate that he could — even if with a certain sense

46. A& W doc. 244: "il excelle aussi au of strain — rise to the occasion. It needs to be considered whether factors
Paisage, aux Bambochades, aux gro- of personality and attitude were not also involved (we know, for instance,
tesques et
Vateau. II
ornemens dans le gout de
fait egalement bien les fleurs,
from Mannlich 49 that Boucher was a Freemason) which raises the elusive —
les fruits, les animaux, ['architecture, les question: what kind of a man was Boucher?
petits sujets galants et de mode &c." For a painter who achieved such eminence, we have extraordinarily little
47. Pompadour, 1878, p. 50; Cochin, 1880,
evidence of Boucher's nonartistic life and character. The obituaries and
p. 81.

48. Mariette, I, 1851-53, 165.

brief biographies written about him say very little about the man (his life
p.

49. Stollreither, 1910, p. 232. could not even supply any matter to the Anecdotes des Beaux-Arts

62
 compiled by Nougaret and Leprince); we have barely any letters by him;
and the references to him in the letters and memoirs of others are few and
ambiguous. It is scarcely surprising that the nineteenth century fell back
—
on sheer invention most preposterously in "The Story of Rosina,"
which Arsene Houssaye related as if it were attested fact, but appears
simply to have made up 5C —
or that invention should have taken its cue
from the subject matter of Boucher's art.
The simplistic attempts of moralists to deduce Boucher's character from
his works, which began in the eighteenth century with Diderot: "And

50. Houssaye, 1845, pp. 414-26; put into what can a man who spends his life among prostitutes of the lowest sort
verseby Dobson, 1873. See below in text have in his imagination?"; 51 and Marmontel: "he had seen the Graces in
and note 56 for evidence of the politically
no good place; he painted Venus and the Virgin from the nymphs of the
inspired vilification of Boucher's name
that occurred in the Revolution.
boards; and his language, just like his pictures, smacked of the morals of
51. Diderot, Salon de 1765, II, 1979, p. 75: his models and the tone of his studio" 52 —
by which they in fact intended
"Et que peut avoir dans l'imagination un nothing worse than consorting with actresses and singers (many of whom
homme qui passe sa vie avec les pro-
stitueesdu plus bas etage?"
did, of course, have more conspicuous careers as courtesans) plumbed —
52. Marmontel, 1972, I, p. 168: "il n'avoit virulent depths in the early years of the nineteenth century: "As a man,
pas vu les graces en bon lieu; il peignoit and as a painter, Francois Boucher is the very image of his century. The
Venus et la Vierge d'apres les nvmphes de
depravity of his morals, the decadence of his taste, the artificiality of his
coulisses; et son langage se ressentoit,
ainsi que moeurs de ses
ses tableaux, des palette, the speciousness of his compositions, the affected character of his
modeles du ton de son atelier."
et heads, his draftsmanship, and his expressions, all followed step by step the
53. Soyer, 1834: "Francois Boucher offre,
licentious and degenerate course of society under the Regence and the
comme homme et comme peintre, l'image
de son siecle. La depravation de ses
reign of Louis XV""
moeurs, la decadence de son gout, la The picture is palpably overdrawn. Boucher remained married to his
factice de sa couleur, le pretentieux de ses wife, without any separation des biens, or any scandal such as afflicted the
compositions, la mignardise de ses carac-
teres de tete, son dessin, ses expressions,
menage of the unfortunate Greuze (nor can I find an authentic source for
ont suivi pas a pas la marche hcencieuse et his supposed statement when getting married, that he was doing so despite
devergondee de la societe sous la regence the fact that "le manage ne fut pas dans ses habitudes" 54 ). The letters to
et le regne de Louis XV"
Favart in 1748 suggest that the couple worked in close harmony with one
54. Houssaye, 1845, p. 429 who even —
makes his wife Marie Perdrigeon, the another. They brought up their son and two daughters without any of
Mme Boucher painted as a vestal bv them turning to the bad, and married each of the latter to one of his
Raoux, and kills her off at twenty-four.
pupils, rather than to any of the rich partis apparently proffered by Mme
55. Mariette, II, 1853-54, p. 96; and I,

1851-53, p. 85.
de Pompadour. Mariette specifically says of his two sons-in-law that
56. Mere, 1806, I, pp. 73-78. This bizarre Deshays was "sincerely attached to him," while Baudouin "adored"
tale presents Boucher as the man who, him. 55 No specific scandal or liaison ever attached itself to his name, other
overcome by the duchess's near nudity
when posing for him as Hebe, first set
than the patently fabricated story of his seduction of the nymphomaniac
her on the path of infidelitv to her duchesse de Chartres. 56 Even the account of his having compromised
husband. This is typical of the stories, himself to the extent of having painted a set of erotic pictures to stimulate
invented to discredit the Ancien Regime
(or, in this case, the house of Orleans),
the jaded sensibilities of Louis XV seems to have been another nineteenth-
rather than Boucher himself in the first
century fabrication (the story is supposed originally to have been set down
instance, that circulated during the Revo- by Thore, according to Charles Blanc, ^ but I have failed to find where).
lution. A much viler story depicting "Le That Boucher was pleasure loving, on the other hand, there can be little
barbare Boucher" as a pimp for Louis XV
employed by Mme de Pompadour, "un
doubt. There is first of all the evidence of the spirited pastel by his friend
des proxenetes en sous-ordre qui Lundberg (fig. 53), which, since it was one of the pastel painter's
peuploient le Parc-aux-Cerfs," is to be morceaux de reception presented to the Academy, must surely reflect an
found Fantin-Desodoards, 1796, II, pp.
in
image of himself that Boucher was happy to have projected. Then there
214-16; whence it was picked up and
given wider circulation by Fiorillo, III, are the little indications to be gleaned from the comments of others: his
1805, pp. 369-70. friendship with the pleasure-loving Tocque, 5S and Natoire's ironic enquiry
57. Blanc, 185 1, p. ic.

Fontenai, 1776,
after his friends and acquaintances from Rome in 1754: "And Boucher, is
58. II, pp. 639, 640.
59. Mantz, 1852-53, p. 289: "Et Boucher he behaving himself?" 59 Or there is Carl Fredrik Scheffer, failing to
e[s]t-il bien raisonnable?" account for yet a further delay in Boucher's production of The Milliner

63
 since: "I have no supporting evidence to allege but Boucher's libertinage
[the word did not then necessarily carry the freight of moral condemna-
tion that it does today], which has to be seen to be believed. . . . Boucher
60
never renounces his pleasures for one [client] or the next." In support of
this, there is Mme de Pompadour's droll letter to the comte d'Argenson,
of about 1750, depicting Boucher's despair at having his entrees to the
Opera withdrawn, and fearing that the consequence would be crippled,
one-eyed nymphs in the pictures that he was painting for Bellevue. 61
There is also the implied complicity in carnal pleasures, in Petit de
Bachaumont's aside upon recommendation for the eighth picture in the
his

set of tapestries of the Story of Psyche, Psyche whipped by the Nymphs in

the presence of Venus: "Quelle croupe &c &0" 62 The same document is
one of a number to suggest that Mme Boucher was far from being a
stranger to her husband's pleasures, or to his fellow sybarites: "Happy
Apelles, to have a living Psyche at home, out of whom you can make a
Venus when you please, etc., etc. . . The best thing
. to do is to read and
reread La Fontaine's Psyche, but above all to look long at Mme Boucher."
("Heureux Apelle, qui avis une Psiche vivante ches vous, de laquelle vous
pouves faire une Venus quand il vous plaira, et Cetera, et Cetera. Ce . . .

qu'il y a de mieux a faire, c'est de lire et relire la Psiche de la Fontaine, et

surtout hien regarder Mad e
. Boucher.") The fact that de Bachaumont could
write like this to Boucher about his wife sugge>sts that the painter took
pleasure in the effect of her attractions upon his friends, while possessing
such complete confidence in her as not to be aroused to jealousy. The
same attitude is suggested in one of the only two at all lengthy letters
emanating from Boucher himself, to Favart in Brussels in 1748, about their
mutual friend, the abbe de la Garde, which is all the more piquant in that

he was apparently using his wife as his scribe: "He is now a courtier . . .

he has left off his abbe's habit and now wears a wig, has a full purse, and is

quite the gay dog. The ladies will lose their heads over him, and I am not
without some anxiety for Mme Boucher." 6 '
We can be sure that he looked
on Count Tessin's evident susceptibility to his wife's charms with the same
amused eye. That he was justified in his confidence in her is borne out by
the testimony of Christian IV of Zweibriicken, who, seeing his protege
Mannlich struck by her enduring beauty at the age of forty, told him:
"You should have seen her twenty years ago, my dear Mannlich: she was
then not just the most beautiful woman in Paris, but in the whole of
France . but she was as virtuous as she was beautiful, and she made
. .

herself generally loved and esteemed." 64

Mannlich was not slow to spin a lubricious story if there was one to tell,

but he has nothing to say of any amorous escapades on Boucher's part,

not even with his favorite model (whom Mannlich himself claims to have
seduced). It is Boucher was by then in his sixties, but there is not
true that
even a hint that he was a reformed rake. Indeed, what Mannlich says of
him is that he was "full of imagination, wit, gaiety, and of utter probity." 65
Elsewhere he refers to him as "cet homme aimable," with the affection
that all his pupils seem to have felt, and not only they, since Cochin wrote
to an unknown correspondent at Blois in 1769: "You are like Mr. Boucher,
who has effortlessly performed fine actions throughout his life: such are
the truly great masters." 66
Boucher was apparently convivial then, but with whom? In the latter

64
 part of his was apparently with his clients and the collectors of
life it his

work, the majority of whom were from the class of financiers and
fermiers-generaux, including Mme de Pompadour herself. What effect

their patronage and hers had on the evolution of the subject matter of his

art is worth more widely ranging consideration than that

a topic well
based on Boucher's works alone, and does not belong here.
Were one to judge from Marmontel's disapproving comments on the
tone of Boucher s conversation at Mme Geoffrin's (see above), Boucher
had spent his life up until then in the company of his fellow artists and of
the actresses, singers, and dancers that he took as his models. The truth is
60. Scheffer, 1982, pp. 124-25: "[je] n'ai potentiallymore interesting, in that he may have acquired a frank and
d'autres pieces justificatives a produire
uninhibited way of speaking in company, from the more intellectually
que le libertinage de Boucher, dont il faut
etre temoin pour le croire. . . . Boucher
stimulating circles in which it is possible that he moved in his younger
days. 67
ne cede jamais ni aux uns ni aux autres ses

plaisirs." What is potentially the key passage occurs in a short piece of

61. Argenson, 1922, p. 287; I am indebted to
reminiscence by Pierre Laujon, exploring the origin, dissolution, and
John Rogister for this reference.

62. A& Wdoc. 130. successors of the "diners du Caveau." 68 These took their name from their
63. Exh. cat. 1964, Paris, Cailleux, no. 88A; location, the cellar of the cabaret run by the traiteur Landelle, in the rue
A& W doc. 343: "C'est un homme de
de Buci (significantly, this also housed the first Masonic lodge in Paris; as
cour a present . . . il a quitte [l'habit]
d'abee, il est actuelement en peruque, en we have seen from Mannlich's Memoires, 69 Boucher was a Freemason). In
bourse, et en cavalier fort leste. Les this met every Sunday from the early 1730s to around 1739, at their
femmes en vont perdre ne
la tete, et je
common expense, a group, composed chiefly of writers. The distinguish-
suis pas sans inquietudes pour madame
ing note of these gatherings was lively and uninhibited conversation,
Boucher." This portion of the letter was
reproduced in the Isographie in 1828-30, seasoned with songs and epigrammatic duels, and stimulated by copious
when it was still in the possession of drafts of wine. Bores and merely social figures were — the pressures
until
Favart's descendant.
letters written by
It

Mme Boucher on
and two other
her
that contributed to the dissolution of the institution — excluded. The
husband's behalf were later in the collec- founder-members were three, or possibly four: Piron, Colle, Gallet, and
tions of Benjamin Fillon (Charavay, 1879, Crebillon /z/s. Laujon lists as other occasional or regular participants
II, p. 223) and Alfred Morrison
(though he extends the life of Le Caveau some years beyond 1739):
(Thibaudeau, 1883, I, pp. 104-05) before
being ultimately acquired by Frits Lugt Fuselier, Saurin pere and fils, Salle, Crebillon pere, Duclos, La Bruere,
and placed in the Institut Neerlandais in Gentil Bernard, Moncrif, Helvetius, Rameau, and Boucher. He goes on to
Paris.
claim that Boucher frequently brought his drawings to these gatherings,
64. Mannlich, 1948, p. 73.

65. Mannlich, 1948, p. 215: "plein de genie,

which sometimes sparked off the idea for a song, and which on one
d'esprit, de gaiete, et d'une probite a occasion, when he brought his designs for Count Tessin s self-suppressed
toute epreuve." conte called Faunillane, supplied Duclos with the basis for his novella
66. Furcy-Raynaud, 1904, p. 176: "Vous etes
called Acajou et Zirphile.
comme M. Boucher, qui a toute sa vie fait

des belles choses sans peine; tels sont les The problem with this engaging picture is that Laujon appears to be
grands maitres." alone in making Boucher a member of the circle. He is not mentioned in
67. Jean-Augustin Jullien des Boulmiers,
either the more authoritative-sounding account in Rigoley de Juvigny's
himself significantly a historian of the y

theater, has a brief allusion to Boucher's Vie d Alexis Piron, 70 or in Saurin's poetic reminiscence of it in his Epitre a
moving in literary circles in his obituary mon vieil ami, M. Colle, 71 which concur in the inclusion of Piron himself,
in the Mercure. After noting that he
Colle, Crebillon fils, Gentil Bernard, and La Bruere, and in the addition
possessed "natural wit and a penchant for
gaiety," he goes on to say "he was fond of
of the singer Jelyotte, but otherwise diverge both from one another and
literature, and enjoyed the company of 'from the list of participants given by Laujon. Such is in the nature of
those who cultivate it" ("// avoit de things with so shifting an institution as a dining club. What gives greater
I'esprit natural & du penchant a la gaiete

aimoit
pause for thought is that the list in the Vie d Alexis Piron, which uses
. . . il les lettres, se plaisoit avec
ceux qui les cultivent ..." [Desboulmiers, sobriquets to list the participants in the text, only identifying the bearers
1770, pp. 188-89] )• ofthem in footnotes, uses one for the poet Gentil Bernard that suggests
68. Laujon, 181 1, IV, p. 226-27.
what it might have been that prompted Laujon to suppose that Boucher
69. Stollreither, 1910, p. 232.

70. Piron, 1776, I, pp. 77-82.

had been a member of these gatherings (it is true that Laujon claimed to
71. Saurin, 1783, II, pp. 193-98. derive his information from word of mouth, from attendance at successor

65
 —

Figs. 44 and 45. Plates facing pages 60 and 82,

etched by P-Q. Chedel after drawings bv
Boucher for Count Tessin's Faunillane (1741).
Reproduced from a copy of Duclos's Acajou et
Zirphile (1744) in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. New York.

72. We know that Boucher in his youth

dining clubs to Le Caveau, but garbled memories of other accounts,
belonged to "a conversazione of painters,
in which each is bound to pav his way bv seasoned with fantasy, may also have been involved).
contributing a drawing," from a letter of Piron gives Gentil Bernard a sobriquet that he bore elsewhere as well
Marietta's to Gabburri of Dec. 1752
i

and it may indeed well have been that it was later transferred from the
(Bottari, II, 1757, p. 300).

73. Piron, 1776, Epitres, VI.

word-painting poet to the artist: "the painter of Love and the Graces" ("le
-
4 .
J-R 876, 877. Peintre de VAmour et des Graces"). Although Laujon includes Gentil
Montaiglon, 1858-60.
75. Bernard Boucher
as well as as members of the Caveau, it would have been
76. Duclos, 1806, I, p. 4.

77. Duclos, 1806, X, p. 36c; unfortunately,

all too easy for him to have at some point assumed that the sobriquet

he does not name the subject, and no referred to the painter rather than the poet, and thus to have added the
Boucher appears in Du Tartre's posthu- former. Reminiscences of the diners de Vaudeville, which Vincent drew
at
mous sale on 19 Mar. ff. 1804.
his fellow guests, and of a dining club of artists themselves, at which they
78. Honour, 1961, pi. 34. Tessin had this
blown up into part of a trompe
trade card set to, to make drawings on a given theme, may have done the rest. 72
l'oeil decoration painted by O. Fridsberg Piron himself would appear to have been a friend of Boucher's, on the
in his wife's cabinet at Akero, and there is
evidence of the poetic petition that he drew up on behalf of Boucher for
a charming watercolor bv the artist show-
ing her sitting there (Leijonhufvud, II,
lodgings in the Louvre in 1746 and the two frontispieces designed by the
'

'933' P- 53 ancl fronds.). It was also latter for his works in 1744." 4 Otherwise, the only part of Laujon's
adapted to form the title pages to Du- account for which we have corroboration is that concerning Duclos and
vaux, 1873.
the composition of Acajou et Zirphile. Well known is the story, inserted
79. Chennevieres, 1887.
80. Cochin, 1S80, p. 81. into a copy of the book from Voyer de Paulmy's library in the
81. Lespinasse, 1929, p. 9.
Bibliotheque d'Arsenal, that Count Tessin invited Boucher to illustrate his
82. See Thibaudeau, I, 1883, pp. 104-05;
original fairy tale, Faunillane, ou L'Infante Jaune (1741), as a pretext for
A& W doc. 343; the letter from a
"chevalier Boucher" to Favart, frequently seeing Boucher's wife. According to Laujon's account, Tessin
75

Thibaudeau, I, 1883, pp. 104-05, and originally wrote it in order to shine in the salon of Mme de Tencin, and
A & W doc. 784, is clearly from an al-
was on the point of having it handsomely published by Prault when he
together different correspondent.
83. Favart. 1808, II, p. 387, 396.
was recalled to Sweden. Thinking its publication might give him a
84. Manuscrit trouve a la Bastille, 1868. reputation for frivolity at home, he had no more than two copies printed,

66
 " ;

took them and the manuscript back to Sweden, but left the plates with
Prault, who got Duclos to write a new story around them. The version
given in L. S. Auger's Notice sur Duclos involves Boucher more directly,
since this says that Tessin left the artist both his drawings and the plates,
and that the latter turned to Duclos for advice over what to do with
them. 76 Duclos showed them to his regular dining companions, who
included the comte de Caylus, de Surgeres, and Voisenon, and they each
set to find some story that would make sense of the bizarre illustrations.
Duclos's was voted the best, and it was his that was then published with
Boucher's illustrations as Acajou et Zirphile (1744).

This story has the merit of connecting Boucher with another convivial
du Bout du Banc (for which, see also
society of litterateurs, the Societe
Voisenon's Anecdotes Litteraires), with which Boucher is associated by
other evidence. Duclos himself owned a picture by Boucher that evidently
had some special significance for him, since he singled it out alone for
mention when leaving his pictures and prints to Du Tartre de Bour-
donne. 77 Caylus was associated with Boucher in a number of ways, even
though his antiquarianism can scarcely have found an echoing chord in the
artist. Boucher designed, and Caylus etched, Gersaint's new trade card,

A la Pagode, in 1740 (fig. 46)

78 Caylus is thought to have been the
anonymous correspondent whom
Lenormant de Tournehem turned for
to
advice about Boucher's sketches for the two overdoors for the chambre du
Roi at Marly; 79 and that Boucher took care to cultivate him precisely
because of his influence as an artistic adviser we know from Boucher's
advice to Cochin to do the same, 80 and from his presentation of Roslin to
the count. 81
Duclos's Acajou was turned into a very successful opera comique by
Charles-Simon Favart same year as the conte was published (1744).
in the
With Favart we arrive not only at one of the few people of whose
friendship with Boucher we can be certain, but also at one whose
influence upon him is palpable. The evidence for Boucher's friendship
with Favart resides in a handful of letters not only in a group of them —
(now in the Institut Neerlandais in Paris) written by his wife to Favart on
» ' \ 1'AI.OPV
&£& his behalf in 1748, S2 but also in the mentions of him as "notre ami

Boucher" in two letters to Favart from the partial subject of his own, the
abbe de la Garde. 8 3 All these letters concern the theater. The first

reference, in a letter from the abbe de June 1746, is to la Garde of 3

Boucher's intention of going to see the spectacle at Versailles, where the
abbe was to be appointed costume designer in 1748, and ultimately
organisateur des fetes particulieres to the king. The reference in the abbe's
other letter, of 3 main topic of the letters from
April 1748, is to the
Boucher and his wife of the same year. These were all addressed to Favart
in Brussels, where —
after the closure of the Theatre de la Foire in Paris in

1745 —
his troupe was playing under the protection of the marechal de
Saxe, "protection" that ultimately turned into the opposite when the
marechal, infatuated with Mme Favart, abducted her and incarcerated her
husband. 84 At this stage, although the marechaVs inclinations had
evidently already become apparent, relations between the Favart and
himself were still good, and the Favart had commissioned Boucher to
Fig. 46. A la Pagode, trade card of Edme-
Francois Gersaint (1740), etched by the comte design and have engraved frontispieces for the plays that they were putting
de Caylus after Boucher. on before the marechal and his troops for presentation to their patron.

67
 The plays in question were the Nymphes de Diane, for which Boucher's
design was so free that had to be redrawn by Cochin before it could be
it

engraved by Chedel, and Cythere assiegee, for which Boucher designed

s
* a

frontispiece depicting Rinaldo and Armida, alluding to the marechaW

86
infatuation (fig. 47).

The chief topic of the three letters from Boucher to Favart concerns the
designs and engravings for these plays, but it is in the last of them, of
17 August 17*48, that the badinage about the abbe de la Garde and Mme
S:"

Boucher also occurs. Further evidence of the friendly relations between

Boucher and the Favart is the landscape, described in the de Sireul sale as
"une de ses plus brillantes productions," s that Boucher apparently
painted for Mme Favart this same year (1748), and two further
frontispieces for Favart's plays, engraved by Le Bas and published in 1755,
both depicting Mme Favart in the title roles: of Le Caprice Amoureux ou
Ninette a la Cour*"> and La Bohemienne (fig. 48). 9 °
The evidence of Boucher's close association with Favart in supplying
Fig. 47. Rinaldo and Armida, engraved by illustrations for his plays is particularly valuable, because it provides
Ingram and Cochin after Boucher, as a frontis-

piece to C-S. Favart's Cythere assiegee (1748).

additional underpinning — if any were needed — for the indebtedness of
Boucher's pictures to the innovations that Favart made upon the stage. For
Boucher's single most influential contribution to French eighteenth-
century painting was the painted pastoral
— "un genre, dont M.
Boucher
est le createur" 9 '

—
for which his inspiration was drawn, above all, from
the Theatre de la Foire. 92 This, in turn, had been transformed by Favart,
as Voltaire acknowledged, y since it was he who refined the coarse popular
5

entertainments generally given there by his introduction of pieces

revolving around the naive emotions of country folk: "From the first

Fig. 48. Left, Mme Favart in the Title Role of

"La Bohemienne," frontispiece engraved by
J-P. Le Bas after Boucher (1755); right, Mme
Favart in the Title Role of "Le Caprice
Amoureux ou Ninette a la Cour," frontispiece
engraved by J-P. Le Bas after Boucher (1754

68
 M. Favart 's pieces revealed his penchant for Feeling — and that is really the
kind of thing that he introduced onto a stage where previously virtually
no manifestation of it had been shown." 9 -*

The painted pastoral was not a new invention; it already had a long
history in Holland; Boucher's frequent exemplar, Abraham Bloemaert,
was even the first Utrecht artist to paint a full-length shepherd piece in a
landscape setting. 95 Nor was the painted pastoral unrepresented in
France —Jacques Stella, for instance, painted a number of idealized
depictions of the simplicity of rural life that were engraved by his
neice. Most painted pastorals in France, however, were indebted to the
mainstream tradition of the literary pastoral — to Guarini's 77 Pastor Fido,
to the rustic passages of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, or to Honore d'Urfe's
85.
86.
Jombert, 1770,
Jombert, 1770, no. 174; J-R 524-527.
p. 67, no. 173.
Astree — and, whatever their source, dressed their protagonists in the

87. A & W
doc. 343; last page reproduced in elaborate costumes of the stage or the fete galante. Such was the practice of
facsimile, Isographie, I, 1828-30 (see note Boucher's closest predecessor in the genre, Lancret, and of Boucher
63).
himself in his earliest essays of the kind. 96 These were Le pasteur galant
88. 3 Dec. ff. 1781, lot 23; A& W 317.
89. J-R 1349-1350.
and Le pasteur complaisant (cat. 30, 31), which he painted as overdoors for
90. J-R 1351. the Hotel de Soubise around 1738/39.
91. Le Blanc, 1753, p. 18.
In these two pictures Boucher for the first time reduced his protagonists
92. The only person who ever appears to
have seized this vital point, before Gisela to the amorous shepherd couple of the classic tradition (with a peeping
Zick's seminal article (1965), is Henry torn in Le pasteur galant) from the more miscellaneous participants and
Lemonnier (1912). detail of his previous, merely rustic scenes, such as La vie champetre or
93. Albert, 1900, p. 178.
the large, decorative pictures purportedly from the Hotel de Richelieu (see
94. Favart, 1763, I, p. ix: "Les premieres
Pieces de M. Favart deceloient deja son cat. 27). Their dress, however, still represents a compromise, with the
gout pour le Sentiment, & c'est la propre- barefoot shepherdess in Le pasteur complaisant in a loose approximation
ment le genre qu'il a introduit dans un
of rustic attire, whereas the other figures are bedecked with rich stuffs,
Spectacle ou Ton n'en voyoit presque
aucune trace." The abbe Le Blanc (1753, cloaks, sashes, scarves, and silk stockings, more appropriate to the fete
p. 18), while crediting Fontenelle with galante, or to the "habits de paysan" of the stage. 97
introducing "a new species of Shepherds,
The action of Le pasteur complaisant belongs to the old tradition of
notable for the gallantry and delicacy of
their sentiments" into the literary pas-
equivocal play with the notions of birds and cages as not very veiled
toral, praised Boucher for adding "that allusions to sexual organs and was employed by Boucher
virginity, 98 and it

precious simplicity and naivete not always

in two of his oval half-lengths of the 1730s: in Le Marchand d'Oiseaux
possessed by those of M. de Fontenelle."
By 1 79 1, however (Watelet & Levesque,
engraved by Daulle, 99 and in another picture of which there is a
II, p. 138), they were being dismissed as photograph, without any details, in the Witt Library (fig. 103), and of
"lovers . . . who are incapable of declar- which a rectangular copy was sold at Christie's East, New York, in
ing their love." IO °
1984. Le pasteur galant is, by contrast, a true pastoral, with both
95. Kettering, 1983, p. 85, fig. 108.
96. Although one of his early bambochades, delicate sentiment and rural simplicity suggested by the shepherd
A& W 54, already has the sentimental encircling his shepherdess with wild flowers beside a fountain. The
overtones of the true pastoral, and the
presence of the peeping torn, however, suggests the intrusion of some
engraving after it was published with that
title by Huquier 1736 (J-R 1089). A yet
in
narrative element, a triangular situation akin to that in Favart's Vallee de
earlier painting with many of the charac- Montmorency. This had not yet been written by the time of Le pasteur
teristics of the pastoral is the Shepherd
galant, but it remains possible that the situation derives from one of the
and the Grape Picker Exchanging Toasts
early pieces that Favart wrote for the Theatre de la Foire between 1734 and
in the Hermitage (Ermitazh, 1976, no.
1275, p. 187, fig. 14). La chercheuse d'esprit in 1741, before which he neither acknowledged his
97. See exh. cat. 1984, Paris, esp. pp. 523-24. authorship of them nor had them printed. What it does not suggest is any
98. See exh. cat. 1978, Braunschweig, nos.
connection with Fontenelle, with whose name Boucher s was constantly to
2 3' 37-

99. J-R 544.

be linked after his establishment of the pastoral as a settled genre. In view
100. 23 Mar. 1984, lot 136; see A&W 88. of the fact that Boucher does not seem to have painted anything further of
101. J-R 571-572; probably cut down to make
the kind until 1743, with the probable exception of the uncertainly datable
a pendant to Le nid (fig. 50), and
identifiable with the painting now in the
Les charmes de la vie champetre (fig. 49),
1QI
which has a more rustic
Louvre, A& W 147, 148. equivalent in the composition engraved by F. A. Aveline and published by

69
 —

f4rv

4*
Fig. 49. Les
Musee du Louvre,
$83

charmes de
Paris.
la vie
z&j®*Kjsii3

champetre.
y ^y

Huquier in December 1742, ,02 it would seem possible that the choice of
theme was dictated by prince Hercule-Meriadec or his advisers, rather
than chosen by Boucher himself, just as the subjects of the mythological
overdoors would have been. That Boucher's innovation with this pair of
pastorals met with an immediate and enduring response is suggested not
only by the engravings after them by Andre Laurent that Huquier
published in 1742, but also by the numerous copies that these in turn gave
rise to, particularly in porcelain (cat. 30, 31, 97).

The Boucher painted in 1743 a P a r °f ovals engraved by

pastorals that ^

Daulle as La Musique Pastorale and Les Amusemens de la Campagne'°>

and an oblong picture of La bergere endormie 10 * may also have been —
painted at the behest of the client, the marquis de Beringhen, who would
appear, from his patronage of Oudry, not only to have had clear ideas as
to his requirements, but also to have favored rural subjects.' * It is

commissioned three overdoors of Sujets

certainly significant that he also
champetres from Lancret. 106 The dress of the protagonists in the Bouchers
is still something of a compromise, in that although all the protagonists are

now barefoot and in loose dress without hoops or stays (so loose in La
Musique Pastorale, indeed, that the drapery and pose of the shepherdess
make her almost indistinguishable from the Callisto in the Jupiter and
Callisto in the Pushkin Museum 107 ), the stuffs are of an impossible cut and
richness for real peasants. The action of netting birds in the latter
introduces echoes of the equivocal meaning of La Marchande d'Oiseaux,
and it could be argued that the flutes in La Musique Pastorale carry the
108
same kind of association. There is even a pair of versions (private coll.,

New York) in which, in La Musique Pastorale, the shepherd is holding

two one must belong to the shepherdess, and he is either trying
flutes: it

out or giving her a lesson. A flute lesson was one of the most popular
scenes of Favart's Vallee de Montmorency, with the shepherd doing the
fingering while the shepherdess blows, but even the first redaction of this,
as Les vendanges de Tempe, was not to be performed until 1745. '° 9
Both the brothers Parfaict in their Dictionnaire des Theatres de Paris' 10
and A-P-C. Favart in his memoir of his grandfather " agree that Boucher 1

7°
 —

Fig. 50. Le nid. Musee du Louvre, Pans.

derived the inspiration for a number of his pictures from the Vallee de
Montmorency, or from its original redaction as Les vendanges de Tempe;
what does not seem to have been given consideration is that, since Favart
and Boucher were friends, the inspiration may have been in part reciprocal
(particularly when one considers that this piece began life as a wordless
pantomine). After the enormous success of Les vendanges de Tempe in
1745, however, it was clearly Boucher who was the debtor. Not only did
he pluck the subjects of a number of pictures, including Pensent-ils au
raisin? (cat. 53), from the pantomime, but it also seems probable that he
derived from these performances in the Theatre de la Foire a further
impulse toward greater naturalism in the dress of his shepherds and
shepherdesses. This was never to be completely realistic, any more than it

was on the stage, but it is surely significant that in his obituary of his wife
in 1772 Favart wrote: "She was the first to dress in character; she took the
102. J-R 197.
known.
bold step of putting truth to life before personal adornment. Prior to this,
103. J-R 554-557; various replicas
104. A& W 260; Louvre, Paris. actresses playing maidservants or rustics appeared in great hooped skirts,
105. See Opperman, 1977, p. 43; exh. cat. their heads sparkling with diamonds, and gloved up to the elbow. In
1982-83, Paris, pp. 75, no.
Bastienne she wore a woolen dress such as countryfolk do, straight hair, a
106. Georges Wildenstein, 1924, p. 42.

107. A& W267. plain gold cross, bare arms, and clogs." 1 ' 2
So she appears in Daulle's
108. See exh. cat. 1978, Braunschweig, engraving after the lost picture of her in the role by Carle Vanloo."} None
nos. 3, 7.
of the shepherdesses in Boucher's paintings is quite so realistic, and
109. See Parfaict, 1756, VI, p. 69; Zick, 1965.
no. Parfaict, 1756, VI, p. 70. Bastien et Bastienne was anyway not put on until 1753, but the transition
in. Favart, 1808, I, p. xxi. to this kind of realism on the stage was no doubt a gradual one
112. Favart, 1808, I, p- lxxvii: "Ce fut elle qui,
interestingly, it was one being pursued at a more exalted theatrical level by
la premiere, observa
sacrifier les agremens de
la costume;
la
elle

figure a la
osa
their mutual friend, the abbe de la Garde —
and Boucher was hardly going
verite des caracteres. Avant elle, les to want to hobble himself with clogs when he could with equal legitimacy
actrices qui representoient des soubrettes, depict bare feet.
des paysannes, paroissoient avec de
grands panniers, la tete surcharged de
The fact that Boucher was not aiming at a depiction of actual rustics, as
diamans, et gantees jusqu'au coude. Dans he was to a greater degree in his youth, but at a reflection of the
Bastienne elle mit un habit de laine, tel protagonists of the sentimental dramas of the Theatre de la Foire, helps to
que les villageoises le porte; une chevelure
account both for the popularity of his pastorals own day, and for the
in his
plate, une simple croix d'or, les bras nus
et des sabots." discredit into which they have fallen since. Nothing can command such
113. Exh. cat. 1977, Nice, no. 297. popularity as the performing arts, and nothing can seem so dated and

7i
 incomprehensible to subsequent generations, once the echoes of actual
performance have died away. We no longer perform or read the
vaudevilles, ballet-pantomimes, and opera comiques of Piron, Panard,
Favart, Vade, and the like, nor does a revival seem likely. The whole
literary tradition of the pastoral has been superseded by the taste for
different kinds of fiction. Boucher's pastorals will thus always lack a
dimension, not to make them credible, but to encourage the suspension of

ii4- Gautier, 1867, pp. 404-05: "ce monde

disbelief necessary to enjoy them fully. In compensation, however, we can
idyllique invente par Boucher a l'usage du enjoy the artifice and the sheer artistry more, as Theophile Gautier did
i8 c
siecle, le moins champetre des siecles, when he celebrated with perfect clarity of vision: "that idyllic world
en depit de ses pretentions bocageres. Les
moutons sont savonnes, les bergeres ont
invented by Boucher for the use of the eighteenth century — the least rural

des corsets a echelles de rubans et des of centuries, in spite of bosky pretenses. The sheep are shampooed, the
its

teints qui ne sentent pas du hale campa- shepherdesses are tight-laced with rows of ribbons, and their complexions
gnard, et les bergers ressemblent a des
quite without that weather-beaten country look, while the shepherds look
danseurs d'opera. Mais tout cela est d'une
seduction irresistible, et d'un mensonge like ballet dancers. But it is all irresistibly seductive, and the lie is much
plus aimable que la verite." more agreeable than the truth."" 4

72
 —

Boucher and Europe

J. PATRICE MARANDEL

On 29 April 1750, Francois Boucher wrote an embarrassed letter to Carl

Fredrik Scheffer, the Swedish minister in Paris. Excusing himself for not
having delivered a painting he owed Count Tessin, Boucher's patron who
had occupied between 1739 and 1742, he went
Scheffer's position in Paris
on to explain: "I would long ago have had the honor of sending it to him
if my occupations for the king had allowed me to do so. Furthermore, I
am still in charge of part of the works at Bellevue for the marquise de
Pompadour. These are things one cannot refuse or neglect; it would be
depriving oneself of all means to obtain favors. . .
."' This clear statement
of the artist's priorities may account for Boucher's limited success outside
France during his lifetime. Although his compositions were well known
throughout Europe —perhaps more through reproductions and
their
interpretations as engravings and —the particular circumstances
tapestries
of his career did not allow him to enjoy the European fame of Ricci,
Pellegrini, Tiepolo, or, because of the many foreigners who sat for him,
Batoni. In this respect, the opinion of the Goncourt that "Boucher est une
2
gloire parisienne" acquires an added significance.
It would be erroneous, however, to consider Boucher an artist who had
hardly any contact with the rest of Europe. The impact of this artist who,
in the eyes of many, exemplified French taste at its best could not be
ignored at a time when the enlightened world had its eyes set on Paris. In

fact, the accounts of Boucher's contacts with Europe provide many

insights into the mechanisms of the Parisian art world, as well as into the
history of patronage and collecting.
Patrons and collectors of Boucher's paintings during the eighteenth
century were limited almost exclusively to northern countries: Sweden,
Denmark, Germany, Poland, and, to a lesser extent, Russia. His contacts
with Italy were nonexistent following his poorly documented stay in that
country some time after he obtained the Prix de Rome in 1723. Although
—
what he saw in Italy in particular the works of Ricci and Castiglione
i. Scheffer, 1982, pp. 253-54: "II i a lontems did have some impact upon his own development, his lukewarm interest in
que j'aurois eu Phonneur de lui envover si the arts of the peninsula is well known. In spite of the rhetorical language
mes occupations pour le rov ne l'avoient
in which various elegies pronounced or written after his death stressed his
permis. De plus je suis encore charge d'une
partie des ouvrages de Bellevue pour debt to Pietro da Cortona, or established a parallel between Maratta or
madame la marquise de Pompadour. Ce Albani and him,} the reality lies closer to Mariette's judgment that "he
sont des choses qu'on ne peut refuser ni
undertook the Italian journey but it was rather to satisfy his curiosity
. . .

negliger, ce seroit s'oter tous les moyens

d'obtenire des graces. ."
than to draw any profit from it." 4 J.C. Mannlich, Boucher's pupil, related
. .

2. E. & J. de Goncourt, 188c, p. 136. in his memoirs how on the eve of his departure for Italy, he was warned
3. A& W doc. 1082, quoted from Xecrologe by his master to limit himself to the study of Albani and Reni and to shun
des hommes celebres, VI, Necrologe de
Raphael, "un peintre bien triste," and Michelangelo, who "fait peur,'^
Boucher.
4. Mariette, I, 1851-53, pp. 165-66: "II fit le —
opinions echoed by the perhaps apocryphal similar recommendations —
voyage d'ltalie . mais ce fut plustot
. .
made by Boucher to Fragonard before the latter's departure for Rome. 6
pour satisfaire sa cunosite que pour en
Boucher's own coterie in Paris seems to have included few artists or
tirer du profit."

5. Roland, 1959, p. 95.

connoisseurs from Mediterranean countries. The list of foreign engravers
6. A& Wdoc. 655. after Boucher, rich in Germans, Swedes, and Britons, includes onlv one

73
Fig. 51. Giuseppe Baldnghi, The Family of fig. 52. Francois Boucher, Study for a Croup
Filippo Borbonc. Galleria Nazionale, Parma. Portrait. Museo Glauco Lombardi, Parma.

Spaniard, Pascual Pedro Moles (1741-1797), and no Italian. If the scarcity

of Italians among Boucher's pupils is notable, it should make the presence
ofGiuseppe Baldrighi (1723-1802) from Parma in Boucher's studio
between 1752 and 1756 all the more remarkable. Baldrighi played a
particularly important role in recommending Petitot to Claude Bonnet,
the man entrusted with the task of finding a suitable architect for the court
of Parma. Baldrighi s suggestion was approved by Boucher himself. 7 The
relationship between master and pupil must have been cordial, for shortly
after his return to Parma, Baldrighi seems to have sought his old teacher's
advice on the group portrait commissioned from him of the family of
Filippo Borbone (fig. 51; 1757, Galleria Nazionale, Parma). Its composi-
tion leans directly on a drawing by Boucher sent to Parma, presumably to
Baldrighi himself (fig. 52; Museo Glauco Lombardi, Parma). 8

Sweden
Boucher's lack of success with Italy was largely compensated for by the
wealth of influential patrons elsewhere. For instance, various circum-
stances made his relationship with the Scandinavian countries particularly
noteworthy, not the least the presence of Carl Gustaf Tessin, the Swedish
envoy to France, between 1739 and 1742. Through Tessin's
in Paris
personal patronage and continuing interest in Boucher even after his
return to Sweden, some of Boucher's finest works found their way to
Stockholm. Tessin, however, was not the first Swede Boucher counted
among his acquaintances. During his grand tour, between 1721 and 1725,
the young architect Carl Harleman (1700-1753) visited France. In 1732, he
returned to Paris with the mission of recruiting artists to work on the
decoration of the Royal Palace in Stockholm. 9 Boucher was not among the
artists directly contacted by Harleman for this task; those who were

included Pater and Oudry. Harleman, who knew Boucher personally, may
already have been discouraged by the prices charged by the artist. His
mission to France was marred by strict economic considerations, which
led to his final selection of secondary artists, headed by Taraval. 10

74
 Nevertheless, Harleman returned to Paris in November of 1744 and
commissioned six overdoors for the Royal Palace in Stockholm. Boucher
delivered one, Venus at Her Toilet, in 1746 and was paid five hundred
livres for it.

Tessin's relationship with Boucher began immediately upon the envoy's

arrival in Paris. In his diary, Tessin related his first visit to Boucher's
studio, which took place on 3 August 1739, only a few days after his
arrival." Tessin was introduced to Boucher by another Swede, the pastelist
Gustaf Lundberg, a prominent figure in Paris and a close friend of
Boucher, of whom he executed a portrait (fig. 53; Cabinet des Dessins,
Louvre). Tessin's purchases of works by Boucher for his own collection
began that day, and culminated with that of The Birth of Venus
a year later
(fig. 54; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), of which he wrote to Harleman in

July 1740: "Boucher is doing for me a Birth of Venus: Cospetto che bella
Cosa! Only eyes such as yours are worthy of it. . .
." I2 After the sale of
Fig. 53.Gustaf Lundberg, Portrait of Franqois
Boucher. Musee du Louvre, Cabinet des Des- his most important Bouchers to Queen Lovisa Ulrica in 175 1, several
sins, Pans. works by the artist still remained in Tessin's collection. The inventory
after his death lists several works that can be partially traced:

1) A woman near a fireplace who ties her garter while her chambermaid
arranges her nightcap, 2) a large picture of a naked woman lying on her
back upon a bed Couleur de Lilas, 3) a large picture of a naked woman,
half-reclining on her side under a red bed-curtain, 4) a large bust picture
7. Briganti, 1969, p. 18.
8. Briganti, 1969, p. 48.
of a woman at her toilet with a parrot on the arm of her chair, original
9. Lespinasse, 1910, pp. 276-98. painting in grisaille or gray-on-gray, 5) a bust picture of a woman sitting
10. In 1736, Tessin passing through Italy was in a chair with a portrait in her hands, 6) a large picture of a woman
also looking for artists to work in Stock-
with reddish hair, leaning out of a window. "3
holm. His choice of Tiepolo and the
negotiations he began with the Venetian
To the above, the portrait aux trois crayons of the countess Fersen,
artist did not result in a commission
because of Tiepolo's previous commit- "smaller than nature, with red dress, black hood, and a coffee cup in
ments and high fees. See Lespinasse, 1910, hand," is to be added. The first of the paintings described in the inventory
pp. 288-90.
is evidently the picture entitled Woman Fastening Her Garter, with Her
1 1. Tessin's diary written at Akero is kept at

the Kungliga Bibliotek, Stockholm (31

volumes, unpublished). I am grateful to
Jan Heidner and Birgitta Sandstrom for
having brought it to my attention. The
same library also keeps nine volumes of
documents pertaining to Tessin's acquisi-
tions.
12. Proschwitz, 1983, pp. 70-71: "Boucher
me fait une naissance de Venus: Cospetto
che bella Cosa! II n'y a des yeux que
comme les votres qui en soient
dignes. . .
."

13. Lundberg, 1972, pp. 126-33: "1) Frun-

timmer vid sin spis, som knyter pa sig
strumpebandet, medan kammarpigan sta-

dar nattduken, 2) 1 st. pa ryggen liggande

safvande naken kvinnobild pa en Couleur
de Lilas sang, 3) 1 st. safvande, halft pi
sidan liggande naken kvinnobild, under ett
rott sparlakan, 4) 1 st. Bild af ett halft
Fruntimmer gor sin Toilette med en pa-
pegoja pa stolskarmen, original maladt i

grisaille eller gratt i gratt, 5) Et Fruntim-

mers brostbild, sittande pa en stol med et

portrait i handerna, 6) 1 st. Quinnohufvud The Birth of Venus.

Fig. 54. Francois Boucher,
med'rogula har, lutande at vanster." Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

75
 Maid in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (see cat. 38). The fourth
painting is known through the engraving of Gilles-Edme Petit, published
as Le matin La Dame a sa Toilete (fig. 55),
I4
while the description of the
fifth corresponds to a picture (Woman Applying a Mouche, fig.43)
presented in Agnew's winter exhibition of ^So. 1
' Boucher's gratitude
toward his Swedish patron, and the link that united them — exemplified in

their collaboration on the publication of Faunillane, a libertine novelette

by Tessin for which Boucher provided ten illustrations' 6 (figs. 44, 45,
—
56-58) were, however, not sufficient to override the priority Boucher
had established for himself to first serve the French Crown. In October
1745, Tessin informed his successor, Carl Fredrik Scheffer, that Lovisa
Ulrica wished to purchase four paintings by Boucher and two by Chardin.
The subjects of the four paintings are clearly described in a letter from
Carl Reinhold Berch to Tessin.' 7 They were to be Morning, Noon,
Evening, and Night —the four Times of Day representing Four also the
Seasons. Boucher promised the four paintings for March 1746. Only one
Fig. 5 5. Z.e matin, engraved by Gilles-Edme
Petit after Francois Boucher. The Metropolitan was ever delivered, The Milliner (Morning) (cat. 51; Nationalmuseum,
Museum of Art, New York. Stockholm), seven months after the promised date. In spite of Scheffer's
continuing requests, Boucher was unable to finish the commission.' 8
Reporting on the lack of progress with the paintings, Scheffer wrote in
June 1746 that the reasons for the delay included Boucher's incredible
"libertinage" and the commissions the painter was receiving from M. de
Tournehem. Boucher's inability to produce his paintings did not deter
Tessin from ordering other works from him, such as a fan that Boucher
delivered after much delay due, according to the artist, to his poor
eyesight and lack of experience in this technique. (Scheffer, displeased with
the result, refused to pay the price that had been set, but nonetheless sent
Figs. 56-58. Frontispiece and plates facing
pages 51 and 57, etched by Pierre-Quentin the fan to Tessin on 23 June 1747). Shortly after being entrusted with the
Chedel after drawings by Boucher for Swedish commission, Boucher was made member of a committee (which
Faumllane (1741). Reproduced from a copy of
Duclos's Acajou et Zirpbilc (1744) in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

76
 included Berch and Gersaint) whose purpose was to acquire works of art
for Lovisa Ulrica at the sale of the cabinet of M. de la Roque. 19
The popularity Boucher among Swedes is also confirmed by the fact
of
that in 1741 Gustaf Lundberg (1695— 1780) was received at the Academy
with his portrait of Boucher, and by Boucher's close relationship to the
portrait painter Alexander Roslin (1718-1793), whom he asked to execute
a portrait of Mme Boucher (exhibited at the Salon of 1753). Upon his

arrival in Paris in 1752, Roslin depended upon Boucher to be introduced

to enlightened collectors. Obligingly Boucher facilitated his first meetings
with the comte de Caylus. Another occurrence exemplifies the rapport
between the two painters: in 1755, Boucher asked Roslin to help him with
the execution of the dress in the portrait of the marquise de Pompadour he
20
was doing at the time. Is it possible, however, that Boucher reserved his
treatment of equal-to-equal to well-qualified painters but discouraged
others? How otherwise to explain that Roslin, so close to Boucher,
directed young Swedish artists who came to Paris and sought his advice to
other studios? Such was the case with Johan Safvenbom whom he sent to
J.
Vernet, Jonas Hoffman who was sent to Vien, and Lorenz Pasch who,
although briefly trained by Boucher from whose teachings he obviously
profited, studied above all with Pierre. Swedish pupils of Boucher
included, however, the docile Mandelberg, who brought into Sweden
Boucher's style with little change, and Per Hillestrom, whose appren-
ticeship with Boucher was motivated by his interest in tapestry.
Swedish engravers of compositions by Boucher included Gustav
Floding (1731-1791) and Jacob Gillberg (1742-1793). It was, however,
—
Johann Heinrich Eberts a man important for the diffusion of Boucher's
work in —
Germany (see below) who engraved a design by Boucher for a
memorial monument to Fraulein von Sandow from Berlin, commissioned
by Fredrik Ulric Friesendorff, a Swedish diplomat serving in Paris in

1762. 2I
A year earlier, Friesendorff had purchased from Tessin —then in
disgrace and financial need —the diamonds of his North Star decoration,
so one can surmise that it was Tessin who, once again, directed the newly
22
posted envoy toward Boucher.

Denmark
In neighboring Denmark, Boucher was no less than in
the interest in
Sweden. Again, Boucher's contacts with that country were through
14. J-R 1456. diplomatic channels and the support of three men whose roles can be
15. Exh. cat. 1980, London, Agnew's, no. 28.
compared to Tessin's, even though their efforts did not bring to
16. Three copies, and possiblv more, were
printed in 1741 by Prault /z/s; Boucher's Copenhagen as many fine paintings. These three men were the ministers
drawings were engraved bv Pierre-Quentin Bernstorff and Moltke, and the secretaire de legation in Paris, Joachim
Chedel.
Wasserschlebe, who was the cheville ouvriere of the operation. 2 ^

17. 27 Oct. 1745; see Scheffer, 1982, p. 104,

In 1731 Wasserschlebe arrived in Paris, to remain until 1752. As he was a
no. 9.

18. Scheffer, 1982, p. 146, n. 4. friend of many artists, his role was particularly crucial in executing
19. Scheffer, 1982, p. 80. Christian VI's wish to obtain paintings by the most representative artists
20. Lespinasse, 1929, sen 1, pt. 2, II, p. 9.
of the time to decorate his residence of Christiansborg. Until destroyed by
21. J-R 952. The original drawing for the
composition was, in 1973, in the collection fire in 1794, Christiansborg represented an anthology of French eigh-
of Arthur L. Liebman; see exh. cat. 1973 — teenth-century art. By 1741 Wasserschlebe was able to organize the
74, Washington, p. 115, no. 87.
shipment of about one hundred and forty pieces, for the most part
22. Lundberg, 1972, p. 132.
23. Reau, 1931, pp. 26-27. overdoors or trumeaux by, among others, Lancret, J-F de Troy, Charles
24. Reau, 1931, p. 25. Parrocel, Oudry, Natoire, Restout, and Dandre-Bardon. 2 Four paintings -*

77
 -
i \ poi -ii n hh;i t

Figs. 59-62. Allegories of Heroic, Lyrical,

Satirical, and Pastoral Poetry, etched by
Claude-Augustin-Pierre Dutlos (Dutlos le

jeune) after Francois Boucher. The Metro-

politan Museum ot Art, New York.

by Boucher were part of the shipment. According to an inventory of 1765,

they represented La [sic] poeme hero'ique, lirique, satinque, et pastorale , 25
and are known today only through their engravings by Duflos (figs. 59-
26
62). Following Wasserschlebe's orders, Boucher discreetly clothed
the children in order not to offend the prudish court of Denmark.
In 175 1, shortly before his departure from Paris, Wasserschlebe wrote
Bernstorff about his commission to find suitable painters to execute
overdoors. Rejecting both Jeaurat for the poor quality of his work, and
Vanloo for the unsuitability of his style to such work, he proposed the
name of Boucher. somewhat unclear if these overdoors were ordered
2"
It is

for Bernstorff himself or for Moltke, in which case they would be those
still in situ at Amalienborg, Moltke's sumptuous residence in Copenhagen.

Whatever the situation, Boucher's Danish patron would have experienced

delays on the part of the artist as long as those suffered by Tessin: these
allegories of Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, Music, Poetry, Geography,
and Astronomy were delivered only in 1756. A letter from Masse to
Wasserschlebe stresses the difficulties encountered in executing these
28
overdoors.
Like Tessin, Wasserschlebe, besides acting as an agent between Boucher
and Danish patrons, collected works by Boucher for himself after his
his
return to Copenhagen, albeit not on the same scale as the former Swedish

78
 —

envoy. A letter of 14 April 1769, addressed to Wasserschlebe by his

successor in Paris, Gottfried Schutze, informs us that six drawings and a
small painting were on their way to him. 29

There are records of only a couple of Danes associated with Boucher's

studio, unlike the case with the more numerous Swedes. More prominent
of thetwo was Anton Muller, who was in the studio between 1752 and
1754 before moving to Rome, but one should also name Isak Henningsen,
who engraved after Boucher.

Germany
Boucher's impact upon Germany, both in terms of collecting and of his
influence upon younger painters, was strongest in the part of that country
25. Krohn, 1922, p. 20.
adjacent to France. In Baden or Pfalz-Zweibriicken, Boucher found a
26. J-R 925-928.
27. A& W doc. 442. clientele of enlightened sovereigns eager to bring to their capitals the latest
28. A& W doc. 644. This source does not give development in French culture or art, and obviously anxious to secure fine
the location of the manuscript. In this
works by one of France's most renowned exponents. Although the same
letter,Masse declares himself satisfied to
know was pleased with the
that Bernstorff can be said of Frederick II in Berlin, his choices of individual artists led
paintings but does not mention Moltke's him in a different direction, and he never bought works by Boucher,
opinion. Could this letter and Wasser- — instead focusing his attention on Watteau and Lancret. In fact, the only
schlebe's letter of 175 1
— refer to a set of
lost overdoors executed for Bernstorff work by Boucher that has occasionally been connected with his collection,
himself? L'Education de L'Amour, appeared in inventories of Potsdam only in 1864,
29. A& W doc. 1026.
and it is now generally agreed that it was not one of Frederick's purchases.
30. Dussieux, 1876, p. 215; Oesterreich, 1774,
Frederick II was, however, aware of Boucher's accomplishments, for he
pp. 44, 45. Oesterreich lists specifically:
"Dans le cabinet, 384-386, De Paris, Sur la had asked one of his agents in Paris, Mettra (also active for Catherine II),
cheminee, qui est admirablement travaillee
to purchase precious vases executed after designs by Boucher. 3° Just as
de jaune antique, nomme Giallo Antico,
linking Frederick II with L'Education de VAmour becomes untenable on
sont poses trois vases d'une tres belle
forme & d'une espece d'agate, ornes riche- closer inspection, so the two allegories of Music and Painting by Boucher
ment et avec beaucoup de gout de bronze (Kress Collection, National Gallery, Washington), traditionally credited to
dore, d'apres le dessin et l'invention de M.
the patronage of Maximilian III of Bavaria, may have originated
Francois Boucher . .
." and "Dans la salle a
manger, 389-93, De Paris, Boucher. Cinq elsewhere. As noted by Colin no mention of them in the
Eisler," there is

vases d'une tres belle forme, dont trois de Staatsarchiv fur Oberbayern, and there is no evidence that Joseph von
porphyre vert d'Egypte et deux de crystal
Dufresne, the duke's agent in Paris, commissioned them from Boucher.
de roche, noblement ornes de bronze dore;
d'apres le dessin de M. Boucher. Le corps Christian IV of Pfalz-Zweibriicken, or due de Deux-Ponts, as he was
de ces pieces destinees pour Mme. de known in Paris where he mostly resided, was an ardent collector. A large
Pompadour, est antique; on a seulement part of his painting collection contributed to the formation of the Munich
voulu les orner plus richement, pour qu'ils
Pinakothek. His sale, held in Paris on 6 April 1778, included no less than
puissent accompagner les autres vases deja
indiques." seven paintings by Boucher, of variable quality, apart from which he
31. Eisler, 1977, p. 318, n. n. owned the version of the Odalisque (cat. 61), today in Munich.
32. The original manuscript of Johann Chris-
Zweibriicken's name is linked, however, even more with that of Mannlich,
tian Mannlich's memoirs, kept in his fam-
ily until the 20th century, seems to have the young man he selected as his court painter and had trained in
vanished in Berlin during the Second Boucher's studio. Today Mannlich's fame relies less on his paintings than
World War.
large parts of
In 1913, Stollreither published
it, translated into German
on his memoirs in which he drew a vivid — and sometimes devastating
from the original French under the title
account of the practices in Boucher's studio. ^ 2 By the time he wrote his
Rokoko und Revolution (Berlin, 191 3). A memoirs, Mannlich had embraced the Mengsian which he had aesthetic,
partialFrench edition by Joseph Delage discovered in Rome after his years with Boucher, and renounced Boucher's
was published in Paris by Caiman-Levy
1948. Three copies of the original man-
in
Rococo style, which he had assimilated to the point of plagiarism on his —
uscript still exist: one in a private collec- —
own account having had to execute paintings in the style of the master
tion in Zweibriicken, one in the manu- that Boucher then approved and signed. In any case, through his copies,
script section of the Staatsbibliothek, Mu-
paintings in the manner of, and reinterpretation of subjects typical of
nich, and one in the collections of the
Wittelsbach family; see Weber, 1970, p. 18.
Boucher, Mannlich was responsible for spreading his teacher's style
33. Roland, 1959, p. 95. throughout Germany. ^

79
 » J

The same can be said of Joseph Melhng, a pupil of Boucher's as well as

an engraver of compositions after him. Hired as a court painter in

Karlsruhe, he apparently played an instrumental role in convincing

Caroline Luise, Margravine of Baden, to commission paintings directly
from Boucher. u The enlightened margravine, herself an artist and friend
of Liotard who had executed her portrait at the easel, decided in 1759 to
systematically build a picture gallery. Drawing up lists of pictures and
artists to be included in it, she also visited neighboring galleries at

Mayence, Mannheim, and Zweibriicken. Jean-Henri Eberts, already

mentioned in connection with the engraving after Boucher he executed for
Friesendorff, Tessin s acquaintance, a banker and engraver established in
Strasbourg, acted as an agent for the margravine. He arranged in

particular the various commissions Caroline Luise gave Boucher. Shortly

after the inception of the gallery,Boucher delivered two pastel heads. In
1760, two more followed, including one of a girl reading a letter. In 1762, a
portrait of the marquise de Pompadour and one of a dancer were added to
the collection. Only two paintings among those commissioned by the
margravine can be traced today: The School of Love and The School of
Friendship, now at the Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe (see cat. 71, 72). These
pictures, in fact, did not hang in her picture cabinet. They were instead
sold by the margravine to her husband to be used as decoration at the
Schloss at Karlsruhe. In spite of their rejection from the picture cabinet,
these two paintings were well thought of: in 1772, Melling executed two
vertical copies of them for the Sickingen Palast in Freiburg.

Boucher's influence in Baden is reflected also directly upon the artistic

production of the margravine herself. Caroline Luise, who occasionally
copied the works she purchased, sent Count Hermann
in 1763 to

Woldemann Schnettow, for the Fine Arts Academy of Copenhagen of

which she was a member, several works, including a sanguine drawing of a

Woman Reading (fig. 63; Kunstakademiets Bibliotek, Copenhagen),

which shows her debt to the figures in the two Karlsruhe pastorals, and
presumably to the lost pastel of the same subject that she owned.
The registres Academie Royale de Peinture indicate
d 'inscription at the
that besides Mannlich, Martin Ferdinand Quadal was registered there in

1767 under the protection of "Monsieur le Prince de Lorraine et Monsieur

Boucher."^ Boucher also lent his protection to the engraver Antoine
Dunker (1746-1807), who was in his studio in 1765. One of Boucher's
most famous German pupils was Januarius Zick (1732-1797), who was in
Paris around 1757. 6 But deeply rooted in the South German tradition,
Zick's art bears little evidence of Boucher's direct influence, except for
some idyllic peasant scenes which are a distant echo of Boucher's pastorals
and an obvious delight which his apprentice-
in the tactile quality of paint,
ship under Boucher may have reinforced. In Paris, Zick was friendly with

J. G. Wille (171 5-1808), the engraver and author of memoirs

which stress
his part as an art entrepreneur, often establishing bridges between French
m artists such as Boucher and German collectors.' 7

Boucher's influence is traceable in many German artists established in

:•/
Paris in the second part of the eighteenth century, whether they were
apprenticed to him or not. Active in Paris from 1756 after an initial visit in
Fig. 63. Caroline Luise, Margravine of Baden,
after Francois Boucher, A Woman Reading. 1744, Johann Anton de Peters (1725-1795) engraved after Boucher, and his
Kunstakademiets Bibliotek, Copenhagen. own compositions often reflect Boucher's manner. Peters owned a version

80
 of the Odalisque, which he sold in 1779 following some financial
difficulties, as well as several other paintings by Boucher that were sold
^ 8
after his wife's death in 1787.Johann Heinrich Tischbein (1722-1789),
Georg Melchior Krause (1737-1800), and the Swiss Sigmund Freuden-
berger (1745-1801) are only a few names that can be added to the list of
German artists who responded to Bouchers style. ^ The list of German
engravers after Boucher includes JohannGeorg Hertel, Johann Georg
Merz, and August Hermann Degmair from Augsburg, Georg Friedrich
Schmidt (1712-1775) from Berlin, Johann Heinrich Wiese (1748-1803)
from Leipzig, and an engraver named Halbauer, who executed single
figures after Boucher's frontispiece for the Tomb of Charles Sackville,
Count of Dorset. 4 °

Poland
The correspondence between King Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski
(1732-1798) and Mme Geoffrin shows the monarch's desire to secure
works by the two artists who, in his eyes, were the leading French
painters of his time, Carle Vanloo and Boucher. Stanislas Augustus's
intention to commission these was linked to the projects of
artists

renovation of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, for which the architect Victor
Louis (1731-1802) had provided designs during his stay in Warsaw in 1765.
The death of Carle Vanloo in 1765 brought an end to his part of the
project, and Mme Geoffrin suggested transferring the commission to
Vien. The king's exacting instructions for the paintings he commissioned
were not always welcome to his mentor, Mme Geoffrin, who wrote to him
on 29 January 1766:
34- Exh. cat. 1983, Karlsruhe, Schloss.
35. Reau, i924[a], pp. 113-46. but I request as the ultimate favor from Your Majesty to give me entire
36. Feulner, 1920, pp. 6-15. discretion in regard to the two paintings that will be executed by
37. Wille, 1857.
Boucher and Vien. They are two men I love and esteem with all my
38. Exh. cat. 1981, Cologne.
39. Becker, 1971, pp. 22-24.
heart, as much for the decency of their minds as for their talent. Trust
40. J-R 194. me for the execution of these two paintings; it is a sacrifice I request
41. Moiiy, 1875, p. 208: "mais je demande Your Majesty to make in the name of the old friendship with which He
pour derniere grace a Votre Majeste de me
laisser la disposition en entier des deux
has honored me. I beg Your Majesty to find it acceptable that they do
tableaux qui seront faits par Boucher et par not send preliminary drawings, as one must leave their imagination free.
Vien. Ce sont deux hommes que ]'aime et If they felt constrained to follow exactly the projects they had sent Your
estime de tout mon coeur, autant pour
Majesty, they would believe they were executing copies: I beg you, as
Phonnetete de leur ame que par leur talent.
Fiez-vous a moi pour Pexecution de ces they do, to let them have a free hand. These two men are friends, a rare
deux tableaux, c'est un sacrifice que je thing among artists: they will agree to make their compositions look
demande a Votre Majeste en faveur de
well together. 4 '

l'ancienne amitie dont Elle m'a honoree. Je

supplie Votre Majeste de trouver bon
ne vous envoient pas des dessins de leur
qu'ils
Yielding to Mme Geoff rin's plea, the king replied on 22 February 1766:
idee, faut laisser leur imagination a l'aise;
il
In order to show you how I wish to please you in everything, I agree
s'ils etaient obliges de suivre exactement les
not to demand these preliminary drawings by Boucher and Vien, since
dessins qu'ils auraient envoye a Votre
Majeste, ils croiraient faire une copie: je such is your pleasure; but you should know that you are perhaps the
me joins a eux pour supplier Votre Majeste only person in the world for whom I would be so complaisant, for one
de leur laisser la bride sur le cou. Ces deux
has never commissioned large painted compositions (when one cares
hommes sont amis, ce qui est rare a
trouver chez les artistes, ils seront d'accord and believes that he knows something about it) without sketches. I

pour que leurs compositions aillent bien know these sketches are not totally binding for the artists, but there
ensemble."
may be something in the composition or the costume completely
I would like to thank Dr. A. Rotter-
mund for his considerable help with the from what the person who commissioned those works had
different in
Polish section of this essay. mind. These are to me far from being indifferent. I would like it, if

81
 «

Fig. 64. Francois Boucher, Project of a Design

for the Coat of Arms of the Polish Common-
wealth and King Stanislas. Warsaw University,
Print Room.

Fig. 65. Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer, Royal

Throne of Poland. Royal Castle, Warsaw.

possible, if the viewer were at once struck by the ideas of justice,

achievement, magnanimity, and harmony that these compositions are
meant to suggest. But since you wantBoucher and Vien do
it that way,
not have to provide sketches. My faith is blind and I will receive the
paintings from your hand, no matter what they are. I beg you to
understand that I am making a big sacrifice for you. 42

Boucher's reluctance to provide a drawing or oil sketch is further

confirmed in Mme Geoffrin's letter to the king, dated 13 March 1766:

My dear son, I cannot but admire your complaisance in the matter of

your paintings; I sense the magnitude of your sacrifice inasmuch as it

would be the greatest I could make myself, but I musn't abuse your
kindness toward me. I you a small colored sketch by Vien,
will bring
and I will try to obtain a drawing from Boucher. Everything you
. . .

saidon the subject is very reasonable, but our painters cannot be

ordered around as one would like: I became their friend because I see
42. Moiiy, 1875, p. 216: "Pour vous marquer them often, make them work a lot, flatter them, praise them, and pay
combien je desire de vous contenter en
them very well. I promise to do the impossible so that your faith in me
tout, je veux bien ne plus exiger de dessins
de Boucher et de Vien, puisque cela vous will prove to be not entirely blind.
fait plaisir, mais comptez que vous etes
peut etre le seule au monde pour qui
The mention of the commission in the correspondence between the
last

I'aurais cette complaisance, car jamais on king and Mme Geoffrin appears on 27 December 1767: "Three of Your
n'a commande de grandes compositions de
Majesty's paintings are executed; it will be possible to ship them only in
peinture (quand on s'en soucie et qu'on
the spring. Boucher's painting is only sketched so far. Boucher is old and
croit s'y connaitreun peu) sans esquisses.
Ces esquisses ne font pas, je le sais, une loi ill; he goes slowly but he is still all right." 44 In fact, Boucher never

rigoureuse aux artistes, mais il v a quel- delivered his painting, but the king received works by Vien, Noel Halle,
quefois des choses dans la composition ou
and Louis Lagrenee. 45
dansle costume qui peuvent s'eloigner

extremement de la pensee de celui qui Boucher, however, produced at least one drawing of significance for
demande les tableaux. Ceux-ci ne me sont King Stanislas Augustus. The drawing 46 represents the coat of arms of the
rien moins qu'indifferents. Je voudrais, s'il
Commonwealth and King Stanislas and was doubtless also executed in
etait possible, qu'au premier coup d'oeil le

spectateur fut frappe des idees de justice, connection with the new decoration of the Royal Castle (fig. 64). The two
d'emulation, de magnanimite et de con- allegorical figures of Peace and Justice flanking the coat of arms were

82
 corde que ces tableaux sont destines a faire copied by other artists in Monaldi used
various decorative schemes: J.
naitre. Mais soit, vous le voulez ainsi, eh
them to flank a marble medallion portrait of the king by Andre Le Brun
bien, Boucher et Vien seront dispenses de
in an overdoor in the ballroom, 47 and the architect Jan Chrystian
l'esquisse. Ma foi est aveugle, et je recevrai

les tableaux de votre main tels qu'ils soient. Kamsetzer adapted the design for the finial of the throne that has been
Je vous prie de croire que c'est un sacrifice recently reinstalled in the throne room of the Royal Castle (fig. 65).
tres penible que je vous fais."
Louis Reau had not been able to consult the inventories of the royal
43. Moiiy, 1875, pp. 218-19: "Mon cher fils,

je suis dans 1'admiration de votre complai- collection published by T. Mahkowski in 1932 48 before he published his
sance au sujet de vos tableaux; je sens la catalogue of French works in the collection that same year. 49 These
grandeur du sacrifice, d'autant mieux que
inventories give a much fuller account of the king's collections and of their
ce serait pour moi le plus grand que je

pourrais faire; mais il ne faut pas abuser de holdings in works by Boucher.

votre douceur pour moi; ]e vous porterai Like many other European monarchs, Stanislas Augustus wished to
une petite esquisse de Vien coloriee et je
establish in his capital a painting gallery and used diplomatic channels to
tacherai d'obtenir de Boucher un dessin.
. . . Tout ce que vous dites la-dessus est
obtain works of art by Boucher, among others. Feliks Loyko, Stanislas's
tres-raisonnable, mais nos peintres ne se envoy at the court of Louis XV, wrote, for instance, how he was offered a
gouvernent pas comme on voudrait: je suis painting by the artist: "We would acquire it only in the presence of Mr.
devenue leur amie parce que je les vois
Cochin or of another famous artist so that we could not have any doubt
souvent, les fais beaucoup travailler, les

caresse et les loue, et les pave tres bien. Je concerning the merit of the painting its owner believes to be one of Mr.
vous promets de faire Pimpossible pour Boucher's best works." 50 Although none of the works by Boucher that
que votre confiance en moi ne soit pas tout
once belonged to Stanislas Augustus has yet been located, descriptions in
a fait aveugle."

a trois tableaux
the inventories give a clear idea of what each was: a Landscape of 1744,
44. Moiiy, 1875, p. 319: "Il y
de Votre Majeste de faits; ils ne pourront measuring about 73.5 by 64.5 centimeters, a Sleeping Shepherdess,
partir qu'au printemps. Celui de Boucher
measuring 52 by 43.5 centimeters, 51 two copies after Boucher, one of the
n'est qu'ebauche. Boucher est vieux et
infirme; il va doucement mais il va encore
Odalisque by Anna Rajecka and the other an oval pastel of Venus
instruisant I'Amour, 1 and two miniatures based on Boucher's composi-
1
*
bien."
45. Budzihska, 1971, pp. 154-57. tions, a Venus a demi couchee et VAmour, and Les Trois Graces J The most >

46. Pen and brush in grayish ink (and wash),

important work by Boucher in the Polish Royal Collection was, however,
white laid paper, 264 x 372 mm. Inscribed
in pen at the bottom: Dessine par Boucher. a gift from Ignacy Krasicki, Bishop of Warmia. This large painting (112 x
Cartouche aux armes du Roi, Print Room 87 cm) was noted by Johann Bernoulli when he visited the Royal Castle in
of Warsaw University Library; inv. vol.
1778. In his Reisen durch Brandenburg Pohlen, Bernoulli wrote:
. . .

140, no. 52/1. See exh. cat. 1980, London,

Heim, no. 9 and illus. on cover.

47. Krol, 1926, pis. 65, 66. In leaving a large oval room we came upon one end of the castle, namely
48. Mahkowski, 1932. to the study, which was hung with paintings favored by the King,
49. Reau, 1932, pp. 225-48.
paintings which bear true witness to his refined taste in art. Found here
50. Marikowski, 1932, p. 40: "Nous n'en
ferions l'acquisition qu'en presence de Mr. are the following paintings: Chddren Playing by Boucher, an
. . .

Cochin ou d'un autre artiste celebre, afin agreeable gift of the present Bishop of Warmia, who has transferred
de n'avoir aucun doutte sur le merite de ce
many paintings from his collection to the King, either as gifts or having
tableau que le proprietaire estime etre un
des meilleurs ouvrages de Mr. Boucher."
sold them to him. 54
51. Marikowski, 1932, pp. 291, 341.
Marikowski, 1932, pp. 288, 292; Reau,
Further described in the inventories as "Enfants faisant la moisson, dont
52.

1932, p. 238, nos. 628, 673. un chatouille avec un epi les levres de celui qui est endormi," it was sold in
53. Marikowski, 1932, pp. 466, 469; also Reau, 1810 to Wojciech Boguslawski. In Boguslawski's posthumous inventory
1932, p. 246, nos. 29, 65.
there was, indeed, reference to a painting of this subject bearing the
54. Bernoulli, 1780.

55. Exh. cat. 1973, Poznan, p. 18. monogram S. A. Bought by his widow at his estate's sale, 55 the painting
56. A& W 63. The dimensions of this has vanished, but was evidently a version of the Amour moissonneur,
painting are almost identical to those of the
executed by Boucher in 173 Stanislas Augustus was not the only
1.
56
composition of the same subject, L'Amour
moissonneur, shown at the Galerie
Poniatowski to collect Boucher: Bernoulli mentions several drawings in
Cailleux, Pans, in 1985 (no. 3). Could it the collection of his nephew Stanislas, the sitter for David's equestrian
indeed be the same painting?
portrait, and more important yet was the collection of Vincent Potocki
57. Only one copy of the catalogue of Vincent
Potocki's collection seems to have sur-
(see Appendix), 57 which included no less than thirty-eight works by or
vived. It is kept today in the Rijksbureau after Boucher.
voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in Izabella Lubomirska, born Czartoryska, owned a considerable collec-
The Hague.
tion of paintings, which numbered between fifteen hundred and two

83
 thousand items. Two Frenchmen traveling through Poland in 1790-92 saw
in the Lubomirski Palace (destroyed in 1899), "in small chambers,
paintings of Boucher, whose style has today very much declined." 58
Later
moved to Lancut, these paintings may have been part of the three hundred
and fifty works that were inventoried there in 1802 and 1805 as "large oval
paintings in gilt frames of French workmanship."" As recently as 1944,

by Boucher were in the

three canvases considered to be original paintings
Lubomirski residence at Lancut: a Sleeping Diana, The Toilet of Venus, 60
and a Baccbanale, while two studio pieces were recorded: Diana with
Shepherd and The Bath of Diana.
Earlier in the century, Boucher may also have provided works for the
Czartoryski family. Juste-Aurele Meissonnier's etchings of a "projet de
Sallon de la Princesse Sartoriski" refer to the Golden Salon in the family
residence at Pulawy Although it was demolished in 1840-43, the existence
of this superb example of French Rococo decoration is confirmed not only
by Meissonnier's engravings, but also by the inventory of the palace kept
at the Hermitage in Leningrad.
61
Decorations by Boucher, now lost, were
62
part of the decorative scheme. The Czartoryski's taste for Boucher was
also exemplified by the decoration of the Ecole des Chevaliers founded by
Stanislas Poniatowski in Warsaw, for which Adam Casimir Czartoryski
commissioned a series of decorations from Jean-Pierre Norblin de la
Gourdaine in 1772. This French painter established in Poland adapted
quite literally for this project the engravings after Boucher published
between 1767 and 1771 by Basan and Lemire as illustrations for the
translation by the abbe Banier of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The decoration
was dismantled in the early part of this century, but at least two bozzetti
by Norblin have survived (figs. 66, 67). 6 '

Meissonnier also organized the decoration of the study in the Bielinski

Palace in Warsaw. The ensemble was executed entirely in Paris and
exhibited at the Tuileries before being shipped to Warsaw around 1736. 64
The ceiling painting representing Apollo in His Chariot may have been,
according to Stanislaw Lorentz, the work of Boucher, who was perhaps
also the author of the Venus and Adonis and Zephyr and Flore that
adorned the room. Dismantled at the end of the nineteenth century, the
decoration has left no tangible trace that allows proof of that assumption.

Russia
In spite of an honorary membership bestowed upon him in 1766 by the
Saint Petersburg Academy —
a distinction which Boucher reciprocated
with the dispatch through Falconet of his large Pygmalion and Galatea
—
(Hermitage, Leningrad) Boucher did not fare as well in Russia as he did
Figs. 66, 67. J-P. Norblin de la Gourdaine, in neighboring Poland. His main advocate in Russia was Falconet, but the
after Francois Boucher, Pygmalion and
disfavor in which Falconet rapidly found himself while working on his
Galatea and Hercules and Omphale. Private
collection.
equestrian monument of Peter the Great did not help promote Boucher's
cause with Catherine II. The empress's own taste, guided by Grimm and
Diderot, who both disliked Boucher, led her toward other choices. If the
acquisition of such fine paintings as Frere Luce (cat. 45) and perhaps the
Paysage a VEtang were due only to her massive purchase of the Crozat de
Thiers collection in 1772, her individual purchase sometime between 1766
and 1774 of The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (cat. 68), originally
commissioned by Mme de Pompadour, nevertheless indicates discriminat-

84
 ing taste inone of the genres for which Boucher was least appreciated.
Russian commissions of Boucher are practically nonexistent. In July
1771, two compositions that Boucher had executed "for a fan of the late
Czarina" (Elzvieta) figured in the Huquier sale; and the correspondence
of Diderot with Falconet indicates that in 1768 Prince Galitzin asked for
five paintings from the most renowned French painters, Michel Vanloo,
Vernet, Vien, Casanova, and Boucher, presumably to offer Catherine II.
In his letter of 6 September, Diderot commented: "One should not expect
anything from Vernet. He is too busy and he owes, out of gratitude, his
entire time to M. de Laborde who pays for his pictures in advance.
Nothing either from Boucher, who is fickle, old-fashioned, and lazy." 6 *

The Galitzin collection included, presumably already in the later part of

the eighteenth century, Boucher's Hercules and Omphale (cat. 13), which
was sold in 1820 to the Yusupovs. Prince Nikolai Yusupov (1751-1831)
arrived in Paris shortly after Boucher's death and started to collect French
j8. Piles & Kerdu, 1796, V, p. 56: "Dans les paintings. This great patron of the arts, who commissioned fifty paintings
petits appartements, tableaux, de Boucher,
from Hubert Robert (today at the Hermitage), acquired the Jupiter and
le genre est bien tombe aujourd'hui."

59.
dont
Majewska-Maszkowska, 1976, p. 316. Callisto, 66 the Baigneuse surprise, 67 a set —
perhaps good studio pieces of —
60. A& W
174, now on the London art the Naissance and the Toilette de Venus (Hermitage), and, of course, in
market. later years the Hercules and Omphale already mentioned.
61. Lorentz, 1958, pp. 186-98; 1962,
pp. 42-46.
Dembowski,
62. 1898,
Michalowski, 1972, pp. 74-80; exh.
I, pp. 130-31.
A systematic review of eighteenth-century sales catalogues, inventories
63. cat.

1985, Paris, nos. 27, 28, illus.

after death, and correspondence of march ands-amateurs would certainly
64. Reau, i924[b], p. 11. reveal that beyond the official patronage of foreign monarchs and
65. A& W doc. 1016, quoted from Diderot, purchases by a European elite of works by Boucher, an active market
1876, p. 301: "II ne faut rien attendre de
linked his studio to all corners of Europe. Already by looking at the
Vernet, il est trop occupe, et il doit, de
reconnaissance, tout son temps a M. de English sales of the period, Alastair Laing has been able to remark that
Laborde qui lui paye la vente du prix de most of Boucher's paintings traded in eighteenth-century London are
ses tableaux d'avance. Rien non plus de
"different in character from the sentimental pastorals or nude mythologies
Boucher, qui est leger, caduc et paresseux."
66. A& W 267. . .sought after by
. .English collectors in the nineteenth century" (see
. .

67. A& W205. cat. 9). But such a pattern of collecting may well be particular to England
68. Historiscbe Erklaerungen, 1768, 603,
p.
only, or may only be traceable in a country where trading was important
no. 602: "Francois Boucher, Auf Lein-
wand, 1 Fuss 1 V/% zoll hoch, 2 Fuss 3 zoll
and has remained well documented. For the rest of Europe, we are so far
breit: Vier reizende Liebesgotter walzen limited to scant information, whether it is a notation in Wille's journal
sich, am niedern Gebiische im frischen telling us that on 20 December 1764 he had sent to the Baron de
Grase, auf ihren bunten Gewandern. Der
Rautenfeld in Riga the engravings the latter had requested from Boucher;
zur linken sitzende Liebkoset dem in der
Mitte hingestrecken, welcher sich zum or the indication in the catalogue of Herr Gottfried Winkler's collection
andern Paare wendet, und lachelnd nach published in Leipzig in 1768 68 of a painting by Boucher among the few
dem kleinen Vogel bhcket, der an den
works of the French school he owned; or again, the indication of several
Faden gebunden, aus der Hand des zur
Rechten hinten im scherzenden Gespielen drawings and occasionally fairly large collections of engravings after
flatten." The picture may have been Boucher assembled by some German collectors. 69

another version of the Amour oiseleur, The international career of Boucher may, after these notes, seem rather
A& W62.
limited. If compared, for instance, to his exact contemporary Giambattista
69. Tenner, 1966. The following collectors of
works by Boucher are mentioned: Georg Tiepolo, who decorated gigantic ensembles in Venice, Wiirzburg, and
Franz Ignaz Leopold von Stengel Madrid, was courted by everyone in Europe, and responded vigorously to
(1775- 824), whose drawing by Boucher
1 is
the demands of his patrons, Boucher does not fare well. The duties of the
now in the Staatliche Graphische Samm-
lung, Munich (inv. 9006); Emmerich French artist, expressed in the letter to Scheffer quoted at the beginning of
Joseph von Dalberg (1773-1833), who this essay, were, indeed, restrictive and prevented him from experiencing
owned eleven drawings by Boucher, now
the boundless freedom of the Venetian artist. But had he been given this
in the Hessisches Landesmuseum,
Darmstadt; and Johann Carl Piton freedom, would he have used it to respond to the expectations of a large
(1746-1825). cosmopolitan clientele? Probably not. Obviously little interested in the

85
 world outside Paris, an infrequent traveler who left Paris twice in his
whole life, once to go to Italy and once to Holland, Boucher felt more
comfortable with a limited Parisian audience who appreciated his work
and used it appropriately in newly conceived interiors which excluded all

Baroque grandeur. Curiously, denounced in his old age as the last

exponent of a dated style, Boucher had understood a very modern
concept: that in order to be known all over the world, his style might as
well be transmitted by the reproductive processes resulting in prints, or in
models executed after his designs in Sevres, Bow, Chelsea, Derby, and
many other types of porcelain; and that the superb tapestries woven at
Beauvais would, better than his pictures, carry the inventiveness of his
70. Bernard-Maitre, n.d. One of these
compositions from Stockholm to Parma and beyond Europe to China, 70
tapestries is now in the Cleveland Museum
of Art, the others of the series in a French
where until i860 his Tenture chinoise was kept in the Yuen-Min-Yuen
private collection. Palace in Peking.

Appendix

Because of the rarity of the catalogue of the Vincent Potocki collection (see note
57), we are reproducing below the pages of this publication that concern Boucher.
The works described in this catalogue have, thus far, not been traced. We hope
that this document will help establish the provenance of yet undiscovered
paintings and drawings by the artist.
Vincent Potocki (d. 1825) first married Ursule Zamoyska, whose mother,
Louise Poniatowska, was the sister of Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland. He
divorced her in 1781. Their son, Francois Potocki (1778—185 3), married Sidonie de
Ligne (1786-1823) in 1807. It is likely that the collection of paintings of Vincent
Potocki was eventually inherited by members of the Ligne family in Vienna.
Vincent Potocki's third marriage was in fact to Princess Helene Massalska, whose
first marriage had been to Charles-Joseph de Ligne.
Following are works by or after Boucher in the collection of Vincent Potocki
CATALOGUE DES DESSINS, TABLEAUX, MINIATURES,
listed in the

ESTAMPES &c CONTENUES Dans le Cabinet de S.E. Mr. le Comte

VINCENT POTOCKI, Due de Zbaraz &c. Mis en ordre par Henri Amiet,
. . .

Warsaw, 1780.

DRAWINGS
205 Un Dessein representant une Femme, beau morceau, d'une touche hardie,
a la sanguine. Haut 9 pouces, 6 lignes, large 7 pouces 10 lignes.
206 Un Groupe de trois hommes superieurement bien dessine a la sanguine. II
porte 9 pouces 6 lignes de haut, sur 8 pouces 1 ligne de large.
207 Une belle etude d'une Tete d'Enfant a la sanguine. Haut 4 pouces 11

lignes, large 4 pouces 6 lignes.

208 Etude d'une Minerve, d'un grand effet, au crayon noir. II porte 7 pouces
10 lignes de haut, sur 6 pouces 8 lignes de large.
209 Etude de Chinois au crayon noir. Haut 6 pouces 7 lignes, large 5
pouces
2 lignes.

210 a 216 Sept etudes diverses, parmis se voyent, Venus a sa toilette & deux
petits enfans, plein d'expression et de legerete, la plus grande partie au crayon
noir.

217 Superbe Dessin representant une femme coeffee en cheveux nattes, autour
de la tete & meles de perles, a la sanguine.

86
 218 Une femme echevelee, regardant en haut contre la gauche, representant
une Magdeleine, a la sanguine.
219 Un Dessein contenant deux tete d'enfans, bien exprime au crayon noir et

rouge, sur papier de couleur.

220 Un ditte, contenant une tete de Diane, sur la droite, et de jeune Femme
contre la gauche, dessine aux trois crayons sur papier gris.

ENAMELS
30 La Voluptueuse, par F. Bourgoin, d'apres F. Bouche. Une belle tete

exprimant la Passion, un beau Corps, une belle Gorge, de beaux Bras, une belle
Draperie, enfin une situation digne de son sujet se voient dans ce morceau rond,
et peint sur email. II porte 2 pouces 3 lignes, en tout sens.

PAINTINGS
184 Venus donnant une couronne de fleurs a PAmour. Esquisse peinte sur
toile: haut 15 pouces 2 lignes, large 12 pouces.

185 Une Baigneuse. Esquisse terminee ceintree du haut, peint sur toile d'apres
Bouche par Briagard: haut 15 pouces, large 12 pouces.
186 La toilette de Venus, PAmour devant elle tenant un ruban bleu, au bout
deux Colombes sont attachees. Esquisse peinte sur toile: haut 15 pouces, large 12
pouces.
187 Angelique et son Amant, devant eux deux Brebis et un Bouc, Phomme
ecrivant, sur le pied d'un arbre Angelique. Esquisse peinte sur toile, meme
grandeur.
Le trait dangereux. Venus tenant de la main droite une fleche et de la
188
gauche un carquois rempli de fleches, PAmour appuye contre sa mere, la prie
instament les mains jointes de lui rendre ces armes. Esquisse peinte sur toile: haut
14 pouces, large n pouces 8 lignes.
189 & 190 Deux Paysages, sur Pun a droite un jeune Homme assis, jouant de
la Clarinette, devant lui une Femme appuyee sur son genou de la main gauche, et
de la droite rec,oit une corbeille de fleurs d'un autre jeune Homme qui se voit sur
la gauche, sur Pautre une jeune Femme rec,oit une poire d'un jeune Homme assis a

son cote, a gauche se voit un panier remplis de fruits &c. Tableaux peints sur toile

d'apres Bouche: haut 15 pouces 4 lignes, large 18 pouces 4 lignes chaque.

191 & 192 Une Venus et une Leda d'apres Bouche. Tableaux peints sur toile: ils

portent chacun 24 pouces de haut, sur 26 de large.

193 Un Cupidon en Pair, tenant d'une main une fleche, & de Pautre un
flambeau, au dessus de lui se voient deux Colombes. Tableau peint sur toile,
d'apres Bouche: haut 17 pouces, large 14 pouces.

194 L'Amour aiguisant ces fleches pendant du precedent et meme grandeur.

195 Venus sur les eaux. Tableau peint sur toile: d'apres Bouche: haut 19 pouces
4 lignes, large 23 pouces 6 lignes.

196 Alliance de Bacchus et de PAmour, d'apres Bouche, meme grandeur.

197 Un Enfant jouant du hautbois, plusieurs livres et instruments de Musique
se voyent devant lui. Esquisse sur haut 24 pouces large 16 pouces.
toile:

198 Diane et Endimion, a droite se voient la Lune sur un nuage, ses deux
mains allongees sous la tete d'Endimion dormant, sur les genoux d'un Vieillard
qui est le symbole du terns. Belle esquisse bien terminee, peint sur toile: haut 11

pouces 3 lignes, large 8 pouces 10 lignes.

199 Les Nymphes de Psyche voient les fleches et le carquois de Cupidon

endormi.
200 Pendant du precedent, ou se voit Venus a sa toilette, faite par les trois
Graces et servie par une quantite de Cupidons. Ce tableau et le precedent sont
peints sur toile: ils portent chacun 24 pouces de haut, sur 30 pouces de large.

87
 201 ou se voit un Homme, un baton a la main et une besace sur le
Paysage,
dos, qui mene devant lui un Cheval et un troupeau de Moutons, allant de la droite
du Tableau sur la gauche, a son cote son Chien, et plus loin un Rocher qui remplit
toute la gauche, peint sur bois: haut 6 pouces 6 lignes.
202 Idem, ou se voit a droite un Homme a cheval, tenant un autre tout selle a

l'abreuvoir, a gauche un Homme et une Femme assis, et derriere eux un Chien, au

fond de la droite est un grand Rocher. Tableau peint sur bois: haut 6 pouces 2
lignes, large 5. pouces.
203 Idem, ou se voit une quantite de grands Rochers, a droite un Homme a

cheval mene Chevaux charges, au milieu un Chien qui passe l'eau,

plusieurs autres
a gauche un Homme
a cheval qui en mene aussi un charge, parlant a une Femme

qui a un panier a son bras gauche, et une verge a sa main droite, trois Moutons et
une Chevre autour d'elle, en haut de la gauche, sur un Rocher une Femme assise
et un Homme appuye sur le derriere du Boeuf, qui est a cote d'eux, ainsi qu'une

Chevre et un Mouton.
204 Idem, pendant, au milieu une Femme assise derriere trois Moutons, et
devant elle une Chevre regardant deux Hommes, un a cheval, avec qui elle semble
faire conversation, l'autre arrange la selle du sien, la gauche est terminee par deux

arbres. Tableaux capitaux et d'un beau coloris, peints sur toile, ils ont chacun 28
pouces de haut, sur 43 pouces de largeur.

88
 Explanatory Notes to the Catalogues

Titles English titles have been used for the works exhibited except
when translation would result in absurdity. Elsewhere, English

has been used unless there is a French title hallowed by long

usage, such as the title to an engraving.

Abbreviations S&M
Soullie, L. &
Masson, Ch. "Catalogue raisonne de Poeuvre
peint et dessine de Francois Boucher." In Franqois Boucher, by
Andre Michel. Paris, 1906.

A& W
Ananoff, Alexandre, &
Wildenstein, Daniel. Franqois
Boucher. 2 vols. Lausanne and Paris, 1976.

J-R
Jean-Richard, Pierrette. Musee du Louvre, Cabinet des
Dessins . . . Ecole francaise. Vol. I, L'oeuvre grave de Franqois
Boucher dans la Collection Edmond de Rothschild. Paris, 1978.

The references to S &M and A& W numbers at the head of

each entry are in parentheses when the picture exhibited is

described as lost since the original record(s) of it, or when its

identity or status is otherwise called into question.

Loans New York: exhibited only at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Detroit: exhibited only atThe Detroit Institute of Arts
Paris: exhibited only at the Grand Palais

Provenances Owners and sales are in Paris, unless otherwise stated.

References Throughout the essays and catalogue entries, references are

abbreviated. For full references, see References Cited. Publica-
tions are listed in alphabetical order except for exhibition
catalogues, which are arranged by date.

89
90
 St Bartholomew
Oil on paper laid down on panel
11V4 x 8 in. (29.5 x 20 cm)
Inscribed bottom left: S. barthelemi
Collection of Jean-Luc Bordeaux,
Santa Monica
(S&M833) (A&W24)
PROVENANCE
Paris art market, c.1980. The rediscovery and recognition of this painting and its former compan-
ion, a St. Andrew (fig. 69), by Pierre Rosenberg a few years ago has for
ENGRAVING
Bartbelemy, engraving by Etienne Brion
the first time given us some secure knowledge of Boucher's earliest style as
S.

dated 1726, published by Jeaurat (J-R 396); a painter. The absence of the Judgment of Susannah that he is supposed to
inscribed with John 1:47, which reports have impressed Lemoine with at the age of seventeen (Galerie Franqoise,
Christ's words at the calling of Nathaniel
1771, p. 1), and the realization that the picture now in the Columbia
(traditionally identified with Bartholomew):
Void un vrai Israelite sans deguisement et sans Museum of Art (cat. 5) does not represent Evilmerodach, and so cannot
artifice. be the composition with which he won the first prize at the Academy in

1723, leave us with no other painting that is datable with certainty to his
tyro years in Paris. These two Saints must indeed be the earliest surviving

pictures by Boucher.
The two pictures can be identified thanks to their having been engraved
as two of a set of depictions of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Twelve

Apostles plus St. Paul, published by Edme Jeaurat, all of which are dated
1726. The St. Bartholomew was engraved by Etienne Brion (J-R 396),
who also engraved St. James the Greater, St. Jude, and St. Simon; the St.
Andrew was engraved by Louis Jacob (J-R 1216), who was also responsible
for the St. Matthew and St. Thomas. None of the originals of the other
—
engravings has as yet come to light no doubt in some cases because their
authorship has not been recognized (although a drawing of St. Peter by
J-B. Deshays, which takes Haussard's engraving after Boucher as its point
of departure, has recently been exhibited [1984, London, no. 9]). The
engravings all say "E Boucher inv." rather than "pinx.," which suggests
that their originals might not all have been painted, but some of them
drawn instead, and the "inv." employed to cover the two cases throughout.
The date 1726 is only a terminus ante quern for the originals: the
Fig. 69. St. Andrew. Private collection, Paris. stylistic differences between these two not very distinctive little pictures,

and others that one is led to ascribe to Boucher's pre-Rome years, suggest
a more precocious dating, despite the fact that one might otherwise have
been tempted to see in them precisely the kind of painting referred to in
passing as "plusieurs petits tableaux" in the review of the "Exposition de
la Fete-Dieu" in the Mercure de France (June [II] 1725, p. 1402). In fact,
^K^M^ -
~-_^f'
they are almost more suggestive of the kind of mass-produced saints'
L " -J '

Kk i images that Watteau was reduced to a part in producing for a devotional

picture seller on the Pont Notre-Dame in his earliest years in Paris.

9 WmM ^H
'
V Thanks above all to the head of the present St. Bartholomew, one is also
tf
— enabled to recognize as Boucher's a Dream
of St. Joseph (fig. 70) that has
\4*^k J=» V^lP ^mi ^
recently appeared on the art market in Paris (Bordeaux, 1985, p. 31). Its
awkwardness of composition and woodenness of gesture can likewise only
Fig. 70. Dream of St. Joseph. Art market,
indicate a work of Boucher's extreme youth. Stylistically, the St.

Paris. Bartholomew (and the St. Andrew) scarcely suggest any very exalted

9i
 —

precedents; they are rooted in the guild routine to which Boucher's father
belonged, and they clearly antedate his son's contact with the academic
tradition, in the shape of Lemoine.
As is the nature of such essentially devotional images, the saints are all

clearly denoted by their attributes — generally by the respective instru-

ments of martyrdoms. Here, St. Bartholomew holds out the knife
their
with which he was flayed. The presence of the Castel S. Angelo-like
rotunda in the background is hard to explain, since St. Bartholomew's
apostolate and death are supposed to have occurred in India and Armenia.

The Surprise

Oil on canvas
32 x 25 5/4 x 65.6 cm)
in. (81.5

New Orleans Museum of Art

(S&M1170) (A&W79)

PROVENANCE This is most enigmatic picture in Boucher's oeuvre, both because of its
the
[The ownerships claimed by 18th-century sale
subject, which appears already to have baffled eighteenth-century cata-
catalogues, and the division into versions
loguers, and because of the problem of locating it within Boucher's
suggested here, are both subject to caution.]
C.;:.ilogue des Tableaux des Trots Ecoles . . .
output, since it is virtually sui generis in handling as well. There is not
&c. du Cabinet de MM. *** [Sorbet & ?], even any engraving or documentation to link it incontrovertibly with
Hotel d'Aligre (Remy .. 1 Apr. ft. 1776, lot 46:
Boucher; but the repeated ascription of the composition to him in
"ce Tableau peint par Francois Boucher, est
ragoutant, vigoureux de colons, & d'un pin- eighteenth-century sales, and the presence of a very similar cat advancing
ceau large; il est peint sur une toile qui pone off a woman's lap in the engraving by Joseph de Longueil after Boucher
2 pieds 6 pouces de haut, sur 2 pieds de large"
called Les caresses dangereuses (fig. 71; J-R 1402), support the attribution.
[in Saint- Aubin's copy of the catalogue in the

.-itsman coll.. New York, the picture is

This is despite the fact that the waters are further muddied by this

illustrated, and the price given as 70c livres]; engraving (only inscribed F Boucher inv.) being merely an adaptation
\otice des princtpaux Articles de Tableaux
&c, prozenans du Cabinet de feu M. COX-
. . .
with cat substituted for fan, and library for boudoir —of another untitled

TAXT 'DIYRYJ, Architecte de Roi print of 175c by Claire Tournay (J-R 1613; inscribed Bouche Pinx.) after a
&c,
. . . sa
maison, rue de Harlay (Joullain), 27 N01 lost painting.
1777, lot 6: "Ce tableau par le meme [i.e., the The spelling of Boucher's name on the latter engraving probably points
author of lot 5, Venus couchee .our
dans un paysage: 'peint par Fr.
.;

Boucher a son
to this painting of the Woman at Her Dressing Table with a Fan,
retour de Rome'], est peint vers le meme terns.
presumably so signed or inscribed, having been executed very early in his
Hauteur yz pouces, largeur 24 pouces. Toile"; career before the orthography of his name was settled, though not as earlv
Catalogue de Tableaux Onginaux des Grands
as The by the woman's features and the treatment of the
Surprise, to judge
—es des Trois Ecoles, qui omoient un des
Palais de feu son Altesse Monseigneur Chns- drapery in the engraving. The closest parallels that are to be found for the
tient, DUC DES DELX POXTS [i.e., Lemoinean features of the woman and young girl in The Surprise are those
Zweibrucken], Hotel d'Aligre (Remyj, 6 Apr. of the wife in Joseph Presenting His Brethren (cat. 5). The treatment and
ff. 1778, lot 71: "Ce tableau tient beaucoup de
coloration of the drapery of the young girl also find echoes in that picture,
la maniere de Francois le Moine; il est peint
sur toile qui pone 2 pieds 6 pouces de haut, as does the looped-back curtain. The head of the woman would appear to
sur deux pieds de large" [bought bv Xover for be further related to those in the engravings after The Encounter ofJacob
433 livres]; Xotice de Tableaux et Dessins du
and Rachel and Bethuel Welcoming the Servant of Abraham. All these
Cab. de M. *** Hotel de Bullion (Paille: 3 .

Apr. ff. 1783, lot 9: "Ce Tableau admirable- comparisons point to the picture's having been painted in the period
ment touche & d'une tres-belle couleur, est before Boucher left for Italv.

1
9-
 In its theme, however, and in the broken handling of paint, and even in
its unexpected delight in fabric and pattern (but compare the turkey carpet
in Joseph Presenting His Brethren), the present painting appears worlds
removed from these solemn biblical representations and other pictures
painted around the same epoch. The contrasting patterns of chintz
cushion and striped mattress ticking anticipate similar juxtapositions in
Liotard's Sultana Reading (Loche & Roethlisberger, 1978, color pi. xxvm);
but it should not be forgotten that Liotard may have drawn his inspiration
for his depictions of this subject not simply from Duflos's engraving after
Boucher in J-A. Guer's Moeurs et Usages des Turcs (1746), as Sir Karl
Parker was the first to suggest (Parker, 1930), but from an actual colored
drawing by Boucher, such as that once owned by Tessin (Sander, 1872, p.
61, no. 126), which is possibly one of those now in the Pierpont Morgan

Library.

Fig. 71. Les caresses dangereuses, engraved by The broken, flickering touch of the brush in The Surprise resembles
Joseph de Longueil after Boucher. nothing so much as what we find in Lemoine's Cleopatra (Minneapolis

93
 .

Institute of Arts; exh. cat. 1983, Atlanta, no. 2), ofwhich the woman here
might almost be a blonde transposition in a genre subject. Here lies,
surely, the clue to the proper dating of the picture. For Pierre Rosenberg,
in attributing the Cleopatra to Lemoine (Rosenberg, 1971-73, pp. 54-59),

has very plausibly dated it to just before his departure for Italy in 1723,
before the transformation of his manner by the encounter with
effected
the breadth and light of Venetian painting. Boucher's brief passage through
Lemoine's studio can only have occurred at this self-same period, when he
needed to take instruction from an established master in order to compete
for the Grand Prix. Boucher's sojourn in Lemoine's studio was, by his
own account, a short one, from which he profited little (Mariette, I,

1851-53, pp. 165-66), which his work generally bears out (but see cat. 4).
Now that we can also see that the Lemoine under whom he studied was
not the mature artist whose works are so easily recognizable, but the artist
Fig. 72. La jardiniere surprise. Private collec- of the Cleopatra, we can also see why
Boucher did paint
the little that
tion, Paris.
under Lemoine's influence has passed unrecognized as such. What makes
this phase of Boucher's development even harder to grasp is that, having

attained such virtuosity in the "manner of Lemoine," he turned his back

on it, to forge a highly individual, less painstaking style and handling of
his own. One further influence can be detected in the present picture,
which is apparent both in the choice of subject and in the features of the
man pulling aside the curtain, and that is of Lancret, whose reputation was
l'original de celui que nous venons de vendre,
at its height in these years immediately after the death of Watteau.
du Cabinet de M. Sprot" [see under Copies];
sale of the comte de Pourtales-Gorgier, Paris, 6 Marianne Roland-Michel has suggested that The Surprise may have been
Feb. 1865, lot 252 (as Deshays); sale of Prince painted as a pendant to La jardiniere surprise (fig. 72; A& W 91, fig. 376,
Paul Demidoff. 3 Feb. 1868, lot 21 (as
but since transformed by the removal of repainting that had added the wall
Deshavs ^reputedly bought for 5,900 francs
by the marquess of Hertford, according to an- on the left and concealed the vase on the right, very possibly to make the
notation in the copy of the sale catalogue in picture balance internally, rather than with a pendant). The suggestion is
the Cabinet des Estampes, but not recorded as
ever having formed part of his collection];
—
very tempting and the two pictures must certainly date from around the

Bloomingdale sale, Parke-Bernet, New York,

same time. The only objection to it is that in none of the sales in which
30 Oct. 1942, lot 23 (as Deshavs i; Paul Drev, either composition is recorded is it ever with a pendant; but then, as can
New York iexh. cat. 195 1, Oberlin, ex cata- be seen below, the present picture appears to have had a very changeable
logue [as by De Troy]; exh. cat. 19 5 8, Munich,
history, which cannot even be traced back to Boucher's lifetime.
no. 21 [as "attributed to Francois Boucher"];
Voss, 1959. p. 35 5 and fig. 2 [as by Boucher]); Two apparently autograph versions of this picture are known. Voss,
Georg Schafer, Schweinfurt; Christie's, who knew both of them at first hand, believed that the present one was
London, 14 July 1978, lot 15c; Galerie
the "first essay, executed with much greater freshness and immediacy"
Cailleux, Paris; from which acquired by the u
New Orleans Museum in 1984. (
mit weitaus grosserer Frische und Unmittelbarkeit ausgefuhrten ersten
Wurf" [Voss, 1959, pp. 353-54, fig- 2]).
REPLICAS
1. [Catalogue d'une belle Collection de
Tableaux des Trois Ecoles &c, provenans . . .

du Cabinet de M. *** ["Tronchin (pere't) ],

Hotel de Bullion (Dufresne & Le Brun), 12 COPIES
Jan. ff. "Le fond offre un jardin
178c, lot 105: 2. Kraemer sale, 5-6 May 1913, lot 21, 80 1 Misc. sale, Hotel d'Aligre (Basan), 1 Mar.
[not present here]. Hauteur 29 pouces, largeur x 64 cm (as "Ecole francaise"); Paul Cailleux, ff. 1779, lot 11: "dans le genre de Boucher,
23 pouces. Toile" [bought by tronchain (sic) Paris (Voss, 1953, p. 90, fig. 67; 1959, pp. 2 pieds et demi sur 2 pieds de large";
for 202 livres]; Sotice de Tableaux &c, . . .
353-54. fig- 0- Catalogue des Tableaux . . . &c. du Cabinet de
apres le dices de M. TROXCHAIX [i.e., 3. Version containing cat with different M. *** [Sprot], Hotel de Louvois (Paillet), 6
Tronchin fils], Tresoner du Marc d'Or, Hotel markings, 32 x 26 in., always attributed to Mar. ff. 1783, lot 61 [s.m.; sold for 72 livres].
de Bullion (Paillet & Chariot . 1 c Feb. ff. J-F de Troy: Warren Wright coll., New York; 2. Version without the man, c. 68 x 60 cm,
1785, lot 16: "un homme qui paroit a une Arnold Seligmann, Rev & Co., New York; Palais Galliera, Paris, 3 Dec. 1969, lot 47;
croisee [rather than the simple opening seen Julius Weitzner, Inc., New York (exh. cat. Hotel Drouot, Paris, 1 Dec. 1977, lot 4.

here]. Hauteur 30 pouces, largeur 24. Toile" 1936, Dallas, p. 29, no. 9); misc. sale, Parke- 3. Miniatures by Charlier, sale of Lfaine],
[If the descriptions were merely loose, possi- Bernet. New York, 24 Feb. 1949, lot 84. "peintre en miniatures," 19 Apr. ff. 1784, lot
bly identifiable with:] 154-

94
 3 Bethuel Welcoming the Servant of
Abraham
Oil on canvas
i8/4 X 14/, in. (46.5 x 37 cm)
Musee du Louvre, Paris (R.F. 1977-15)

Bethuel Welcoming the Servant of

Abraham
Oil on canvas
39/2x 32 in. (100 x 81 cm)
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg
(S&M715) (A&W33)
New York and Paris

PROVENANCE OF SKETCH
Le Rouge sale, 12 May ff. 1809, lot. ?; Osterby Both recent rediscoveries (the sketch suggestively lurking under the
coll., Sweden (as Tiepolo); misc. sale,
successive names of Tiepolo and Pellegrini before its acquisition by the
Bukowski, Stockholm, 29 Mar. -5 Apr. 1976,
Louvre), this sketch and finished picture belong to the series of depictions
Aldo Poggi, Rome; from
lot 175 (as Pellegrini);

whom acquired by the Louvre in 1977. of the lives of the Old Testament patriarchs that preoccupied Boucher in

the years before his stay in Italy. The reason for such a choice of subjects
PROVENANCE OF FINISHED PICTURE
Catalogue de Tableaux Precieux . . . &c., le
appears to have been twofold: On Boucher was responding
the one hand,

Cabinet de feu M. BLONDEL DE GAGNY, to the demand of the print publishers Jean-Francois and Laurent Cars and
Tresorier-General de la Caisse des Amortisse- Hecquet for images to engrave, to be put at the top of their thesis plates
ments, Place de Vendome (Remi), 10 Dec. ff.
(there being a surprising dearth of depictions of the Old Testament in
1776, lot 240: "Rebecca qui re$oit les presents
du serviteur d'Abraham, composition de France, in contrast to Italy). On the other hand, by attempting such
douze figures. Ce tableau est du meilleur^nre subjects as autonomous paintings rather than merely as disposable designs
de cet Artiste, & d'un coloris vigoureux; il est
for the engravers, Boucher was announcing his ambitions as a history
peint sur toile qui porte 3 pieds 1 pouce de
painter. These were the very kind of themes set by the Academy of
haut, sur 2 pieds 10 pouces de large" [bought
by the chevalier Lambert for 1230 livres, Painting and Sculpture for the Grand Prix, which he himself had won, but
according to a copy of cat. in Bibliotheque without receiving the usual recompense of a scholarship in Rome, so that
d'Art et d'Archeologie, Paris, which has an
he finally had to make his way there at his own expense.
additional note to the effect that he sold it in

1778 to M^ Haudry for 1239 livres 10 sous At first sight, the present composition appears to have been intended
(presumably in the following sale), and that: for just such a thesis plate, but the sequence of events is a little more
"Il avait ete fait sous les jeux de Lemoine avant
complicated than that. The engraving by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau after
que Boucher alia a Rome, il tientbeaucoup de
ce maitre"]; Catalogue des Tableaux des Trois
the finished picture is, as are all such plates, oblong, not upright (fig. 73).

Ecoles . . . &c. [assembled by Le Brun], Hotel Moreover, Perronneau was not born until 171 5 and could never have
d'Aligre (Chariot & Le Rouge), 19 Jan. ff.
engraved this plate before Boucher left for Rome in 1727. Although the
1778, lot 102 [width reduced to 2 pieds 6
very patchy and random survival rate of thesis plates and their long
pouces; apparently bought by M: Haudry for
1239 livres 10 sous (see preceding and succeed- continuance in the stock of the publisher make it hazardous to draw any
ing sales)]; Belle Collection de Tableaux Ori- conclusions from their use in this form, the date of 17 March 1740, on
ginaux . &c, composant le Cabinet de feu le
which H-M-B. de Rosset de Fleury de Ceilhes maintained the thesis for
. .

O HAUDRY, a vendre, s'adresser a Orleans,

which he used the engraving as a headpiece, is likely to be much closer to
place de reunion, no. 4 [s.d., but c. 1800,
la

when Haudry died], lot 26 [height reduced to the date at which it was engraved. What Cars, therefore, appears to have
36 pouces, width to 29 pouces; sold for 1200
done in the present case was, some time after it was painted, to have
francs]; sale of M.B ***, Paris, 24 Nov. 18 31,
lot 24; misc. sale, Nouveau Drouot, Paris, 14
borrowed the upright painting and to have had the print scraped in the
June 1985, lot 73. usual oblong format. In doing so, he appears to have glossed over the fact
that the moment of the story depicted was not exactly what he needed,
since there is a discrepancy between the subject suggested by the verse

95
ENGRAVING
Finished picture engraved in horizontal format
in reverse by Q-B.] Perronneau, published by
Laurent Cars, with an inscription in Latin,

taken from Genesis 24:50-51.

ANALOGIES
i. Another painting identified (possibly er-
roneously) as Eliezer Offering Jewels to Re-
bekah, z6'A x 27V2 in., Augustin de Saint-
Aubin's posthumous sale, 4 Apr. ff. 1808, lot 1

[sold with sketch of Pilgrims of Emmaus in

same lot, for 63 francs].

2. Eliezer et Rebecca, oil on canvas, 155 x
122 cm, Meffre aine, [comte de Morny] sale, 9

Mar. 1863, lot 5

[bought by Febvre for 276
francs].

3. Framed pen and bister drawing on white

paper, 9 x 13V, in., identified (possibly
erroneously) as Rebekah Receiving Presents
from Eliezer, with 10 figures, in Bergeret's
posthumous sale, 24 Apr. ff. 1786, lot 148;
possibly the same drawing (no details given),
misc. sale (Regnault), 21 germinal, l'an IV
(10 Apr. 1796), lot 37.

from Genesis quoted on the plate and the actual subject of the picture (it
must be admitted, however, that since their reappearance, both the sketch
and the finished picture have been similarly mistitled).
Whereas both sketch and finished painting clearly show the moment
when, presented by Rebekah's brother Laban, the servant of Abraham
(traditionally called Eliezer) is made welcome by their father Bethuel,
while Rebekah's maidens admire the jewels that Eliezer had given her at
the well (Genesis 24:24-33), the caption (Genesis 24:50-51) denotes the
moment when the servant of Abraham had finished explaining his mission
and was entrusted with conveying Rebekah back with him to become the
wife of Abraham's only son, Isaac. The makes the episode
finished picture
depicted even more clear-cut than the sketch by removing from the
foreground the inappropriate figure of the slave proffering gold plate, who
belongs to a later moment The title given to the picture in
in the story.

Blondel de Gagny's sale and subsequently, Rebekah Receiving Presents

Fig. 73. Bethuel Welcoming the Servant of
Abraham, engraved by J-B. Perronneau after from the Servant of Abraham, by contrast, refers either to the encounter at
Boucher. the well, when the servant of Abraham rewarded Rebekah for voluntarily

96
Fig. 74. Francois Lemoine, The Adoration of
the Magi (171 5). Courtesy of Christie's,
London.
drawing water for his camels by presenting her with a golden earring and
bracelets (Genesis 24:22), which she is seen showing off here, or to the
moment after he was entrusted with her, when he heaped her with "jewels
of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment" (Genesis 24:53). Cars had no
need of any depiction of Rebekah at the Well, however, since, as the

catalogue of his stock of thesis plates drawn up by his nephew Babuty in

1771 reveals, number 6 of the Old Testament subjects on Papier Grand

Aigle was "Rebecca destinee a Isaac, d'apres Halle," which must have
been Desplaces's engraving after Claude-Guy Halle, of Rebekah at the
Well;number 7 was listed, with evident uncertainty as to its exact subject,
as "Une autre Rebecca, d'apres F. Boucher." It is possibly significant for

Boucher's choice of theme that Lemoine had exhibited a small picture of

Rebecca qui reqoit les presents qu Isaac lui envoit at the "Exposition de la

Fete-Dieu" in 1723.
This confusion over the exact subject of the finished picture strengthens
Fig. 75.The Death of Adonis, engraved by the hypothesis of some interval between painting and engraving. A
Michel Aubert after Boucher (1733). manuscript note in the copy of the catalogue of Blondel de Gagny's sale in

97
 the Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie in Paris asserts that the finished
picture "had been executed under the eyes of Lemoine, before Boucher
went to Rome; it has much of that master in it." This, as we can now see
better, thanks to Pierre Rosenberg's recognition of a crucial early picture

by Lemoine, the Adoration of the Magi (fig. 74) that he showed the
Academie in 171 5 in order to be agree (Bordeaux, 1985, p. 71, no. 5),
whose appearance was previously known only from the drawing in the
d'Orsay collection in the Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre (exh. cat.
1983, Paris, no. 81), is the exact truth. It is not simply that the crowded
composition, with its wealth of carefully studied figures, their types, and
the shimmering treatment of drapery (but also the nervously broken folds
of that of the woman in the foreground, see The Surprise, cat. 2) are all

Lemoinean; but that the figure of the servant of Abraham is clearly

indebted to that of the foreground Magus in the Adoration. Already,
however, Boucher lays on the paint —particularly in the foreground sheep
and dog (who is employed in very similar fashion in both the vertical and
horizontal versions of the Death of Adonis and in the Martyrdom of the
Japanese Jesuits, see figs. 78, 75, 89) —with an impasto that was foreign to
the less declamatory brushwork of Lemoine. There is also a sense of
movement, extending even to inanimate things such as the tree, that sets
Boucher apart from the more measured Lemoine. Interestingly, this is
reduced in Perronneau's engraving after the finished picture, which also
gives all the figures greater amplitude and gravitas.
If the finished picture strongly reflects Lemoine, the sketch and here —
the former reattribution was by no means unintelligent has a quick, —
evanescent quality that suggests Pellegrini. It must have been very shortly
before this picture was painted that Pellegrini painted the brief-lived
ceiling of the Banque de Mississipi (1720), which Mariette (IV, 1856-58,

pp. 92-98) for one admired, and lor which Lemoine produced a rival
design (Bordeaux, 1985, no. 21). Despite this rivalry, it would appear that
Pellegrini's sketches —possibly for this very ceiling —were not without
influence on Lemoine's pupil, the young Boucher. Perhaps one can even
see the effect of the criticisms made by Lemoine, as Boucher's teacher, in
the more substantial air given to all the figures in the finished picture, as
in the numerous small adjustments of pose and characterization. The

more rustic notes sounded by the additional sheep (some of which were
necessitated by the removal of the inappropriate figure of Eliezer's servant
displaying plate), on the other hand, may be a shift of emphasis ascribable
to Boucher himself. All in all, however, either this picture gives the lie to
Boucher's claim to Mariette to have spent only a short time in Lemoine's
studio, and to have learned little from him, or — if it was simply painted
during or shortly after this brief period of preparation for the Grand
Prix — it shows formidably quick powers of assimilation.

98
 5 Joseph Presenting His Father and Brothers
to Pharaoh
Oil on canvas
223/4 x 28/2 in. (58 x 72.5 cm)
Inscribed lower left: boucher
The Columbia Museum; Samuel
H. Kress Collection (K2148)
(S & M
700) (A & 9) W
PROVENANCE
^Catalogue raisonne d'Estampes . . . &c. . . . Ever since the subject of was misidentified in 1954 by
this painting
du Cabinet de M' PREVOST, Dessinateur
Graveur, rue des Bons-Enfans no. 30 (Re-
et
Hermann Voss — understandably overjoyed to have found what he thought

gnault-Delalande), 8 Jan. 1810, lot 277; private

was the linchpin of his brilliant reconstruction of Boucher's juvenile
coll., London; sold Sotheby's, London, —
oeuvre as Evilmerodach Releasing Jehoiachin from Prison, the theme set
20 May 1953, lot 90 (as The Continence of for the Prix de Rome in the year in which it was won by Boucher (1723),
Scipio); H. D. Molesworth, London; Samuel
H. Kress coll., 1956; allocated to Columbia
this picture has enjoyed canonical status within the artist's oeuvre. Now
Museum in 1957. that its true subject has been perceived (Pigler's discreet rectification in his
Barockthemen, 1956, I, p. 89, having apparently passed unnoticed, the
present writer, having independently come to the same realization and
found confirmation communicated his findings for use in the
in Pigler,
catalogue of the Kaufmann and Schlageter donation to the Louvre; see
Rosenberg, 1984^], pp. 33-34), we no longer have a certain date for the
picture; yet it retains its importance as an undoubtedly early work. The
question is: how early — since it is too facile to retain, while overturn-
ing the traditional identification, the dating of the work that this carried
with it.

But first it is necessary to justify the reidentification of the subject. The

theme by the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1723 was
set
taken from 2 Kings 25:27-30 (repeated virtually word for word in
Jeremiah 52:31-34) and relates how Jehoiachin, the former king of Israel,
was released by Evilmerodach on his succession to Nebuchadnezzar as
King of Babylon after thirty-seven years' captivity (but still only aged
fifty-five) and set upon a "throne above the throne of the kings that were

with him in Babylon." In the present picture, the central figure is an aged
patriarch, not a middle-aged king; there are no signs of former captivity,
and no throne is prepared for him. Instead, a young man in a turban
(Joseph) is introducing to a ruler (Pharaoh) his 130-year-old father (Jacob)
and his brethren and their wives, whose calling as herdsmen can be
recognized from their staffs (the youngest, on the far right, may well be
Benjamin), exactly as narrated in Genesis 47:1-10.
The setting of this composition and, in particular, the figure of Pharaoh
have something of the character of certain of the drawings for the Histoire
de France, as Colin Eisler (1977, pp. 315-16) and Eric Zafran (exh. cat.
1983, Atlanta, no. 3) have indicated (fig. y6); but as Eisler also observed,
the organization of the picture, with the protagonists disposed upon steps
in the front plane, and with a looped curtain and salamonic columns
flanking an arch framing a patch of cloud-flecked blue sky forming a
backdrop, is essentially Venetian in character. Furthermore, as compared
with the Mutius Scaevola (cat. 8), the forms of the figures and drapery are

99
 less mannered, and the fall of light is more studied, and its effects on flesh
and stuffs exploited. The whole painting is on a small scale, and the
handling is appropriately delicate, but the overall impression is of scaled-
down monumentality. Despite the presence of details that suggest French
models —the head of the wife behind Jacob evokes those of Lemoine's
women, while that of Jacob himself draws upon a patriarchal type
apparently established by Antoine Coypel (see exh. cat. 19S3, Karlsruhe,
'o Louis All c
Dessins, Lou-
Kunsthalle, no. 10) — the overall impression is as much almost, if not
more, Italian.

The French painter with the "miniature monumentality" of whose

works the present picture immediatelv prompts comparison is Nicolas
Yleughels, the director of the French Academy in Rome from 1724 to his
death in 1737 (see esp. his Circumcision of 1726, and his Christ in the
House of Simon the Pharisee and Marriage at Cana of 1727 and 1728;
Hercenberg, 1975, cat. nos. 107, 109, no). Yleughels, with his well-known
admiration for the Venetian school, is also the likeliest conduit for its
influence upon Boucher, before the latter had had the opportunity of

10c
 seeing an appreciable number of its works at first hand. This might suggest
that the present picture had been painted in Rome, but it does not fit

comfortably so late in Boucher's development. In handling the drapery

Boucher still employs little squiggles to suggest broken folds, in a way
characteristic of the early Lemoine (see The Surprise, cat. 2). Many of the
heads employ his types, but above boy at the far right is
all, the eager
evidently studied from the same model as the young servant crouching at
the far left of the Bethuel Welcoming the Servant of Abraham. The
handling of the present picture is both more lively and more idiosyncratic
than that of the latter, however, so that it would appear that Vleughels's
was simply one of the influences that Boucher drew upon in order to
emancipate himself from his former master and forge a style of his own,
one less monumental and more miniature. The subject matter of the
painting— taken from the lives of the Old Testament patriarchs is also of —
the kind that appears to have occupied his brush in the years before and
during his sojourn in Rome, and it is early in this group that it probably
should be placed, after his Lemoinean pictures for Cars, but before he
embarked on his Castiglionesque scenes from the Old Testament and from
rural life, or on his small mythologies, in other words, in the period
1723-26.

The Sacrifice of Gideon

Oil on canvas
49/2X 33 in. (126 X 84 cm)
Othon Kaufmann and Francois
Schlageter collection, Strasbourg;
donated, subject to life interest, to the
Musee du Louvre, Paris (R.F. 1983-72)
(S&M721) (A&W37)

PROVENANCE
La Live de Jully coll., salon of his house in rue The most spectacular of all the rediscoveries of a work by Boucher since
Saint-Honore (by 1757; see Dezallier, 1757, the Rape of Europ a and the Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus now in
p. 150) and then (by 1764; see Catalogue
the Wallace Collection were rescued from their misattribution to Lemoine
histonque, p. 92: "Ce morceau, d'une tres-

belle couleur & d'une heureuse composition, in i860, The Sacrifice of Gideon was recognized by Pierre Rosenberg when
rappelle avec plaisir l'Ecole ou cet agreable it was offered for sale some years ago masquerading as a Sebastiano Ricci
Artiste a perfectionne ses talens naturels") rue
(seeRosenberg, 1984^], no. 1). This not wholly implausible attribution,
de Richelieu [no. 81], salon sur le jardin; his
sale, 5 Mar. ff. 1770, lot 93: "Un autre Tableau together with the for the young Boucher apparently unprecedented scale
aussi tres ragoutant . [bought for 758 livres
.
."
and character of the work, led Rosenberg to the natural — albeit tentatively
by Metra,
copy of
who
cat. in
is claimed by a ms. note in
Bibliotheque de l'Art et de
advanced —conclusion was one of the first fruits of
that the picture

l'Archeologie, Paris, to have been acting as

Boucher's journey to Italy. In this he was at the time wholeheartedly
agent for the Czarina; if true, she must have seconded by the present writer. That would also appear to have been the
declined the purchase]; [de Vassal de Saint-
opinion of so fine a contemporary connoisseur as Mariette, if he was
Hubert] sale, rue Vivienne, 17 Jan. ff. 1774, lot
indeed at the elbow of La Live de Jully when the latter drew up the
99: "Un tableau d'un bonfaire, & vigoreux de
coloris . .
." [bought for 1400 livres by catalogue of his own collection in 1764, in which it is said that the picture:
Boileau, acting for the prince de Conti]; prince "recalls with pleasure the School where this delightful Artist perfected his
de Conti's sale, 8 Apr. ff. 1777, lot 720: "Ce
natural endowments" {"rappelle avec plaisir VEcole ou cet agreable Artiste

101
102
tableau ragoutant de coloris, est d'une touche a perfectionne ses talens naturels" [Catalogue historique, 1764, p. 92]).
tres savante ." [bought for 2012 livres by
. .

Written with a capital E, and put in this way, "Ecole" could only have
Paillet]; misc. sale, Hotel de Bullion (A-J.
Paillet), 23 May ff. 1780, lot 23: "Un des chef-
been intended to refer to one of the four acknowledged national schools of
d'oeuvres de ce Peintre, tant par le beau ton de painting epoch (training at the Academy was not yet sufficiently
at this
couleur que par la touche s^avante & le genie
organized for it to have been called an "Ecole," nor would a single master
de la composition . .
." [sold for 1700 livres];
such as Lemoine have been so described). The only two national "Ecoles"
[Montaleau] sale, Maison du Mont-de-Piete
(Paillet & Delaroche), 19 July ff. 1802, lot 5: that the cataloguer could have had in mind were the French and the
"Ce morceau a toujours ete distingue dans le Italian. Bearing in mind Mariette's inability to identify any native master
nombre des ouvrages de ce Peintre, autant par
la richesse de la couleur que par le brillant de
by whom Boucher had been formed, it is evident that only the Ecole

son execution . .
." [bought for 225 francs by italienne could have been intended.
Penose (sic);] Cooper Penrose, Waterford, and Nor was this invocation of the Italian school misguided. The error has
thence by descent; Somerville & Simpson,
been to go on to draw the natural conclusion that this influence had to
London, from whom acquired in 1978.
wait until Boucher's journey to Italy to make itself felt. There are in fact

ENGRAVING several indicators that attach this picture to works painted some time
Sacrifice de Gideon, published by Jean- before he finally traveled there in 1728. Some of them have only recently
Francois Cars on Papier au Petit Chapelet (see
Catalogue, 1771, no. 16) [no example
become apparent, with the rediscovery of the finished picture of Bethuel
p. 10,

traced]. Welcoming the Servant of Abraham (cat. 4), the engraving after which has
always been somewhat misleading about its style and character. Most
readily apparent are the resemblances between figure types. The head of
Gideon is patently conceived along the same lines as that of Bethuel (in
certain respects, the affinities are even closer with his head as it is painted
in the sketch, cat. 3), his hands are similarly articulated, and their manner
of gesticulation common to that of both Bethuel and the servant of
Abraham (and beyond them, to that of St. Joseph in the yet earlier Dream
of St. Joseph, fig. 70). The witness to the left of Gideon's sacrifice is clearly
studied from the same model as the servant holding a loaf to the right of
Bethuel. The female witness in the foreground of the Sacrifice of Gideon is
a variation upon the similarly posed and placed figure of a maidservant in
the foreground of Bethuel Welcoming the Servant of Abraham. The latter
is even pouring water into a ewer of almost identical form to the one
Fig. 77. Selene and Endymion. Private collec-
tion, France.
found of Gideon.
in the Sacrifice

In handling, however, the Sacrifice of Gideon is very different from the

Bethuel Welcoming the Servant of Abraham. Gone are the muted colors
and the Lemoinean preoccupation with the fall of light on drapery and
flesh; in their place are more vivid coloristic effects, as in the sacrificial fire
and Gideon's robe, and a much more pronounced chiaroscuro. At the
same time, the handling of paint has become freer and rougher, drawing
attention to its own virtuosity in a way that would have been incon-
ceivable in the carefully toned and modulated compositions of Lemoine (at
least until he started to react to the innovations of his own former pupil).

In this it most resembles the handling of the early group of small

mythological paintings, none of which, regrettably, has it proved possible
to borrow for this exhibition: The Birth and Death of Adonis, which,
significantly, also once belonged to La Live de Jully (A & 38, 39; last W
recorded with the heirs of Matthieu Goudchaux; a pair of replicas of the
same size in a private collection in Switzerland; a pair of replicas of larger
dimensions, 96 x 128 cm, sold Paris, Palais Galliera, 22 Nov. 1972, lots 23,

1 K MUKT D'ADONIS
24); the Selene and Endymion (fig. 77; A & W
36; since rediscovered and
exh. 1982, New York, no. 5 now in a private collection in France); and
;

Fig. 78.The Death of Adonis, engraved by the upright Death of Adonis (see fig. 78; A & W
87; sold Sotheby's
Louis Surugue after Boucher (1742). Monaco, 26 May 1980, lot 553; now in a private collection, Saint-Jean-

103
PREPARATORY DRAVING Cap-Ferrat), which provides the best chance of dating the whole group,
Supplement to sale of l'abbe Renouard,
since it appears to have been painted as a pendant to Carle Vanloo's Mars
ic Feb. ff. 1780, lot 197: "Un beau Dessin"
[glazed, but no further details]; misc. sale
and Venus (see fig. 31; exh. cat. 1977, Nice, no. 259; still missing), which
(LeBrun), 14 Apr. ff. 1784, lot 110: "composi- Dandre-Bardon (1765, p. 63) dates to 1726. It is with the androgynous,
tion de cinq figures; dessin a la plume & au
elongated bodies in the last of these mythological paintings by Boucher
bistre, sur papier blanc. Hauteur 2c pouces,
largeur 13 pouces" [bought for 14 livres 9 sous
that the figure of the angel in the Sacrifice of Gideon has most affinity.
bv Constantin]. Common whole group of pictures is the profusion of frothily
to the
rendered, color-flecked clouds and smoke.
The problem with placing the Sacrifice of Gideon in relation to these
small mythological pictures lies in deciding whether it was painted before,
after, or even concurrently with them, and in the fact that there is no

other picture that is strictly comparable. It represents an extreme of both

size and painterhness to which Boucher did not again aspire until after his
return from Although of an Old Testament subject, it is quite
Italy.

different in character from the paintings of this kind that are currently
known. It must fall in time between the Bethuel Welcoming the Servant of
Abraham (cat. 4) and the Joseph Presenting His Brethren (cat. 5), which
betray an apprentice indebtedness to Lemoine and Vleughels respectively,
and the two paintings of Noah (cat. 10, 11), which embody the distinctive
miniature manner that Boucher had evolved before leaving for Rome.
Although the Gideon was one of the three subjects set by the
Sacrifice of
—
Academy for the concours of 1721 in which Boucher was probably
anyway too young and inexperienced to have competed and although his —
composition was engraved for Jean-Frangois Cars's stock of thesis plates,
it is of the wrong size and format to have been executed for either contin-

gency. It seems instead to have been a rare example of a commissioned

picture, painted after Boucher had emancipated himself from the chore of
providing designs for thesis plates, while still in that vein of infrequently

depicted Old Testament subjects.

The episode illustrated (which was curiously one much favored by
Boucher's Venetian contemporaries) is that of Judges 6:21, in which
Gideon, having asked for a sign that he had indeed been chosen by God to
deliver Israel from the Midianites, has his sacrifice consumed by fire
kindled by the staff held by an angel. Whereas the better-known episode
of Gideon and the fleece was sometimes depicted as an antetype of the
Virgin birth, the present scene had no such significance, and one can
therefore perhaps see it chiefly as a pretext for Boucher to impress
potential clients with a novel subject, which gave him the opportunity of
displaying his most ragoutant color and bravura faire in the flames and
smoke of the sacrifice.
What models Boucher looked at to aid him in this emancipation from
Lemoine and his other early mentors is not readily apparent. It was surely
paintings of the Italian school that provided the inspiration for the
ragoutant effects of his brushwork; but to point to a particular painter — if

such there was — is more problematic. The obvious figure, Sebastiano

Ricci, does not appear to have left much evidence of his passage through
France (his morceau de reception Academy, the Triumph of Learning
in the
over Ignorance, Daniels, 1976^], no. 297, is one of his more conventional
performances), nor is there any real sign of influence emanating from him
or from that other recent bird of passage, his compatriot Pellegrini, in
either the types or the brushwork of the present picture. There is also no

104
 trace as yet of the bravura color effects or hatched brushstrokes that
Boucher was to absorb from his study of Castiglione, which are only
evident after his return from Italy. One can only echo Mariette's
exasperated question: "Whose follower is he then?" ("De qui est-il done le

disciple?" [Mariette, I, 1851-53, p. 165]), Boucher had a

and admit that
striking ability to transmute whatever influences he did undergo into not
one, but a succession of striking personal idioms. It is especially fitting
that this key work of Boucher's early development should have found its

place in a collection begun under the auspices of the greatest expositor of

that development, Hermann Voss.

7 Les oies de Frere Philippe

Gouache on taffeta
8/4 X x 42 cm)
16/2 in. (21
Musee des Beaux-Arts et d'Archeologie
de Besancon (inv. 848.7.1)
(S&M2605) A&Wfig. 8

Paris

PROVENANCE
PCollection of Jean de Jullienne; thence by gift This gouache is unique in Boucher's surviving oeuvre, not only in its
or descent to: Catalogue d'une belle Collection
medium, but also in the Watteauesque character of its female protagonists
de Tableaux . . . &c., venans du Cab. de
M.M[on]t[ulle], Hotel de Bullion (Le Brun),
and landscape. It is also rare among his paintings in illustrating a story,

22 Dec. ff. 1783, lot 99 [bought for 29 livres 19 although between 1736 and 1747 he was to prepare monochrome oil
sous by Constantin]; Catalogue d'une belle sketches of four of the Contes of La Fontaine for de Larmessin to engrave.
Collection de Dessins des Trois Ecoles, Hotel de
Bullion (Constantin), 2 Apr.
If it were to be a fan leaf, which would help to account for some of these
ff. 1787, lot 63:
"Cette charmante gouache, faite dans la singularities, it would also be a unique survival, but it is by no means sure
maniere de Vateau . .
."; Bruzard sale, 23-26 that is what it is, despite its recent inclusion in an exhibition of designs for
Apr. 1839, lot 25; acquired by the Musee de
fan leaves (exh. cat. 1984, Stuttgart, no. 31).
Besancon in 1848 for 100 francs.
The story is taken from La Fontaine's version of one told in the
PREPARATORY DRAWING introduction to the fourth day of Boccaccio's Decameron. Frere Philippe
De Jullienne sale, 30 Mar. ff. 1767, lot 947:
was widower turned hermit who had brought up his only son in the wild
a
"Les Oyes du Frere Philippe: dessein a la
plume & colore, de 7 pouces 6 lignes de haut,
to preserve him from the evils of human contact. When finally taken to
sur 11 pouces 9 lignes de large" [sold for 47 town, the son was filled with insatiable curiosity about everything they
livres]; misc. sale (Le Brun), 11 Dec. ff. 1780, saw. Their encounters included one with a group of finely dressed young
lot 212: "Dessins aquarelles [sic] sur papier
Hauteur Largeur pouces 6
women. Never having seen a woman in his life, the son asked his father
blanc. 9 pouces. 12
lignes" [sold for 9 livres]; marquis de Sabran what kind of thing that was. "It's a bird — called a goose," replied the
sale (Basan), 2-4 Dec. 1782, lot 92; Ch. father."Oh!" said the son, who had some familiarity with poultry and felt
Drouet coll. (exh. cat. 1901, Paris, no.
strangely drawn to this new variety of fowl. "Can't we take one home and
).

feed it up?"
The story was illustrated by a number of French artists in the eighteenth
century, most notably by Vleughels (a painting, dated 1729, sold 6 June
1805, lot 61), by Subleyras (Louvre), and by Lancret on more than one
occasion (see G. Wildenstein, 1924, nos. 658-62). Subleyras's picture has
no affinity with Boucher's, which, like Lancret's, somewhat traduces the
story (but creates a subtle suggestion of the encounter with a gaggle of
birds of exotic plumage) by situating it in the countryside. Why Boucher

105
 should have adopted this uncharacteristic subject is uncertain; however, it

is evidently a work of his youth, when he would naturally have been

disposed to try his hand at anything.

I
-T • Yet this versatility never normally seems to have included the execution
of fans. When Grimm (Correspondance litteraire, II, p. 282) said in 1753
y a longtemps qu'on appelle ce peintre un peintre d'eventail," it
that, "II

was because of his garish colors, not because of any such activity. If we
come across mentions of fans in connection with Boucher, these generally

Fig. 79. Landscape in the Veneto (after Cam-

concern designs supplied for execution by others: e.g., the two depic-
pagnolaj. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. tions of Amusemens de Campagne composed for the Czarina Elzvieta
(Huquier sale, 1 July ff. 1771, lot 18); the drawings in the Lempereur and
Collet sales (24 May ff. 1773, lot 538 [A & W fig. 413], and 14 May ff.

1787, lot 439); or the drawing of Bacchus and Ariadne in the National
Gallery of Canada (see exh. cat. 1984, Stuttgart, no. 32). The one occasion
on which we know Boucher accepted a commission for a fan, for Count
Tessin in 1746, he proposed executing it in india ink and watercolor and,
having been persuaded to paint it on vellum instead, took almost a year to
produce it, because of his unfamiliarity with the difficulties of the task
(Scheffer, 1982, pp. 135-66 passim). Most significantly of all, on neither of
the two occasions when the present gouache passed through the salerooms
in the eighteenth century was it suggested that it was intended as a fan (see
Provenance). Closer examination of the object bears this out: there is

nothing in the composition to suggest that it was intended to fit into a

semicircle (unlike all by Boucher's contemporaries
the other designs
illustrated in the above-mentioned catalogue), and it is impossible to
detect any difference of support or handling in the "added" segments. The
presumption is, therefore, that they are not added at all, but evidence of

ic6
 arrested vandalism, when someone's hand was stayed from cutting this
gouache on silk into the web of a fan.
The medium alone is almost enough to declare this gouache an ex-
periment of Boucher's youth, since references to other gouaches by him
are extraordinarily rare: there was an ecran with La belle Bouquetiere,
"drawn in pen and painted in gouache" in Huquier's posthumous sale
(9 Nov. ff. 1772, lot 7); a pair of oval gouaches, Painting and Sculpture, in

Bergeret's posthumous sale (24 Apr. ff. 1786, lot 114); and the rather
surprising use of gouache, for a sketch, Venus sur les eaux, which was
engraved by Daulle and included in Vennevault's posthumous sale

(26 Mar. ff. 1776, lot 19) and Basanpere's sale (i Dec. ff. 1798, lot 74).
The preparatory watercolor also points to an early date, since this was
a medium that Boucher only employed in his youth.
Details of the composition likewise point to Boucher's early years,
Fig. 80. La bonne aventure, engraved by principally its Watteauesque elements, of which the most obvious is the
Pierre Aveline after Boucher (1738).
Campagnola-derived view of a town on the right (fig. 79). There are
parallels for this in a signed drawing by Boucher in the de Boer collection
in Amsterdam Amsterdam, no. 17) and in a drawing
(see exh. cat. 1974,
disputed between Watteau and Boucher in the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge, which seems to sit most comfortably with the drawings of the
latter (see Jacoby, 1979). Watteau's is the very influence that one would

expect to see predominant in the years immediately prior to Boucher's

departure for Italy, when his main occupation must have been making
etchings after Watteau's compositions for de Jullienne's Recueil. The
umbrella pine and the cypresses, on the other hand, might almost suggest
firsthand experience of Italy on Boucher's part, were they not also to have
been constant elements of Watteau's landscapes, and hence additional

Tv^vM
m -^iJ-'-l^r
'
^ \•^'Jjl
«^A • —%B A
evidence of his influence.
The figures of the women are modish, and thus perhaps more suggestive
of Lancret than Watteau, but those of Frere Philippe and his son relate
. %1P^*™§gSBI directly to Boucher's
and beard fusing into one long
own early works, particularly the old
vertical, who
man, with face
has an extensive kindred in
Fig. 81. The Death of Meleager.
A. S. Ciechanowiecki collection, on extended these years. His closest relative is the fortune-teller in Aveline's La bonne
loan to the University of New Mexico Art
aventure (fig. 80), an engraving that was announced in the Mercure de
Museum, Albuquerque.
France in April 1738, but whose strikingly Watteauesque original must
date from at least a decade earlier. Related again is the figure supporting
the body of the hero from behind in the various versions of the sketch of
The Death of Meleager (one of which, paired with The Birth of Meleager,
was in Dandre-Bardon's posthumous sale [23 June ff. 1783, lot 5]; a pair,
attributed to Dandre-Bardon himself and called La naissance d'Oedipe and
La mort de Meleagre, in the Musee Bargoin, Clermont-Ferrand; a Death
of Meleager with the same attribution in an English collection on loan to
the New Mexico Art Museum [fig. 81; see exh. cat. 1980, Albuquerque,
no. 12]; and another, formerly attributed to Fragonard, called Antiochus et
Stratonice [see Portalis, 1889, p. 271], currently on the Paris art market).
The hounds in the two compositions are also visibly from the same ken-
nels. Related, via the figure in The Death of Meleager, is also that of the
pontifex in the Mutius Scaevola (cat. 8). And finally there is the figure of
Laban drawing The Separation of Lab an from Jacob recently
in the
acquired by the Louvre (see exh. cat. 1984, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins,
no. 78).

107
 . —

Les oies de Frere Philippe appears to stand alone in Boucher's oeuvre.

One can only speculate at his motives for adopting this medium and kind
of subject, and for his soon virtually abandoning them, but it is evident
was not among them. We should be grateful that
that lack of capability
—
chance has also preserved in this unaccustomed mode of painting
Boucher at his most Watteauesque. In this feature, at least, we can surely
detect the endeavor to cater to the tastes of his client, particularly if — as

seems likely — this was Watteau's great propagandist, de Jullienne. Not

only did the latter own the preparatory watercolor for this gouache, but
its first recorded owner, J-B-F. de Montulle, was his son-in-law.

8 Mutius Scaevola Putting His Hand in

the Fire

Oil on canvas
23/2 x 19 in. (60cm) x 48. 5

Musee Sandelin, Saint-Omer (inv. D.3)

PROVENANCE
Catalogue d'une belle Collection des Tableaux This vibrantly treated sketch was once demoted — no doubt because of the
des Trois Ecoles . . . &c. composant le Cabinet apparent absence of anything comparable in his oeuvre — "school of
to
de M. PARIZEAU, Peintre & Grave ur a Pans,
Hotel de Bullion (Paillet & Boileau), 26 Mar.
Boucher," and then somewhat willfully ascribed to Dumont le Romain
ff. 1789, lot 97 [bought by Renaud (Regnault) because of his derivative signed and dated oblong picture of 1747 of the
for 24 livres]; ^Cabinet de feu M. [le chevalier same subject in the Musee des Beaux-Arts at Besangon (see Locquin, 1978,
de DameryJ, 18 Nov. 1803, lot 15 [under the
pp. 6, 177, and pi. 5).
name of Fr. Lemoine]; chevalier d'Orlemont's
posthumous sale, Paris, 9 Feb. 1833, lot 33:
On the cumulative strength of the evidence, as was tentatively proposed
"Bonne esquisse du maitre fait a Rome"; Dr. by Philippe-Gerard Chabert in 1980 (exh. cat. 1980, Nord, no. 106), this
Louis La Caze; bequeathed with his collection
sketch must, however, be given to Boucher himself. Not only does the
to the Louvre in 1869; consigned to Samt-
Omer in 1872.
style point to the artist, although admittedly to a previously unsuspected
phase of his development as a painter, but we also have a closely related
DRAWINGS drawing by the young Boucher of this composition, and the record
Compositional study (preparatory to a print? I,

black chalk heightened with white on blue

of an oil sketch by him of this subject, of the same dimensions, in an
paper, 465 x 378 mm, Suida-Manning coll., eighteenth-century sale.
New York (fig. 84; exh. cat. 1973-74, Wash- Most telling, particularly for the prospect that it opens up of recovering
ington, no. 2).
a crucial phase in Boucher's development before he went to Rome, is the

ANALOGIES kinship between the ductus of this oil sketch and that of Boucher's pen-
1 Mutius Gordius Scaevola dans le camp de and-wash drawings prepared for the 1729 edition of P. Gabriel Daniel's
Porsenna, sketch composed of 16 figures, black
Histoire de France, which are now in the Louvre (for the recognition of
chalk on white paper, 10 pouces x \ pied,
Gros sale, 14 Apr. ff. 1778, lot 67 (illustrated
these as Boucher's, overturning their old ascription to Cazes, see Ruch,
by Saint-Aubin in his copy of the catalogue; 1964). The affinity is not limited to the handling, to the types of the
Dacier, IV, no. 7, 191 26 and facsimile).
3, p. figures, and to the character of the drapery, with its multiple sausagelike
Mutius Scaevola before Porsenna, painting
2.

signed Dumont Le Rom. 174J, 165 x 192 cm,

folds; it extends to the almost direct repetition of the figure of the fallen
Musee de Besan^on (Magnin, 1919, p. 225); warrior (a device first used for the body of Adonis in the Venus and
many details, including the figure of the
borrowed by Dumont
Adonis of about 1726 [private collection, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat; A& W
assassinated secretary,
from the present composition.
87, unlocated and misdated]) in Charles Martel Annihilating the Saracen
Army (fig. 82; Guiffrey & Marcel, III, 1909, no. 2169; see also A & W
fig. 2) in that of Porsenna's assassinated secretary in the forefront of
Mutius Scaevola, and to the repetition of the figure of Francois II in the

108
Fig. 82. Charles Martel Annihilating the
Saracen Army. Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre.

Fig. 83.The Condemnation of the Templars.

Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre.

Requite des Huguenots (Guiffrey & Marcel, III, 1909, no. 2185; Ruch,
•J'
1964, fig. 22) in that of Porsenna himself. Furthermore, both the
Condemnation of the Templars (fig. 83) and the Querelle entre le Comte
de Valois et Enguerant de Marigny employ a repoussoir figure with out-
stretched hand at the edge of the picture in a similar way to the pontifex
(Guiffrey & Marcel, III, Ruch, 1964, figs. 21, 24).
1909, nos. 2181, 2180;
^&& Having established the close kinship of the Mutius Scaevola with the
\
drawings for the Histoire de France, we need to rectify the common
misdating of the latter. Encouraged, no doubt, by a belief that the
distortions of these drawings indicate Boucher's stylistic immaturity, most
commentators follow P-J. Mariette and imply an association in date
between them and the second edition of the Histoire de France, dating
from 1722. The case is quite otherwise. The 1722 edition published by his
uncle Denvs Mariette was adorned mostlv with woodcuts, and the onlv
illustrations with any artistic pretensions were the two commissioned
Fig. 84. Mutius Scaevola Putting His Hand in
the Fire. Collection of Robert and Bertina from Vleughels (see Hercenberg, 1975, nos. 333, 334). Boucher's
Manning. illustrations appear only in the third edition, published jointly by Denys

109
 Mariette and Jacques Rollin in 1729. The preparation of this edition can
hardly have begun much before 1727, the date on the false title page
announcing the project, which is bound in with the copy in the Biblio-
theque Nationale. The distortions apparent in Boucher's illustrations are
thus not the product of artistic immaturity, but the willed pursuit of an
individual hand, such as was also to characterize the years after his return
from Italy. The disconcerting thing about Boucher, however, is that his
development was not linear, and that, having achieved so intensely
personal a manner just before his departure for Rome, albeit one that was
really suitable only for application on a small scale, he could reculer pour
mieux sauter and forge a quite different manner in Italy and in the years
immediately after his return, one that enabled him to become an artist of
quite a different stature.
There is no indication that any large-scale work was ever executed from
the present sketch; indeed the drawing (fig. 84; see exh. cat. 1973-74,
Washington, no. 2) possibly suggests that none was intended, that the
sketch existed in its own right, and that its vibrant qualities were to be
disseminated in an etching or engraving. The story of the Roman Mutius
Scaevola (Mutius the Left-Handed) relates how, when he had concealed
himself in the camp of Porsenna, the king of Etruria, in order to
assassinate him and had killed his secretary in error, he thrust his right
hand into the sacrificial fire to make his point that, even though he had
failed, there were three hundred more young Romans with like courage to
renew the attempt — a demonstration that so alarmed Porsenna that he
sued for peace. In the painting, Mutius is indeed putting his right hand
into the fire, but in the drawing, in which the whole composition has been
reversed (so as to produce an image the right way round when engraved)
and slightly altered, it is his left. It is intriguing that the picture should
first be recorded in the possession of a painter-etcher, Philippe-Louis
Parizeau (1740-1801), who also recorded one of Boucher's sketches in an

etching, his Psicbe refusant les honneurs divins (see cat. 34); but Parizeau
was not even alive at the time the present picture was painted. Possibly he
acquired it from whichever engraver had intended but failed to make a
plate from it.

9 La vie champetre
Oil on canvas
24 /, x 19 x 48 cm)
1
in. (61

Private collection, London

(S&M1844) A&W55

PROVENANCE
This picture is unique in having a virtually unbroken English provenance
Sale held by Andrew Hay, London, [14/15
Feb.] 1744 (O.S.)/i745 (N.S.), 2nd day, lot 33, extending back to a date not long after it was painted. Like almost all the
A Harvest with Fig'., a Man Sleeping [bought other Bouchers that featured in English sales or collections in the
for £15 by Peters]; sale held by Bragge, 1756,
eighteenth century, it is quite different in character from the sentimental
2nd day, lot }2, A
Harvest [bought for £13 is.
6d. by Banks; Banks can plausibly be identi-
pastorals or nude mythologies that were so avidly sought after by a
fied with the later Sir Henry Bankes (d. 1774), number of English collectors in the nineteenth century. Indeed, as with La

no
Ill
whose name appears to be decipherable, to- belle cuisiniere (cat. 21), it was no doubt because of the genre
which it in
gether with the numbers N. ij and H.R.6, on was painted, rather than because of Boucher's own reputation, that it was
an old label on the back of the picture,
taken over to England in the first place.
apparently one of those with details of attribu-
tion and provenance affixed by Elisabeth Ciist The genre here is Dutch. Into a setting that owes something to the rural
to the pictures at Belton House, since they scenes with ruins by the Italianate school of landscapists, Boucher has
correspond with those entry on the
in the
inserted figures indebted to his imitations of Abraham Bloemaert's studies
picture in the first manuscript catalogue of the
collectiondrawn up by her in 1805-06 (I am from everyday life The figure of the sleeping harvester,
(see Slatkin, 1976).
most grateful to John Chesshyre of the Na- in particular, is almost a quotation from Bloemaert's Pastoral Scene with
tional Trust for supplying me with a transcript
Tobias and the Angel in the Staatliche Museen in East Berlin (see
of this); see F(rancis) R(ussell), "The Picture
Collection at Belton," foreword to cat. of
Rosenberg, Slive & ter Kuile, 1977, pi. 193; for Subleyras's copy of
Belton House sale, Christie's, London, Bloemart's drawing for this figure, see exh. cat. 1983, Paris, no. 100).
30 Apr. -2 May 1984]; his coll., Wimbledon, From a study identifiably for the Boucher directly quoted the figure
latter
whence inherited by his daughter, Frances,
of the boy standing with a basket, which he was to employ in his
Lady Cust (from 1776, Lady Brownlow), and
brought to Belton House, Lines.; thence bv Capriccio View of the Farnese Gardens (cat. 23), and in the tenth etching
descent, until sold at Christie's, London, of his Livre d'Etude d'apres les Desseins Originaux de Blomart (J-R 184).
3 May 1929, lot [bought by "Smith"]; Frank
1
This book of etchings was only published in 1735, to judge from the
T. Sabin, London (exh. cat. 1935, no. 6); with
Frohlich,London, in 1946; Dr. E. Sklarz, advertisement of it in the Mercure de France for June of that year (pt. II,
London, from whom it passed to the present p. 1382). Must we therefore place the painting as late? Although
owner.
juxtaposed by Ananoff with the painting that he calls La tendre pastorale

ENGRAVING (A & W 54; last recorded with David Findlay in New York around 1955,
La vie champetre, engraved bv Elisabeth according to information kindly supplied by David M. Koetser), itself
Lepicie in 1741 and published by her husband
dated too early (to 1730), in view of the fact that (as the drawings
Bernard Lepicie in the same year, with a verse
associated with it bear out) it was probably painted much nearer to the
bv him:
Le Repos et I'Amour regnant dans ces aziles date at which an engraving incorporating it was published by Huquier, in
Et sont la source des plaisirs:
1736 {Mercure de France, Jan., its affinity with this painting is a
p. 134),
Le Tumulte et la haine babitent dans les Villes
fortuitous one of composition, and not at all one of handling (as far as can
Et sont la source des soupirs.
(J-R 1382) be judged from reproductions of La tendre pastorale). The brushwork of
the present picture, and the types of the figures in the middle plane in
DRAWING
particular, associate it rather with such paintings as La fontaine (fig. 85;
}La des moissonncurs, pen and sepia
sieste

wash, heightened with carmine, sale of MM. A& W 46; engraved by Jean Pelletier, J-R 1453), or the two depictions of
D et P Pans, 19 Dec. 1898, lot 9. Noah (cat. 10, 11) and, slightly more distantly, with certain of the early
group of pastoral landscapes published by Voss in 1953: Rustic Scene with
COPIES
i. Misc. sale, Versailles, 11 Mar. 1973, ot '
a Mother Spinning (Voss, p. 82, and fig. 45; A& W 50; last recorded in
93- the Frey collection in Paris in 1953); tr*e Landscape with Bathers in a
2. The boy from
engraving reproduced on
the foreground of the
a Capodimonte cov-
Moat (Voss, p. 82, and fig. 37; A& W 72; last recorded in a private

collection in Paris in 1966); and the Crossing the Ford (Voss, p. 82, and
ered |ar in the Hispanic Society of America,
New York (see Frothingham, 1955, p. 10 and fig. 38; exhibited at the Galerie Georges Petit as a Fragonard in 1907). All
fig- 13)- but the last slumped figure of a peasant acting as a
of these have the

ANALOGY repoussoir in the foreground, and one can well believe that if they were
Boy Standing behind a Laden Mule (fig. 87), not derived directly from drawings by Bloemaert, they were at least
black chalk with touches of red, Cabinet des
inspired by such. In the three last, the landscape predominates over the
Dessins, Louvre (R.F. 1475 1), [a variant in

reverse of the similar detail in the painting].

figures and is characterized by exaggeratedly plunging effects of perspec-
tive recession and by vegetation of almost demented vitality (partially

inspired by Lemoine). In La fontaine, as in the present picture, it is the

figures that predominate over the setting, and the distortions of per-
spective and foliage are less extreme. The brushwork and the treatment of
drapery have also shed the mannerism of Boucher's earliest pictures,
without acquiring the summary quality of those that he painted after his
return from Italy. Despite the fact, therefore, that La fontaine was said by
the catalogue of the fourth sale in which it appeared, that of M. Bourlat de
Montredon (16 Mar. ff. 1778, lot 15; which also mistitled it Bergers a la

112
 Fontaine), to have been painted by Boucher after his return from Rome, it

is most probable either that both these pictures just antedate the journey
there, or that they are examples of the "tableaux precieux a la maniere des
Flamands," that Papillon de La Ferte (1776, II, p. 657) asserts Boucher did
in Rome.
Additional support for an earlier dating of the present picture can be
obtained from closer consideration of the etchings after Bloemaert.
Although these were made as late as 1735, the drawings from which they
were done seem to have been available to Boucher for some time before.
Not onlv is there the evidence of their exploitation in other early works,
Fig. 85. Lafontaine. The J.
B. Speed Art as seen above, but they also appear to have come from a larger group of
Museum, Louisville.
drawings circulating among Boucher's fellow students in Rome. This
would at any rate appear to be the explanation of the two sheets of copies
of Bloemaert drawings among the three fonds d'ateliers of French artists in
Rome acquired by the comte d'Orsay and now in the Louvre, whether
one accepts their ascription to Subleyras or not (see exh. cat. 1983, Paris,
nos. 99, 100). None of the figures on either of the two was etched
sheets
by Boucher, but the second contains a study for the sleeping farmhand in
the Pastoral Scene with Tobias, who is so closely related to the sleeping
harvester in the foreground of the present picture. Are these in fact further
compilations by Boucher after Bloemaert's drawings that he did not
proceed to etch (but the face of the seated young woman has been altered
from Bloemaert's original in a way that is more suggestive of Natoire)? Or
did a group of students at the French Academy originally think up this
idea of compiling etchings after Bloemaert's drawings when Boucher was
still in Rome? One of Boucher's rustic scenes in his precious earlier
manner, very close to La vie champetre, but with more monumental
figures, which strongly suggest that it was one of those painted in Rome ,

Le repas champetre. Private

Fig. 86. collection,
is the Repas champetre formerly in the collection of R. H. Benson (fig.
Germany.
86; Sotheby's, London, 5 July 1984, lot 369 [bought by Neuhaus];
private collection, Germanv; drawing in the National Gallerv of Canada,
Ottawa [Popham & Fenwick, 1965, no. 225] as J-P. Le Bas). While it is
not yet possible to indicate specific models, the figures in this painting
give every impression of having been derived from more of these
Bloemaert drawings.
An indicator that needs to be accounted for suggesting a later placing of
the present picture than the one proposed here is the date of Elizabeth
Lepicie's engraving of it: 1741. The date of an engraving after Boucher
bears no necessary relation, however, to that of the original painting or
drawing, least of all by the 1740s, when his reputation was made and
engravers eagerly sought out anything of his to reproduce. The absence
either of a dedication or of any indication of ownership on the plate
might even suggest that it was simply made to assist the picture's resale.
Significantly, the advertisement for the engraving in the Mercure de France
Fig. 87. Boy Standing behind a Laden Mule.
in November 1741 (p. 2456) says that the picture was "entierement peint
Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre.
dans le gout de Benedetto Castillon," which is palpably not the case but
which was no doubt intended to associate this picture with Boucher's later
paintings, in which the influence of Castiglione is evident. So, too, the
verses underneath the engraving, hymning the simple pleasures of rustic
society, belong more to the time of the engraving, when Boucher was
painting his first sentimental pastorals, than to the epoch of the picture

"3
 itself, although these implications may well have been latent in it. It is,

indeed, the concentration upon a group of rustics without the introduc-

tion of any erotic or sentimental note, while not reducing mere them to
staffage in a landscape, that sets this painting, La fontaine, and one or two
transitional later works apart from the themes of Boucher's maturity.

10 Noah Entering the Ark

Oil on panel
12 3/, x 25/2 in. (32.5 x 65 cm)
Private collection, Fort Worth
(S & M 707) (A & W 29)

II The Sacrifice of Noah

Oil on panel
12/2 x 25/2 in. (32 x 65 cm)
Private collection, Fort Worth
(S & M 707) (A & W 30)
PROVENANCE
?Painted for Jean de Jullienne; certainly in his The recent rediscovery of this pair of pictures is important, not merely
collection by c. 1750-60, when in [J-B-F. de because they were originally in a celebrated collection,, that of de
Montulle] ms. Catalogue des tableaux de M:
Jullienne, but also because they are additions to a still scantily attested
de Jullienne, pp. 49-50, nos. 76, 85, as Entree
dans I'Arche and Sortie de I'Arche, and illus- phase of Boucher's career. Despite the assertion of the catalogue of the
trated in the "ze Cabinet de M'.: cote en face Franc,ais sale in 1815 that they were "done in Italy," it seems much more
de Pentree" (Pierpont Morgan Library, New
plausible that they were executed before the artist went there, very

JO

114
York, 1966.8); Catalogue Raisonne des possibly as a present for their original owner, whose steady employment
Tableaux . . . &c. apres le decks de M. de of Boucher to engrave Watteau s works over the previous four or five years
Jullienne (Remy), 30 Mar. ff. 1767, lot 270
[bought for 1190 by the president d'Al-
livres
had enabled him to accumulate the funds with which to make the journey.
bertas]; Catalogue de Tableaux &c. du . . .
At first blush, this early dating must seem implausible, since the
Cabinet de M' [Barre & autresj, rue des Bons- obvious indebtedness of the two pictures to Castiglione's Marches suggests
Enfans (Regnault), 17 prairial, l'an XIII (6
exposure to Italy, while the character of such details as the animals and the
June 1805), lot 8; Catalogue d'une Collection
de Tableaux des Ecoles Italiennes, Flamandes, gleaming copper basins cannot but evoke similar elements in the Dutch-
Hollandaises et Francaises [du comte Franqais], influenced pictures painted after Boucher's return. The handling of these
Hotel de Bullion (Constantin & Chariot),
two paintings is, however, quite different from those executed after his
16 Jan. ff. 1815, lot 12, "faits en Italie" [sold for
return from Italy and associates them backward with such works as the
75 livres; the Entry erroneously identified as
the Exit from the Ark, and the support as Mutius Scaevola (cat. 8) rather than forward with such apparently related
canvas]; misc. sale, Palais des Congres, Ver-
pictures as the lost Depart de Jacob (engraved by Elisabeth Cousinet
sailles, 24 Oct. 1982; Galerie Pardo, Paris,
from which acquired by the present owner
Lempereur; J-R 1375) or the View ofTivoli (cat. 16). This is evident above
in 1983. all in the brushstrokes, which are small and liquid, and in the color, which

is rich and saturated. The folds of drapery still retain some of the
REPLICA OR COPY
mannerism of those in the Mutius Scaevola, and the faces of the figures are
Noah Entering the Ark, sold anonymously,
Versailles, 18 Nov. 1962, lot 32; private coll., likewise variations on shorthand formulas, particularly those of the
Paris: canvas, 50 X 60 cm [i.e., extended in women, with their tilted noses and coiffed hair with escaping strands, and
height, but not in length, with no compensat- the half-naked children, with their sideswept licks of hair. The perspective
ing adjustments, in such a way as to suggest a
copy, rather than a finished version or replica
diagonals in the Noah Entering the Ark have the vertiginous exaggeration
from Boucher's own hand, despite the appar- characteristic of a group of Boucher's early pastoral landscapes, and the
ently good quality of the picture as reproduced trees and foliage are imbued with the sinuous, bushy vitality also found in
in A& W fig. 216].
those youthful works (see cat. 9), which he seems to have caught from
ANALOGIES
Lemoine.
i. The Animals Entering the Ark, by J-B. The most obvious affinities of other details of the present pictures are
Deshays, Mariette sale, 15 Nov. ff. 1775, lot also with those pastoral scenes: the same drawings (fig. 88; National-
1 221: "grande composition en travers, &
peinte sur papier dans le style de Benedette"
museum, Stockholm; Bjurstrom, 1982, nos. 823, 824) appear to have been
[sold with Castiglione drawings in lot 357 to adapted for the hen and cock in the Noah Entering the Ark as were used
Lempereur for 24 livres]; Debuscher sale, 28 Ea fontaine; the hen recurs in a picture painted after Boucher's
directly in
[advanced to 18] June 1804, lot 52, "Esquisse
return from Italy, Ee repos des fermiers (cat. 20), and the types of the

II

"5
au pinceau et coloriee a Phuile, sur papier . . .
women and La vie champetre (cat. 9).
children are the same as those in
d'apres Benedette Castiglione !'
Prophetically for Boucher, men play a somewhat restricted role in the
z. Noah Entering the Ark. by J-J. Lagrenee,
canvas, 18 x 22 in., described as "d'un ton de present pictures, with the exception of the patriarch, Noah, himself. He
couleur analogue au sujet" [i.e., Castiglio- again, rather than looking forward to the vigorous figures of Jacob
nesque] when in the Dulac and Lachaise sale,
(cat. 5) or Gideon (cat. 6), has the miniaturized features of the old man
;c Nov. ft. 1778, lot 280; and as "dans le gout
de Boucher," when up again in an anonymous remonstrating with one of the victims in The Martyrdom of the Japanese
sale, 1 1 Jan. ff. 1779, lot 89. Jesuits (fig. 89; engraved by Laurent Cars as a thesis plate; last recorded in

Germany before World War II; A& W one of a small

119). This last is

M| group of early religious scenes, the other two being Jacob Obtaining
Isaacs Blessing (fig. by Daulle, pirated by P. A. Kilian;
90; engraved
whereabouts never recorded), and The Separation of Lab an from Jacob,
whose affinity with the present pictures is much more evident in the
drawing in the Louvre ( exh. cat. 1984, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins,
no. 78) than in the thesis-plate engraving after the lost painting of this
composition, which was apparentlv in Bergeret's posthumous sale, whose
changes from the drawing amount to the implication of an altogether
different subject (The Separation ofJacob and Esau}).
Significantly, The Separation of Laban from Jacob was engraved by
Fig. 88. Study of a Strutting Cock. National- Etienne Brion, who also engraved Boucher's early St. Bartholomew (cat. 1)
museum, Stockholm.
and other Saints, but nothing further of his, and published by Hecquet,
who done after a painting of Boucher's youth
issued another thesis plate
(The Return of Jephthah, examples on theses maintained 15 July 1767
and 30 Jan. 1789 in the second volume of thesis plates in the Cabinet des
Estampes) and Daulle's engraving of Jacob Obtaining Isaacs Blessing.
Boucher told Mariette that the father of Laurent Cars, whose name is on
the known prints of The Martyrdom of the Japanese Jesuits, employed him
to make designs for thesis plates for his bed and board and 60 livres a
month after he had left the studio of Lemoine: all additional indications of
the earlv date of this group of religious paintings.
The present pair of paintings is probably the first in which Boucher
adopts the Castiglionesque theme of the Marche, but at this point his
Fig. 89. The Martyrdom of the Japanese
Jesuits, after Boucher, published by Laurent indebtedness to the Genoese master was purely thematic. Not only are the
Cars. flocks and herds kept subordinate to the central protagonists of the
compositions, which was not the case with his models, but there is also no
impact of Castiglione upon his palette or brushwork. Nor did Boucher
need to go to Italy to see works by this master: Castigliones (or pseudo-
Castigliones) appeared frequently in Paris sales from the moment that
we have some record of their contents, from the 1730s onward (see
D. Wildenstein, 1982, pp. 20-21; the Viallis sale of 28 Dec. ff. 1781 [not
cited there] included no fewer than eleven); the royal collections had at
least three by 1753, au now m trie Louvre; and Dezallier d'Argenville

records half a dozen in the ampler 1757 edition of his Voyage Pittoresque.
It is, indeed, precisely the fact that in these pictures Boucher has imitated

the content but not the facture of Castiglione's paintings that leads one to
suppose that he painted them in France — inspired perhaps as much by
engravings as by the sight of original paintings — and not
where he in Italy,
was to respond to the full resonance of Castiglione's brushwork, no doubt
because he could see it emulated in the work of contemporary masters,
such as Sebastiano Ricci.
Fig. 90. Jacob Obtaining Isaacs Blessing,
pirated engraving by P. A. Kilian, after Jean When these two pictures were sold in 1805, they were described as
Daulle's engraving after Boucher. "esquisses." There is, however, no record of any finished paintings of these

116
 Jo
subjects; both the support and the elongated proportions of the sketches
•etdtt IC speak against any ever having being intended. De Jullienne was not
one of those who made a point of collecting sketches, and neither the
enchantingly illustrated manuscript catalogue of his collection in the
B Pierpont Morgan Library (see fig. 91) nor the printed catalogue of his
posthumous sale says that they were sketches. The use of the term in 1805

simply reflects the Davidian expectations of finish that then prevailed.

What is unexpected is that, despite the great appeal of these pictures, and
the close association that Boucher must have had with de Jullienne over
the engraving of Watteau, there was only one other painting by Boucher
Fig. 91. Illustration of the end wall of de in de Jullienne's posthumous sale (we cannot, of course, know what
Jullienne's second cabinet, showing the two paintings by Boucher de Jullienne may have owned and traded in earlier,
paintings of Noah hanging bottom left and
as was the case with his Watteaus; he may have given Les oies de Frere
right, and a pastel Head of a Woman by
Boucher, center left (from the partially illus-
Philippe [cat. 7] to his son-in-law, de Montulle). That picture was a
trated manuscript catalogue in the Pierpont grisaille of Cassandra before the Statue of Minerva (lot 271; subsequent
Morgan Library, New York).
fate unknown). Evidently, de Jullienne was one of those who preferred a

still traditional and Italianate Boucher to Boucher the founder of a new

ecole francaise.

12 The Encounter on the Road

Oil on canvas
16/8 x 12/2 in. (41 x 32 cm)
Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield,
Massachusetts; The James Philip Gray
Collection (55.01)
(S&M 1424, 1756) A&W53

PROVENANCE This one of the most spontaneous pictures in Boucher's oeuvre but
is

Catalogue de Tableaux . . . &c. formant le nonetheless not immediately easy to situate. There are elements in it, such
Cabinet de feu SON EXCELLENCE M. LE as the writhing tree, the compressed perspective, the facial types, and the
BAILLI DE BRETEUIL, Faubourg Saint-
Honore [no. 83] (Le Brun), 16 Jan. ff. 1786, lot character of the animals, that seem to link it with pictures that Boucher
46: "Une Marche d'Animaux. . . . Ce tableau, painted before he went to Italy, whereas the hatched brushwork declares it
qui est de la belle maniere de ce maitre, doit
to date from a later epoch, associating it with other pastoral scenes and
etre recherche des amateurs" [bought for 371
livres by "Cailar" or "Quesnet"]; Catalogue landscapes painted in the years immediately after his return.
d'une precieuse Collection de Tableaux, choisis Although the coloring of the present picture appears to be much
dans toutes les Ecoles Anciennes et Modernes warmer, the closest parallel to it can probably be found in the
par M DIDOT Hotel Bullion,
r
6 Apr. ff. 1825,
lot 96: "La Rencontre sur la Route . .
." [sold
Washerwomen on loan since 1967 from the Academie des
at the Fountain,
for 71 livres]; sale of Dr. Ricord, Hotel Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Clermont-Ferrand to the Musee
Drouot, Paris, 29 Mar. 1890,
to Boucher): "Bergers en Voyage.
lot 5 (attributed
Ce
Bargoin (fig. 92; A & W
56; see Hallopeau, [1980], p. 18, fig. 8), in which

tableau rappelle les oeuvres de Boucher en

. . .

there is a tree of similarly tormented form, and women with small,

Italie imitant Benedetto Castiglione" [sold for chignoned heads of the same character. Nonetheless, the recession of
105 francs]; baron Philippe de Rothschild, planes in the Washerwomen at the Fountain is more regular, as in all the
Paris (exh. cat. 1951, Geneva, no. 4; Voss,
other landscapes painted after Boucher's return from Italy. The face of the
1953, P- 85); Frank T. Sabin, London; David
M. Koetser, London and New York; acquired young man is not of a type immediately recognizable as Boucher's (and,
by the Springfield Museum in 1955. indeed, it should be remembered that another version of this picture has

117
n8
 been published as a Fragonard), but then it is, unusually for him, seen en
face — and Boucher anyway notoriously had difficulty with men's faces.

Curiously, the young man's features have most affinity with those of the
young mother in the picture of a Mother and Children beside a Fountain
(A & W
564; formerly collections of Edmond and Maurice de Rothschild,
Paris; sold Sotheby's Monaco, 26 June 1983, lot 487; currently on the
Japanese art market), whose apparent date of 1762 is most probably a
corruption of 1732.
The catalogue of the Didot sale of 1825 captioned the lot containing the
present picture with: "boucher (fran^ois), en Italie," and went on, after

Fig. 92. Washerwomen at the Fountain. Aca- describing the picture, to say: "If Boucher had remained in Italy, the bad
demic des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de taste prevalent in France would not have subjugated him on his return
Clermont-Ferrand, on loan to the Musee
home, and he would have left a distinguished reputation as a painter.
Bargoin, Clermont-Ferrand.
Nevertheless, in exercising a choice among his works, one could easily
encounter several worthy of featuring among the ranks of good painters of
the French School. . .
." ("Si Boucher jut reste en Italie, le mauvais gout
qui regnait en France ne Vaurait pas subjugue a son retour dans sa patrie,
et il aurait laisse la reputation d'un peintre distingue. Cependant, en faisant
un choix dans ses ouvrages, il serait facile d'en rencontrer plusieurs dignes

de figurer dans la collection des bons peintre s de I'Ecole franqaise. . . .")

This, however, is more document in the history of French

interesting as a
taste and as an illustration of the way in which attempts to rescue the

reputation of Boucher from his critics were made than reliable as evidence
proving its date. For even in Boucher's lifetime, sales catalogues made it
clear that the value of a picture of his could be increased by claiming that
it dated from his years in Italy; and in this case, the claim was not even

made in the eighteenth-century sale in which the present painting was

sold, but only in the nineteenth century, when there were no longer any
Fig. 93. Hubert Robert, The Ruins (1777). The connoisseurs of his work to challenge the assertion. Nonetheless, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift Didot in whose sale this picture featured, later known as Didot de Saint-
of Mrs. William M. Haupt, from the collec-
Marc, was apparently an experienced march and-amateur, so that the
tion of Mrs. James B. Haggin, 1965.
claim, if not adducible as evidence, does provide some support for
supposing that this picture was painted, if not in Italy, immediately after
Boucher's return. It may be that the first record of the picture, in the
posthumous sale of Jacques-Laure Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, known as the
de Breteuil (1723-178 5), lends support to the idea that the picture
bailli

— —
was painted and remained in Rome, since this collector was ambas-
sador from the Sovereign Order of the Knights of John (Malta) to the St.

Holy See (1758-77). It is certainly supported by Hubert Robert's use of

the group in a drawing done in Rome (see below, Analogies).

PREPARATORY DRAWING VARIANT VERSION ANALOGIES

Red chalk, 258 X 190 mm, R[ouillard] sale, 17/2 x 14'/, in.
(44.5 x 36 cm): Earl of The group was employed by Hubert Robert in

1-3 Mar. 1869, lot 35; coll. of M. X., Paris; Pembroke sale, Paris, 30 June 1862, lot 33 (as a group of ruin pieces: a drawing done in

engraved by Claude Briceau (active from 1767) Fragonard) [bought by Michaud]; Michaud Rome in 1760, Bourgarel sale, Paris,

as Les Voyageurs (J-R 394); a black chalk posthumous sale, Paris, 11-13 Oct. 1877, lot 61 15-16 June 1922, lot 199; a circular painting,

variant, 253 x 184 mm, belonging to a private (as Fragonard); Edouard Michel coll.; Wil- dated 1777, in the Metropolitan Museum, New
coll. in Virginia, sold Sotheby Parke Bernet, denstein, New York (exhibited as Fragonard, York (fig. 93; Baetjer, 1980, I, p. 156, and III,

New York, 3 June 1980, lot 60. 1926, New York, no. 18, and 1929, Hartford, p. 521); a painting, based on the drawing in the

no. 11); private coll., Buenos Aires (exhibited Bourgarel sale, in a sale at the Palais Galliera,
as Fragonard, 1945, Buenos Aires, no. 5); Paris, 26 Nov. 1975, lot 9.

Christies, London,
7 July 1978, lot 157 as
Boucher [see G. Wildenstein, i960, no. 113; D.
Wildenstein & G. Mandel, 1972, no. 123].

119
 —

13 Hercules and Omphale

Oil on canvas
35/2 x 29 in. (90 x 74 cm)
Pushkin Museum, Moscow (inv. 2764)
S&M167 A&W107
Paris

PROVENANCE
Catalogue des Tableaux & Dessins precieux des
Despite his reputation as an erotic artist (for one of the most extreme
Maitres celcbres des trois Ecoles . . . &c, du and ill-informed — denunciations of which, see Fiorillo, III, 1805, pp.
Cabinet de feu M. DE BO/SSET RANDON 364-71), Boucher rarely depicted subjects of overt sensuality. It was,
Receveur General des Finances, rue Neuve des
Capucines, pres la place Vendome (Remy), 27
indeed, one of the grounds for both Diderot's and Grimm's complaints
Feb. ff. 1777, lot 192: "Ce tableau est dans le against his pastorals, that they were not frank enough (Diderot, 1979, p.
style de Francois le Moine, le coloris & la
81; cf. cat. 78), while his mythological paintings remained well within the
touche sont admirables" [bought by (Philippe-
conventions of the genre. It was only in the nineteenth century that the
Guillaume) Boullogne de Preninville for 3,840
livres, but alienated before his death in 1791]; improbable story arose of his having painted a set of erotic pictures for
collection of M. de Vaudreuil, rue de la Mme de Pompadour with which to stimulate the jaded appetite of Louis
Chaise, no. 7 (Thiery, 1787,
in 1787]; Catalogue d'une tres-belle Collection
p. 54) [hotel sold
XV (Charles Blanc, 18 51, p. 10, ascribes the tale to Thore, but I have not

de Tableaux dTtalie, de Flandre, de Hollande succeeded in finding it among the latter's writings). Rather the reverse, it

et de France . . . &c, provenans du Cabinet dc was in fact she who

one point put herself on a bizarre diet of ambre
at
A/ :::::: [de Vaudreuil], grande Salle, rue de
'

vanilla chocolate, truffles, and celery soup to combat the frigidity that the
Clery (Le Brun), 26 Nov. ff. 1787: "Ce
Tableau, de
king found in her (Hausset, 1824, p. 92). Nor does the set of pictures that
la plus belle couleur possible, a
toujours ete regarde comme 1'un des plus may have inspired the story (one pair in the Louvre, M.N.R. 117, 118;
beaux de ce Maitre" [bought by Donjeu(x) for another pair, location unknown, photographs in the files of H. Roger-
900 livres]; Catalogue d'une belle Collection de
Viollet, L.M. 15.684, 15.685 bis; a bowdlerized version of the former,
Tableaux, Hotel de Bullion (Paillet), 7
[deferred to 13] Feb. 1792, lot 37: "Un tableau reputedly painted for Louis XV, in Sedelmeyer Gallery, 1898, no. 268)
de ton de couleur le plus riche & de la touche suggest anything closer to Boucher than the hand of a later pasticheur.
la plus savante & la plus gracieuse"; Prince
The Hercules and Omphale was probably best characterized when it
Gahtzin, Moscow; Prince Youssoupov, Saint
Petersburg (1839 cat., no. 86); preempted from became known to a wider public through the inclusion of a sepia plate and
the Youssoupov coll. for the Hermitage in an analysis of by Alexandre Benois in the commemorative volume of the
it

1925; transferred to the Pushkin Museum in

great exhibition of European paintings in Russian collections mounted by
1930.
the magazine Starye Gody in 1909 (see Benois, 1910, p. 115). Benois
COPY BY ERAGONARD contrasts the picture with a pair of Pastorales painted in the year of
Varanchan sale, 29 Dec. 1777, lot 32 [in the Boucher's death (curiously rejuvenated to works of 1760 by the time that
handwritten breakdown of this lot in the copy
of the catalogue in the Bibliotheque Nationale
they were exhibited in 1932) and goes on to say, "One has difficulty, on
are a number of Fragonards, including a
the other hand, in believing that Boucher who painted the heroic,
it is

et omphale,"
"copie d'apres boucher, hercule impetuous scene of Hercules with Omphale, in which everything— from
which was bought by Boinet(?) for 123 louis
1 sol. The Avis to the catalogue states that the
the dash of the lines to the ardent flesh tones is more evocative of the—
(small) collection was chiefly remarkable for tendency to excess inherent in the Flemish artistic temperament. This
"the finest sketches and drawings by one of picture is instinct with youth throughout, and it is much closer to
our first Painters (Boucher), regretted, and
still
Lemoine and even to the brutal frankness of works of
Rubens than to the
sought after ever more now that he is no
longer with us; there will also be pleasure in
Boucher's own maturity." ("Par contre on a peine a croire que c'est Boucher
finding several of the spontaneous composi- qui ait peint Vheroique et impetueux episode d'Hercule chez Omphale, ou
tions of one of his Pupils (Fragonard), who has tout —en commencant par la fougue des lignes et finissant par les couleurs
attained celebrity with a
("les plus belles esquisses
manner
& les
of his
plus beaux
own"
ardentes des chairs, —
rappelle plutot le temperament porte aux exces des

Dessins d'un de nos premiers Peintres toujours Flamands. Ce tableau est tout penetre de jeunesse, et il s'approche
regrette, & recherche davantage depuis qu'il beaucoup plus de Lemoine et meme de la sincerite brutale de Rubens que
on verra avec plaisir beaucoup des
n'est plus:
des oeuvres de la maturite de Boucher lui-meme. ")
pensees d'un de ses Eleves, devenu celebre sans
lui ressembler"); de Sireul sale, 3 Dec. ff. 1781,
The mention of Lemoine chimes with that in the catalogue of the sale
lot 37: "Ce tableau est la copie exacte de celui from which we first learn of the picture's existence, that of Boucher's later

120
121
de M. Boucher, decrit dans le Catalogue de M. friend and patron, Randon de Boisset, in 1777: "This picture is in the style
de Boisset, sous le No. 192" [bought by
Payenne(?) for 23 louis 19 sous. It is worth
of Francois le Moine, its color and brushwork are admirable." Com-
noting that de Sireul's sale also included an oval parison with Lemoine suggests that this picture should have been painted
pen and wash drawing of Hercules and shortly after Boucher emerged from his pupilage and before he went to
Omphale which was bought by M.
(lot 92),
Rome. In fact, in the case of other pictures, we find the comparison being
Lallie, in whose collection it was engraved (J-R

1645). The engraving, which may have taken

much more loosely applied, sometimes even to works painted after
some liberties with details and format, reveals Boucher's return from Rome, partly because it was not (and still is not)
the drawing to have been a smaller version of
appreciated to what extent Lemoine's own later manner reflects the
that in the d'Orsay coll. (see p. 123), which is

evidently also a work of Boucher's youth].

Boucher and Natoire.
influence of his returned former pupils,
Nothing could in fact be less Lemoinean than the present picture, as a
glance at his Hercules and Omphale of 1724 in the Louvre is sufficient to
demonstrate (Bordeaux, 1985, no. P.47, pp. 93-95, and fig. 43). In
contrast to Lemoine's aim of combining, as Bordeaux puts it, "Venetian
coloring and decorative brilliance . . . and Parmesan sensuality with the
solid form of the Roman school" in a light-bathed picture set in the open
air, Boucher presents an indoor picture of hothouse intensity, in which
contours are dissolved by the flickering, lambent manipulation of the
brush (rather as the extraordinary lion skin held by the cupid on the right
is decomposed into a formless monster), and in which color is used to
intensify the conveyance of passion rather than to reflect the fall of light.

The two pictures even differ widely in their message. Whereas Lemoine
underscores the traditional import of this episode in Hercules's career, that
he was for a time completely unmanned by his physical and amorous
enslavement to Queen Omphale, Boucher places the distaff and spindle in

the hands of one of the cupids rather than in those of Hercules himself,
leaving the hero (Benois's choice of adjective exhibits a nice sense of irony)
Fig. 94. Hercules and Omphale. Cabinet des
free to indulge his ardor to the full. Since Boucher's intentions are not
Dessins, Louvre.
pornographic, however, he uses the convention of the "slung-over leg" to
stand in for the actual consummation of their passion.
None of this forecloses the possibility that the picture was in fact
painted before Boucher went to Rome — nothing, that is, except the very
conspicuousness of the brushwork. Though of a mythological subject,
both in this and in its "fougue," or energy, it is worlds away from the
various early depictions of Venus and Adonis, and Selene and Endymion
(see figs. 78, 77). On the other hand — and despite its not implausible
juxtaposition by Ananoff and Wildenstein with the Rinaldo and Armida
of 1734 (cat. 26), with which it shares such features as the banded column
and drapery, and the use to which cupids are put in scale, handling, and —
the character of the protagonists, it is also remote from the mythological
pictures painted even shortly after Boucher's return from Italy (e.g., cat.
I7 l8) -
'

These seemingly conflicting arguments point to the conclusion that the

Hercules and Omphale was painted in Rome. This is hard to substantiate,
since we have no certain knowledge of any picture having been painted in

Italy (but see cat. 12). There is, however, one small piece of possible
supporting evidence. Among the drawings in the Cabinet des Dessins of
the Louvre stamp identified by Jean-Franc,ois Mejanes as
that bear the that
of Pierre-Marie-Gaspard Grimod, comte d'Orsay (1748-1809), which
were mostly acquired by him from the fonds d 'ateliers of French artists

deceased in Rome, isone that Hercenberg (1975, cat. no. 417, p. 178 and
fig. 27) entitled Les amours de Mars et de Venus and calls (without

122
 indicating the existence of any original) "after N. Vleughels," but which
Mejanes (exh. cat. 1983, Paris, p. 181, Ors. 827) correctly identifies as

Lucrece et Tarquin, and tentatively proposes as "a study done by the

young F. Boucher in Rome
between 1728 and 1730." The attribution is
plausible, but hard to substantiate, since the drawing is a black-chalk
—
counterproof gone over in black chalk and it is very possible that the
original was bv another hand (perhaps indeed that of Vleughels), making
the end result difficult to read as that of a particular artistic personality.
The similarities in the character of the scene and of its setting with those of
the Hercules and Omphale are telling. Most striking of all, however, is the
affinity between the head of Tarquin and that of Hercules. The face is a

bizarre (and somewhat unappealing) one, whose use in both drawing and
painting surely points to an identity of hand. It also indicates Boucher's
difficulty in inventing convincing male physiognomies even at this early
date. (It worth noting here that the d'Orsay collection also contains an
is

oval pen and wash drawing of Hercules and Omphale by Boucher, which,
although in no way related compositionally, is similar in spirit and in date
[fig. 94; see under Copy by Fragonard].)

Ultimately, however, it is the verve and intensity manifest throughout

the Hercules and Omphale that tell over any deficiencies in detail. Benois
thought that in enjoying this picture we should regret "that Boucher
'found himself later, and that he did not remain for the rest of his life the
vigorous, full-blooded sensualist that we have here" ("que Boucher se soit
'retrouve' plus tard, quil ne soit pas reste pendant toute sa vie ce sensuel
fort et vigoureux"). That would be to wish too much undone. Yet might
not even Boucher have had his regrets by the 1760s, and even have feared
invidious comparisons being drawn between his output then and such
brilliant essays of his youth? Such at any rate is the implication behind

Diderot's (more maliciously concluded) assessment of Boucher's works

immediately after his return from Italv, which could have been applied to
the Hercules and Omphale equallv well: "His color was forthright and
true; his composition was sound, yet full of verve; his handling was broad
and grand. I know some of his earliest pieces, that he nowadays calls
croutes, which he would love to buy back so as to burn them." ("// avail
une couleur forte et vraie; sa composition etait sage, quoique pleine de
chaleur; son faire large et grand. Je connais quelques-uns de ses premiers
morceaux qu'il appelle aujourd'hui des croutes et quil racheterak
volontiers pour les bruler" [Diderot, 1975, p. 205].)

H Moses before the Burning Bush

Oil on canvas
46'/, x 38/4 in. (118 x 97 cm)
Private collection, France

PROVENANCE
rFran^ois Derbais, rue Poissonniere, salle a The coarse vigor of this large painting will come as a shock to many after
manger (imentaire apres deces 2 Mar. ft. 1743,
the delicate little pictures of Boucher's early years, even to those who have
no. 4) [I owe the communication of this
important document to the kindness of its been somewhat prepared for it by the new scale and boldness (and the
discoverer, Georges Brunei]; Bragge's Sale of fiery glow of the sacrificial flame) of the Sacrifice of Gideon (cat. 6). For

I2 3
I2 4
 London, 1743/44, 3rd day, lot 33:
Pictures, Moses before the Burning Bush represents the furthest extreme to which
"Moses and the burning bush. Bouchee.
Boucher ever went in his adoption of a rough facture and the inclusion of
£4.175. 6d. (Houlditch mss. extracts of sales,

1711-59, Victoria and Albert Museum Library, patches of violent color (already reduced to his preferred basic palette of
London); posthumous sale of baron Em- red, blue, and yellow), for both of which he drew his inspiration from the
manuel Leonino, Galerie Jean Charpentier,
paintings of Benedetto Castiglione.
Paris, 18-19 Mar. 1937, lot 23, as "Ecole
italienne"; private coll., France, whence sold Some might even go so far as to question Boucher's authorship of the
at the Palais Galliera, 24June 1968, lot 17; picture, but of that there can be no doubt. The rough facture, with its
private coll., France, and acquired by the hatched effects; the arbitrary yet wholly convincing folds of the drapery,
present owner.
which are the product of sheer dexterity with the brush rather than the
result of laborious imitation; the gnarled and curving forms of the tree,
and the seemingly invented form of leaves of the foreground plant: all

these have parallels in Bouchers first pictures after his return from
Rome — above all in the putti pictures, of which it has regrettably only
been possible to show one in this exhibition (cat. 15), but also in La
marchande d'oeufs (A & W now
Wadsworth Atheneum,
90), in the
Hartford. There are still echoes of all these things in the Venus and Vulcan
of 1732 (cat. 17) and its pendant, Aurora and Cephalus of 1733 (cat. 18),
but in these the brushwork is already less furious, and the peintre des
Graces is starting to emerge from these unlikely beginnings.
In detailing these correspondences, it must seem as if the character of
the picture's sole protagonist, the young Moses, has been deliberately
avoided. Not so; it is merely that the closest parallels for his vibrant form,
with its sinewy limbs and knobblv extremities, are to be found in a
previously unpublished picture whose state regrettably prevents its being
shown Le repos de Diane, which should perhaps more
here. This is

properly be called Jupiter and Antiope, but was engraved by Pelletier

under the former title (J-R 1454). The engraving was doubtless made after
the picture's purchase by the painter-dealer Godefroy at the de Vassal de
Saint-Hubert sale of 17 January ff. 1774, when it was sold, without any
title, as lot 101, and said to be: "executed with verve and facility much in

the manner Lemoine"

of ("fait facilement & avec esprit, tient heaucoup de
la maniere de le Moine") —words that themselves suggest an early work.
Such is indeed the case, as can be seen from the wreck of this picture

among the Troubat le Houx bequest in the Chateau de la Louviere at

Montlucon, where it is awaiting eventual exhibition Remarkably

(fig. 95).

for this bizarre collection of hopefuls, it is under its proper name; the
optimistic attributions of companions no doubt account for the fact
its

that this one does not seem to have found credit. It is visibly, however, the
same picture as that engraved by Pelletier (who modestly reversed the
position of the phallic-looking quiver), albeit badly damaged (by fire?),
partially repainted, and truncated of its upper half. The bodies of both the
nymph (who appears to have been studied from the same model as the
exquisite red-chalk drawing of the Diane endormie in the Ecole des Beaux-
Arts, Paris, exh. cat. 1981-82, no. 88) and the satyr have the same sinewy
forms and knobbly extremities as the young Moses. More tellingly still,
they, the quiver, and the drapery are all painted, like the present picture,
with vigorous parallel strokes
— "cette maniere de peindre par hachures,"
as Chaussard described (Pausamas francais, 1806, p. 51), albeit miscredit-
it

Fig. 95. Nymph and Satyr (Jupiter ing Carle Vanloo rather than the young Boucher with the technique, which
and Antiopef). Chateau de la Louviere,
was one of the things had acquired by studying Castiglione.
that the latter
Montlu^on.
It is at first sight surprising that there appears to be no reference to the

i^5
 —

present striking picture, and that — unlike most of Boucher's ambitious

attempts at Italian old-master-like renderings of Old Testament subjects
it was not engraved. There are good reasons for this, however. First of all,

it in fact represents a considerable advance over the latter. Boucher is here

experimenting with new effects of painterliness, and on a larger scale than
anything hitherto save the Sacrifice of Gideon. All of these effects would
have been lost in engraving; Boucher's ambitions evidently lay in a
different direction.We. should remember Mariette's statement about: "a
number of large pictures that he had painted for a marble mason called
Dorbay, who had furnished his whole house with them, which was
perfectly easy for him to do, since Boucher, not seeking to do anything
but make a name for himself at that period, would, I believe, have done
them up the opportunity" ("nombre de
for nothing rather than pass
grands tableaux quil avoit fait pour un sculpteur marbrier nomme Dorbay
qui en avoit garni toute sa maison, ce qui lui avoit ete tres-facile, car
Boucher, ne cherchant alors [dans sa jeunesse] qua se faire connoitre, les

auroit, je crois, faits pour rien, plus tost que d'en laisser manquer
1'occasion" [Mariette, I, 1851-53, p. 165]).

Most of the "Dorbay" pictures that it has been possible to identify with
any confidence, thanks to Georges Brunei's discovery of the inventaire
apres decks of the actual commissioner of them, the marble sculptor
Jerome Derbais's lawyer son, Francois (and in spite of the fact that this
gives no artists' names), are mythological and were either on the staircase
(cf. cat. 15, Analogy 1) or in the salle de billard (cat. 17, 18). Mariette, who

may of course have been exaggerating, implies the presence of rather more
than these; if his explanation of Boucher's motives was correct, one would
certainly expect pictures of Old Testament subjects to have been among
them, not least because the Sacrifice of Gideon suggests that immediately
after Italy Boucher's ambition ran along such conventional lines.

Sure enough, the inventory contains a Buisson ardent, in the salle a

manger. The valuation put upon it is admittedly low — ten livres — but that
may do no more than reflect the discredit into which this kind of painting
had fallen in a city avid for subjects and palettes more compatible with
light Rococo interiors; Derbais had, on the other hand, placed the picture
in an important room, along with such things as a large portrait of Louis
XIII (itself only valued at twenty livres) and a pair of much more highly
valued mythologies. The subject was not a common one in France, despite
the distinguished precedents set by Poussin and Le Brun.
Perhaps most telling, however, is the one probable record of this picture
in the eighteenth century, in a sale held in London between January and 1

25 March 1744 (N. S.). This is only a year after the posthumous inventory
taken of Francois Derbais's effects. It is unlikely that his sole heir, his
niece Marguerite-Julie Langlois, nee Derbais, should have wanted to
retain her uncle's very miscellaneous-sounding collection of pictures; and
if she was selling them, there was no better outlet for such an old-master-
like subject than England, whose "pretendus connoisseurs" would pay
absurd sums for what they regarded as old masters, while rejecting
anything that looked as if it belonged to the modern French school (see
Boyer d'Argens, 1752, p. 20)— something would not have been
that
thought of this picture in the 1740s, by which time Boucher himself had
taken his style in a quite different direction.

126
 *5 Putti Playing with Birds (Summer)
Oil on canvas
28 x 28/2 in. (71cm)x 72. j

Signed bottom center:/ Boucher

Museum of Art, Rhode Island
School of Design, Providence;
Anonymous Gift (64.15)
S&M1455 A&W61
PROVENANCE
Catalogue Raisonne de Tableaux . . . &c. apres At the same time as, or not long after, extending his range into large
le deces de M. Fortier . . . Doyen des Notaires mythological compositions, Boucher began to develop another speciality.
du Cbdtelet de Paris,

Champs, premiere porte cochere

rue neuve des Petits-
a gauche
This was one that would become — after his depictions of nymphs and
apres la rue de Richelieu (Remy), 2 Apr. shepherdesses — most indelibly associated with his name: scenes of little

ff. 1770, lot 42: "L'Ete, represente par qua- children or cupids at play. For reasons that have never been adequately
tre enfans, dont deux assis sur des epis; ils
expounded, depictions of putti have been common since the Renaissance,
s'amusent avec des oiseaux . . . [and
L'Automne]. Ces deux Tableaux, tres
. . .
particularly for decorative and allegorical purposes. Among paintings,
ragoutans, sont peints sur toile, chacun porte Titian'sWorship of Venus (and Rubens's copy of this), Poussin's
16 pouces en quarre"; coll. of M. D "
:::::
", 4-5 Bacchanals, and the Triumph of Cupid ascribed to Parmigianino are (or
Feb. 1833, lot 61 (with
Rothschild, 1 Seamore
its

Place,
pendant); Alfred de
London (ac-
were in their day) simply the most celebrated. Significantly, most — if not
quired subsequent to the privately printed all —of these were based upon literary or pictorial models from Antiquity.
catalogue of his collection, compiled by What was novel with Boucher was that he (not unlike his contemporary
Charles Davis, 1884); the sale of his legatee,
Jakob de Wit in Holland) made the depiction of putti into a genre in its
Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, Christies,
London, 22 May 1925, lot 60 (separate from its own right, extending through his painted and graphic oeuvre.
pendant, lot 61) [bought by Pawsey & Payne Boucher may have acquired his taste for putti in Italy, since it was in the
for 600 guineas]; Cailleux, Paris (Voss, 1953,
French Academy in Rome under Vleughels that students acquired practice
p. 89 and fig. London, 25 July
60); Christie's,
in drawing them (Hercenberg, 1975, nos. 368-72, figs. 214-18), including
1958, lot 61 [bought by Davidge for 1250
guineas]; private coll., New York, from which very probably Boucher himself (a group of drawings of putti with the
donated anonvmouslv to the museum in 1964.
mark of the artist Baptistin Rousseau [Lugt, supp., 1956, 403] attributed
ANALOGIES to Boucher in the Musee de Nimes, inv. 754, 756-58). After Boucher's
1. L 'Amour oiseleur, Derbais coll., Paris (bv return they began to play a conspicuous part in his paintings (see cat. 18,
June 1734, when B. Lepicie presented his
1733) and in the designs that he supplied for engravers (the vignettes for
engravings after this picture and its pendant,
the Satyres de Regnier, 1733; the Tomheaux des Princes c. 1736).
V'Amour moissonneur, to the Aeademv among
. . . ,

his morceaux de reception): Derbais's pictures One of the earliest autonomous compositions of putti from his hand
never having reappeared as a set (although a would appear to be the Putti Playing with a Goat, since this still adheres
pair of LAmour oiseleur and L Amour
most closely to the bacchanalian model established by Antique reliefs and
moissonneur appeared in Ph. SichePs posthu-
mous sale, 22-28 June 1899, lots 3 and 4,
Duquesnoy This painting exists in two versions: a more complex oblong
85 x 113 cm, described as overdoors), it is picture, in which the children are denoted as cupids by little wings, with
hard to be certain that any of the surviving
six playing with the goat and grapes on the ground, and two carrying a
versions of individual compositions come from
the set, not least because all appear to differ in
basket of grapes in the air (Voss, 1953, p. 89, fig. 57; formerly Ch. E.
minor particulars from the engravings, though Riche coll., sold Nouveau Drouot, 30 Mar. 1984, lot 57; Paris art market);
the engravers may have been at fault; the best and a simpler square version, in which the children have no wings, and
version of LAmour oiseleur would appear to
be that which resurfaced in the sale of M.
there are only five of them on the ground and none in the air (fig. <)G\
H *** in Paris, 7 May 1898, sole lot, with a Voss, 1953, fig. 58; formerly H. E. Ten Cate and Thyssen collections;
highly dubious provenance from a supposed
sale of effectsfrom the queen's apartments at
currently on the Swiss art market). Both of these in turn relate neither —
exactly, but the Riche picture more closely because it is of cupids and has a
Fontainebleau in 1794, and which was last seen
at Sotheby's, London, Nov. 1978, lot 33. 1
group in the air — to an ornamental engraving for the leaf of a screen,
2. [F. W. Kreuzschauf], Historische Erklae- scraped by Duflos after Boucher around 1737, entitled the Triomphe de
rungen der Gemaelde welcbe Herr Gottfried
Pnape (J-R 875).
Winkler in Leipzig gesammlet, Leipzig, 1768,
no. 602: "Vier reizende Liebesgotter walzen The Ten Cate picture first came to light in the collection of Alfred de
sich, am niedern Gebiische im frischen Grase, Rothschild, as the pendant of the present picture; the pair of them can in

"7
auf ihren bunten Gewandern. Der zur Linken
sitzende liebkoset dem
Mine in der
hingestreckten, welcher sich zum andern Paare
wendet, und laehelnd nach dem kleinen Vogel
blicket, der, an den Faden gebunden, aus der
Hand des zur Rechten hinter ihm scherzenden
Gespielen flatten," i ft. ii'/i in. x 2 ft. 3 in.

[Saxon measures].
3. Spielende Kinder, Stroganoff sale, Lepke,
Berlin, 12-13 May 1931, lot 64, signed, 69.5
x 137 cm (pendant to lot 65, Die Musik).
4. L'Air, one of a set of the Elements

engraved bv CI. Duflos (J-R 909-916), most

probably (with the four Seasons) his earliest

engravings after Boucher, since he spells his

name on them as Boucbe. The inv. probablv
refers to the engravings having actually been

made from drawings after shaped over-

which may have been
doors(?), the offsets of
those from sanguines in Huquier's posthumous
sale, 9 Nov. ff. 1772, lot 377. What may be the
original painting, much truncated (to reduce it

to a regular shape?), is in the W. A. Clark

Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art,
Washington.
5. Painting in a misc. sale, Paris (Monroy &
Saubert), 25 Mar. ff. 1793, ' ot I2 ^ : "Un su ) et
de deux amours, dont un assis ayant les mains
appuvees sur un cage. Ce tableau, peint par
Boucher, est de son bon temps. Toile."

turn be reasonably identified with lot 42 in the posthumous sale of

Fortier, the doyen des notaires du Chdtelet, in 1770. Not only do size and
descriptions correspond, but the very word "ragoutans" used to praise
them implies pictures from Boucher's earlier and most painterly period.
Nothing that has been said so far enables us to date these pictures any
more precisely than to the 1730s. A probable terminus ante quern is
supplied by Cochin's engraving of the fifth of the five ornamental screen-
leaf designs, the Triomphe de Pomone, which was completed in February

1737 (J-R 517, 518). However, it is possible to push the date of the present
painting and its pendant back yet further, because of their evident affinity
with a set of four putti pictures originally painted for Derbais (see
cat. 17), none unfortunately in the present exhibition: L'Amour moisson-
neur (Voss, 1953, p. 89, figs. C, 56, 61; a cut-down version, formerly in
Fig. 96. Putti Playing with a Goat (Autumn)
the Contini-Bonacossi collection, Florence; and an intact version now on
Art market, Switzerland.
the Paris art market [fig. 97], exh. cat. 1985, Paris, no. 3); UAmour
oiseleur (fig. ^§ s D, 59; see under Analogies); L Amour
98; Voss, 1953, -

nageur (Voss, 1953, fig. E; cut-down picture at Waddesdon Manor,

England); and L Amour vendangeur (A & W
65, figs. 305 [engraving by
Fessard, J-R 962], 302: a painting cut down to an oval, in a private
collection, Switzerland). The firsttwo of these compositions were engraved
by Lepicie (J-R 1378, 1377) in prints that he included among the morceaux
de reception with which he presented the Academy June 1734 and that
in

were advertised in the Mercure de France in October 1734 and March 1735.

128
 Since I have not seen either version of the Derbais composition of
L'Amour oiseleur (in both of which the vegetation looks sobered and
tamed by comparison with the picture presented in Lepicie s engraving), it
is hard for me to establish priority between that composition and the one

here, from Rhode Island. The bold simplifications of rock and foliage in
the present picture, however, by comparison with the more elaborate
landscape setting of the Derbais composition (which has certain parallels
with the background of the Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus in the

Wallace Collection), suggest that it is the earlier of the two. So too does
the transformation of the four putti in the present picture into the more
tightly grouped set of cupids in the Derbais composition — a transforma-
tion comparable to that effected upon its pendant of Autumn in the Riche
picture. Thus if Lepicie's engraving makes 1733/34 the latest possible
dating for the Derbais picture, the present painting seems likely to date
from 1732/33.
Once embarked on new genre of putti depictions, Boucher was not
this

only prolific in it, but he also made it clear that he did not regard it as an
inferior sideline. For when in 1735 the Academy instituted a small
exhibition of freshly completed works by its members to see which of
them should be advanced in office,Boucher showed "four little pieces,
depicting the four Seasons in the shape of little women and children,
which were found very fine, as much for their striking color, modeling,
and brushwork, as for their charming conception" ("quatre petits
Morceaux, representans les quatres Saisons, par de petites femmes et des
enfans, qu'on trouva tres-beaux, tant pour la vive couleur, le relief et le

Fig. 97. L' Amour moissonneur. Art market, Pinceau, que pour Vaimable invention' [Mercure de France, June [II] 1735,
Paris. p. 1386]), which earned him an associate professorship. These are prob-

ably (given the presence of a "petite femme" at the center of Le Prin-

tems) the four lost paintings recorded in engravings by Aveline (J-R
208-215), tne Printems from which was advertised in the Mercure in June
1737. These compositions have palpable affinities with a set of The Four
Seasons etched by Natoire, aided by B. Audran and P. Aveline (see exh.
cat. 1977, Troyes, p. 55). Natoire 's etchings were published in 1735, after a

set of pictures he had painted for the Chateau de La Chapelle-Godefroy,

belonging to the contrbleur general des Finances, Philibert Orry, that must
have been completed shortly before. If Natoire drew inspiration from
Boucher for his Venus Requesting Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas (see cat. 17),
it is by no means so clear where the priority lay in the present case, since

Natoire seems always to have had an independent predilection for putti.

Was he inspired by such pictures by Boucher as the present one and its
pendant to paint his set of putti Seasons for La Chapelle-Godefroy, or was
Fig. 98. L'Amour oiseleur. Courtesy of
Sotheby's, London. Boucher fired by those to paint the set that he exhibited at the Academy?
In either case, it would appear that the two artists consciously measured
themselves against one another on the same subjects. Natoire, by three
years the elder, at first had the edge over Boucher in the commissions in
which they both partook (La Chapelle-Godefroy and the Hotel de Sou-
bise), but it was Boucher who was thereafter to sweep the field. One of

the ways in which he became the darling of collectors was by his prolific
output of putti pictures in these years, of which those listed opposite
(mostly from sets of the Elements, Seasons, and the like) are a mere fraction.

129
 ——

i6 Capriccio View of Tivoli

Oil on canvas
zyA x 2i'/4 in. (65 x 54 cm)
Musee des Beaux-Arts et
d'Archeologie, Boulogne-sur-Mer

PROVENANCE
Left to the museum in 1848 by Pierre Carv The problem of repetitions in Boucher's early career is particularly thorny,
(no. 317, attributed to Rosa di Tivoli).
asVoss (1959) was the first to recognize. For, whereas in later life he was
prosperous enough, and sufficiently well-supplied with able pupils, to
ANALOGIES
1. Drawing in black chalk, 346 x 221 mm, have made in his studio repetitions that he barely touched himself, at this
Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre (Guiffrey & stage in his career his involvement was necessarily greater. If he was not
Marcel, II, 1908, p. 1408; here fig. 99).
always wholly responsible for the repetitions, as Voss implied he was
2. x 95 cm, acquired by Tessin
Painting, 74
in Pans and shipped back to Sweden in 1741; making a first version that more than redeemed by its spontaneity small
bought for Lovisa Ulrica in 1749; Drottning- faults of drawing and composition, and a second that improved upon the
holm
the
until 1953, w hen
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (fig. 101).
transferred to
first in detail, but at the price of a certain slickness of execution —he must
3. Painting, 60.5 x 73.5 cm, [de Vassal de
still have been involved in each stage of the process. The various versions
Saint-Hubert] (Remy), 17-21 Jan.
sale, Paris of the Capriccio View of Tivoli exemplify this phenomenon.
100: "Une vue interessante de
1774, lot It must be admitted straightaway none of the currently known
that
rochers, fabriques & chutes d'eau; plusieurs
painted versions of this composition would appear to be the prime
figures, des cheveaux charges de bagages, une
vache & des moutons se voient dans un chemin original. That distinction probably belongs to one of a pair of finished
presque sur le devant de ce tableau qui nous drawings, which are in the Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre, both of
paroit avoir ete fait en Italie; il est sur toile de
which were drawn on subsequentlv to create rather different paintings (see
22 pouces de hauteur sur 26 de largeur"
[bought by Norblin for 501 livres 1 sol]; Slatkin, i97i[b]). The Louvre drawing (fig. 99) is in turn based upon a
?anon. sale, Paris (exp. Laneuville), 29 Feb. drawing, The Waterfall and the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, done by
1856, lot 7: "Paysage avec cascades"; private
Boucher when he was in Rome in 1730 (Rijksprentenkabinett, Amster-
coll., England (since the 19th century); Chris-
tie's sale, London, 14 Dec. 1984, lot 92.
dam; exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 77; two drawings of Tivoli by Boucher, of
4. ?One of a pair of paintings in the which this may have been one, were in de Jullienne's posthumous sale, 30
posthumous sale of M. \\ llliot, Hotel de Mar. ff. 1767, lot 938). This was one of the classic views drawn and
Bullion, Paris (Paillet & de Caudin), 26 Feb.
painted by foreign artists in Italy. Boucher's drawing, which was probably
1788, lot 8: "Deux Tableaux de forme en
hauteur, representans des paysages & chutes based on a study made on the spot but worked up in the studio afterward,
d'eau, ornes de differentes figures touches avec nevertheless succeeds in seizing a novel aspect of the site, one that
I'esprit & I'intelligence connus a cet habile
emphasizes the rocaille, as it were, out of which the temple arises. The
Artiste. Hauteur, 22 pouces, largeur 15."
Louvre drawing, which adopts a vertical format, makes a more balanced
and picturesque composition out of this: reducing the amount of craggy
rock, taming the fall of water, introducing a bridge, an umbrella pine, and
different buildings on the brow of the hill, and peopling the scene with a
shepherd boy following a packhorse, ox, and sheep, and two people
leaning over the bridge. The boy was subsequently to be reemployed in
another (lost) capriccio Italian landscape, entitled Le moineau apprivoise
in the engraving after it by Gaillard (fig. 100; J-R 1033).

The ensuing sequence of pictures is not easy to put into proper order
and it is always possible that there is a missing link in the chain that is
unrecorded (it is tempting to speculate, for instance, that the two upright
pictures "representing landscapes and waterfalls" in the posthumous sale
of M. Williot in 1788 were made from the pair of drawings in the Louvre).
What would appear to have happened is that Boucher, with studio
assistance, proceeded to make salable paintings of the composition in the

more usual oblong format. There are two versions of this: one of larger
dimensions (74 x 95 cm), which was shipped back to Sweden by Tessin in

130
i3i
 August 1 74 1, and already described in his bill of lading as merely
"retouched by Boucher" (see Sander, 1872, which he was
p. 57, no. 73),
forced by his debts to sell to Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrica in 1749 and is
now in the Xationalmuseum in Stockholm (fig. 101; W48; exh. cat. A&
19S4, Manchester, no. Pi). The other, of smaller dimensions (60.5 x 73.5
cm), which was recently sold from an old English private collection, can
from its size almost certainly be identified with a picture bought by
Xorblin for the healthy price of 501 livres 1 sol in the sale of de Vassal de
Saint-Hubert.
two paintings the composition was extended to the left by
In these
adding a further group of herdsmen and their beasts climbing the track
now linked (somewhat contrivedly) with the bridge, and to the right by
some more rocks. Boucher obviously no longer had access to the drawing
he had made in 173c, since the paintings omit all the terracing that made
Fig. « .':. Cabinet des
this part (which is the weakest in both paintings) interesting. In both
Dessins, Louvre. paintings, indeed, it would appear that it was the landscape that he turned
over to his studio assistants, and the figures, at least the more important of
them, that he put in himself. It is not possible to say for certain which of
the two paintings had the priority, but the apparently higher quality of the
figures in the de Vassal de Saint-Hubert picture and the fact that it exhibits
a pentimento in the placing of the shepherd boy suggest that it was the
earlier.

The present Louvre drawing

picture reverts to the upright format of the
but changes the vertical relation between foreground and background in
order to retain the additional group of herdsmen on the left (it was, after
all, these Castiglionesque details that made Boucher's early landscapes
popular). At the same time it alters both the detail and the scale of the
bridge and ruins and completely does away with the buildings beside the
Temple of the Sibyl and with the subsidiary figures on the track and
Fig. ioo.Le moineau apprrooise, engraved by bridge. In this picture, evenmore than in the other two, the landscape is
Rene Gaillard after a lost painting by Boucher.
the least inspired element. The figures, however, appear to be as vigorous
as ever (possibly even strengthened in the group on the left, among which
the boy behind the second horse is treated less perfunctorily, and to which
a sheep has been added at the extreme left) and from Boucher's own hand.

It would thus appear that all three of the known versions of the

Capriccio View of Tivoli are by Boucher, but with studio assistance. It

seemed worth showing the present version (which was recognized by
Pierre Rosenberg in 1979 but has remained unpublished) to shed fresh
light on the manner in which Boucher made repetitions of his composi-
tions. In the present case, the tight, slightly summary manner of
rendering the figures indicates that all three versions were made not long
after Boucher's return from Rome. It was not until 1734, however, when
his manner was again more liquid, that Boucher painted the Vieu- of the
_ roi. Caprifxit Vieu . :: ali (retouched
Famese Gardens (cat. 23) from the drawing that was made as a pendant to
j

bv Boucher Ninonalmuseum, Stockholm.

that of the Capriccio View of Tivoli.
 n Venus Requesting Vulcan for Arms
for Aeneas
Oil on canvas
99 x 69 in. (252 X 175 cm)
Signed bottom right:/ Boucher 1732
Musee du Louvre, Paris
(inv. 2709)
(S&M315, 322, 353) A&W85

PROVENANCE
Francois Derbais, rue Poissonniere, salle de This Venus and Vulcan is the first dated, or even securely datable, painting
billard (inventaire apres decks, 2 Mar. 1743,
in Boucher's oeuvre. It also announces new ambitions, both in its size and
Archives Nationales, Minutier Central, LIX,
in its treatment of a mythological subject on such a scale and with such
p. 230); Catalogue de Tableaux . . . & Le tout
provenant du cabinet de feu M. WATELET, boldness and visibility of brushstroke. Boucher was to return to its subject
Conseiller du Roi, Receveur General des Fi- throughout his career. There was thus considerable vision and appropri-
nances d'Orleans . . . &c, appartement de M e
.

ateness in its acquisition by d'Angiviller for the Museum, along with its
Havot de Long-Pre, Huissier-Priseur, cour du
Vieux-Louvre (Paillet & Hayot de Long-Pre), pendant, Aurora and Cephalus (cat. 18), at the Watelet sale in 1786.
12 June ft. 1786, lot 11 (with the Aurora and It is hence all more extraordinary that we have no certain record of
the
Cephalus, miscalled Venus and Adonis): "deux
the picture before this date: we do not know for whom it was painted or
morceaux, aussi gracieux qu'il soit possible de
les desirer . . . peints dans la grande force de from whom Watelet acquired was engraved. It is like a
it, nor whether it

cet Artiste, tant par la beaute de la couleur, manifesto of Boucher's gifts after his return from Italy that went
que par un empatement admirable & la touche
unpublished. The temptation is therefore strong to see in it one of the
la plus savante" [bought for the Crown by
Paillet for 3,121 livres; Engerand, 1900,
"grands tableaux" that Mariette (I, 1851-53, p. 165) says Boucher painted
p. 594,
records their purchase for 3,201 livres (the in his youth for the "sculpteur marbrier nomme Dorbay," all the more so
difference reflecting Paillet 's commission?) but in that Mariette identifies the Rape of Europ a in the Watelet collection as
garbles the purchase by omitting the title of
having been painted for the same individual. The pendant to the Rape of
the present picture and dividing that of the
Aurora and Cephalus into two separate paint- Europa, Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus (both now in the Wallace
ings]; placed in the Louvre in the same year. Collection, London), must have had the same origin, and we know from
the ascription of ownership on the engravings after the four large putti
PREPARATORY DRAWING
Jete de femme (Venus), medium unknown, pictures called L'Amour moissonneur, L Amour oiseleur, L Amour nageur,
engraved by J-C. Francois (J-R 1019). and L Amour vendangeur, that they, too, were in the same collection,
there called the "Cabinet de M r
. Derbais."
COPY
Head of Venus, canvas, 38 x 40 cm, Corrodi
That makes six large pictures — but would that have been enough to
sale, Antonina, Rome, 16-23 Jan. 1935, lot 56. justify Mariette in saying that this "Dorbay" had "furnished his whole
house" with paintings that "Boucher, not seeking to do anything but make
ANALOGY
Venus demandant des armes a Vulcain, 43 x
a name for himself, would have done for nothing, rather than pass up the
32 pouces, Chardin's posthumous sale, 6 Mar. opportunity"? One might think not; in which case it is not unreasonable
ff. 1780, lot 11 [the proportions of this are to suppose that Watelet acquired his Venus and Vulcan and Aurora and
virtually identical to those of the picture in the
Cephalus from Derbais, just as he did his Rape of Europa and Mercury
Louvre, which is the only surviving upright
version other than the much narrower picture Confiding the Infant Bacchus.
in the Wallace Collection. The picture owned Who wasDorbay or Derbais, and why should Boucher have
this
by Chardin might thus have been a model for,
imagined that by painting large pictures for him he would gain a
or reduction of, the former]. His sale also
included a red-chalk drawing of the same
reputation? The only sculpteur marbrier of whom there is any record in
subject, paired with another of Venus and the eighteenth century is Jerome Derbais, who frequently appears in this
Mars What was very possibly the same
(lot 41).
role in the royal accounts between 1668 and Lami, 1906, pp.
(see
171 5
drawing was on its own in Bergerets posthu-
mous sale, 24 Apr. ff. 1786, lot 151, measuring 145-46), but who is best known for the bronzes supposedly done from his
11/2 X 7/j pouces. busts of the Grand Conde and Turenne (examples of both in the Wallace
Collection, and of the latter alone in the Frick Collection, New York).
However, 171 5 was the year of his death. The natural assumption, since

r
33
J
34
 —

Jerome Derbais belonged to a kin group of sculptors (his father-in-law

was Gilles Guerin), was that he had had a son who carried on the same
profession, but in greater obscurity. I am deeply indebted to Georges
Brunei for pointing out to me that this was not the case, and for
communicating to me his discovery of the inventaire apres dices of

Francois Derbais, the lawyer son of the sculptor, taken on 2 March 1743.
It is frustratingly unspecific in not supplying any artists' names, but it

does indicate that the son of the sculpteur marbrier Derbais did have a
substantial collection of pictures, and that this collection included in the
salle de billard Rape of Eur op a and a Birth of Bacchus, together with a
a

pair of larger pictures of Aurora and Cephalus and Venus Requesting

Vulcan for Arms, and a large Birth of Venus, which were the most highly
assessed pictures in the whole collection. There can be little doubt that
these, and two pairs of depictions of children on the staircase, were the

Fig. 102. C-J. Natoire, Venus Requesting

pictures by Boucher that we have been considering.
Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas (1734). Musee It is still not wholly apparent how Boucher expected to gain from this
Fabre, Montpellier. connection. Derbais is not cited as a celebrated collector in his own day;
his social station and connections were unremarkable; and if he was
instrumental in having L Amour moissonneur and UAmour oiseleur
engraved in 1734, their fellows were not engraved until 1741, while the
Rape of Eur opa and Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus were not
engraved until after his death, in 1748. The Venus and Vulcan and the
Aurora and Cephalus were not engraved at all. One can therefore only
—
suppose that if Mariette's account of the relationship is to be trusted
Boucher was able to use Derbais's house in the rue Poissonniere as a kind
of gallery to display his work to prospective clients.
The Venus and Vulcan was indeed a remarkable new departure in
French painting for the time. In its strong, acid coloring, reduced to a few
striking notes, in the serpentine vitality of its forms (notably of the armor
on the ground), and in the broad, highly evident strokes of its brushwork,
it broke decisively with the even gradations and delicate glazes and finish
of the then leader of the French school, Francois Lemoine, and his
emulators. Its frank sensuality — above all in the pose of Venus (who, one
should remember, needed to seduce her alienated husband into forging
arms for her illegitimate son) and in the shape of the nymph with her
upturned bottom (the first occurrence of this celebrated pose in Boucher's
oeuvre) — must also have been startling. So too, even though treating a

well-tried theme, Boucher managed to create a composition of such

originality and narrative force that it evidently left an indelible impression
on two near-contemporaries and rivals, Natoire and Carle Vanloo, as
his

witness the former's morceau de reception of 1734 (fig. 102; Musee Fabre,
Montpellier; exh. cat. 1977, Troyes, no. 17) and the latter's painting of 1735
(private collection, France; exh. cat. 1977, Nice, no. 39). Thus, whether
the assumption about the presence of Boucher's picture in Derbais's
collection is was evidently somewhere that satisfied the
correct or not, it

young Boucher's requirement of getting himself known.

In view of the fact that this must have been the first picture with which
Boucher carved out for himself the leading position within the ecole
franqaise, there is particular piquancy in its having been singled out for
criticismby the determinedly anti-Gallican Julien de Parme, when he
described a visit to Watelet's collection in a letter to Andre Lens of 9 May

135
 °

1774 — ne °f a whole series of diatribes against the ecole francaise

(Rosenberg, 1984^], p. 224):

Would you believe that such a man had nothing in his collection but
Vanloos, Bouchers, Pierres, Viens, Doyens, etc. . . . which he finds
very beautiful, and I find detestable? . . . But Mr. Watelet not only
owns pictures that are worse than mediocre, he seeks to justify them
and get them appreciated, despite one's having had enough of them. Not
having been able to prevent my saying that the body of a Vulcan,
painted by Boucher, had nothing at all of the beauties of antique forms,
he replied that it exhibited manv traits of observed nature, and a
charged brush. But the truth was nothing there but la
is that there
mamere franqoise in its most extreme form. (Croiroit-on qu'un tel
homme n'eut dans son cabinet que des Vanloo, des Bouchers, des Pierre,
des Vien, des Doyen, etc. . . . quit trouveque je trouvetres beaux, et

detestablesf . . . Mais Mr. Watelet non seulement a des tableaux au-

dessous du mediocre, mais il veut encore les justifier et les faire trouver
beaux, malgre qu'on en N'ayant pu m'empecher de dire que le corps
ait.

d'un certain Yulcain, peint par Boucher, n'avoit rien du tout des belles
formes antiques, il me repondit qu'il y avoit beaucoup de verites de
nature et un pinceau moelleux. Mais la verite est qu'il n'y avoit autre
chose que la mamere franqoise la plus outree.)

18 Aurora and Cephalus

Oil on canvas
98/2 x 69 in. (250 x 175 cm)
Signed bottom center: boucher/iyjfjfj
Musee des Beaux- Arts. Nancy unv. 143)
S&M88 A&W86'

PROVENANCE
Francois Derbais (see cat. 17); Watelet 's post- Since it same dimensions, and provenance from the Watelet sale,
shares the
humous sale, 12 June ft. 1786, lot 11 (see
as the Venus and Vulcan (cat. 17), there can be little doubt that this Aurora
cat. 17), as Venus et Adonis [bought with its

pendant Venus and Vulcan for the Crown by and Cephalus was also originally painted for the same patron, despite the
Paillet for 3,121 livres, but Engerand (190c, one year's difference of date between them. As has already been suggested,
p. 594) omits the title of Venus et Vulcain, this must have been the avocat au Parlement Francois Derbais. What has
instead dividing the present picture into two,
been said of the novel technique and effects of the Venus and Vulcan is
asCephale and L'Aurore]; placed in the
Louvre in 1786; sent to Luneville for the perhaps even more strikingly apparent in this picture. In Nancy this
negotiations preceding the Treaty of Luneville, emerges even more vividly, through the painting's juxtaposition with
iSci; transferred to the museum of Nancy
Lemoine's Continence of Sap 10 (fig. 13) and de Troy's Diana and Her
when the conference was over.
Nymphs in Repose. Two additional elements in Aurora and Cephalus, both
PREPARATORY DRAFTINGS prefatory of Boucher's subsequent oeuvre, are the extraordinary freedom
Female Xude, Seated on Clouds, Holding
i .

of his characteristic fantasy plant in the foreground (now rendered even

Drapery 'Aurora red chalk heightened with
.

white on buff paper, 37c x 231 mm, signed

more unreal by the loss of surface glazes, which has turned it gray-blue)
lower left/ Boucher; Peter Jones; Basil and the gamboling cupids in the air, who introduce a note of festivity that
Dighton; Hon. Irwin Laughlin; by descent to had almost been banished from monumental French history painting
Rear Adm. and Mrs. Hubert Chanler (exh.
through the influence of the Academy. One of the few pictures in which
cat. 1973-74, Washington, no. 20).
such an uninhibited use of putti is found in the work of Boucher's seniors

156
137
 2. }Head of Cephalus (medium and dimen- was Noel-Nicolas Coypel's Rape of Eur op a, which the artist submitted as
sions unstated), engraved in reverse under the
direction of Deseve, as a representation of the
his entry in the 1727 competition (fig. 34; Philadelphia Museum of Art;

youthful male head, fig. i of pi. 23, Dessin, les see Conisbee, 198 1, pp. 78-80). Both Coypel and Boucher, however, were
Ages, in the supplementary volume of illustra- probably encouraged to adopt this Rubensian device by Watteau's
tions (1805) to the two volumes of the
depictions of Cythera. What sets Boucher apart is the unidealized, almost
Encyclopedic Methodique: Beaux Arts written
by Watelet and Levesque (1788 and grotesque, features and poses of his infants.
1791).
This also happens to be the first painting by Boucher for which we
possess a nude study of the principal figure, Aurora. It is not exactly an
academie, for not only is the pose conceived specifically for the painting
but also some of the drapery on which the model must have sat is

transformed into clouds. Her hair, however, is still her own, under a little

kerchief, and awaits its embellishment in the painting by coiffure and

pearls. 1973-74, Washington, p. 27) suggests that
Regina Slatkin (exh. cat.

the model was "undoubtedly" the seventeen-year-old Marie-Jeanne

Buseau, whom Boucher married in the year that he painted this picture.

This is not only inherently implausible — there is not even any facial

resemblance with the accepted depictions of her — it also traduces the

deliberate piquancy of the presentation. For this is the body not of a
young girl but of a mature woman; in thus pointing up the discrepancy in
age between the older woman and the beardless boy, Boucher evokes the
legend that Aurora was cursed by Venus with nymphomania for having
slept with her lover, Mars. He takes some liberty in suggesting enthusiasm
on Cephalus's part, however, since the legend has it that he attempted to
remain faithful to his wife, Procris. Despite the error of the Watelet sale
catalogue, there is no question (as has generally been recognized, pace
Levey, 1982) but that the scene represented is that of Aurora and Cephalus
rather than Venus and Adonis, because the chariot, the torch bringing
light, and the putto watering the plants with dew denote the woman as

Aurora, while the horn, hounds, bow, and arrows denote the male figure
as Cephalus, the passionate hunter (whose passion for hunting led to the
death of his wife). What is more, the subject of the picture was already
correctly identified when it was acquired for the French Crown at the
Watelet sale (see also the same elements in the overdoor of Aurora and
Cephalus of about 1739 in the Hotel de Soubise).
Regrettably, we only know what appears to have been a study for the
head of Cephalus through an ambiguous engraving. His face, with its

sharply receding forehead, tilted nose, and high-set eye, is curiously

similar to those in the later paintings of Vouet and the early paintings of
Le Sueur, and it is possible that the engraving (if it is not simply after a
study made by Watelet when the painting was in his possession) records a
drawing by Boucher after such a work. The back-tilted pose of the
foremost cupid can be paralleled by others notably in the ex- Watelet —
Rape of Europ a in the Wallace Collection and must also have been —
studied in a drawing, but none has so far come to light. In general,
however, it is the spontaneity of the picture that is most apparent; it is far
from being a labored assemblage of separately studied figures, as in the
academic tradition, but gives the feeling of having been created at the tip
of the artist s brush —Watelet 's "pinceau moelleux" (see cat. 17).

138
 19 De trois choses enferez-vous une?
Oil on canvas
Oval, 41/2 x 33'Ain. (105 x 85 cm)
Institut de France,
Musee Ephrussi de Rothschild,
Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat
S& M 1439, 1490, 1506
A&W88bis

PROVENANCE
?A Young Man, & his Mistress, oval, Andrew The riddling title given to this composition in the engraving of it (literally:
Hay sale, [14-15 Feb.] 1744/45, ist day, l ot 3°
"Of three things will you make/do one?") has thus far defied elucidation.
[bought by Lord Hume (Home) for £16.55
It is obvious that it contains an element of sexual innuendo, but that is all.
6d]\ [Lecomte & Escudero] sale, exp. Febvre,
Paris, 12 Dec. 1854, lot 36; anon, posthumous There are two autograph versions of this picture, as is not uncommonly
sale, exp.Haro, Paris, 22 Jan. 1874, lot 1 (with the case at this relatively early stage in Boucher's career (see Voss, 1959).
La Marchande d'Oeufs as its pendant, lot 2);
The other version, to which it has regrettably been impossible to gain
anon, sale, Hotel Drouot (Feral), Paris, 14
May 1877, lot 7 (with the same pendant, lot 8); access (baron Edmond de Rothschild collection, Chateau de Pregny; Voss,
Mme C. Lelong, Paris [not included in her sale 195 3, pp. 90-93, fig. 71), simplifies the arrangement of flowers in the girl's
of 11— 1 5 May 1903, unlike its pendant]; sale of
hair, places a pearl bracelet on her left forearm, clothes her in a shawl, and
Mme X [Lelong?], Petit, Paris, 26 June 1924,
lot 70; Mme Ephrussi, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat;
substitutes a ribbon with a bow for the scarf around her neck. Although it

donated with the foundation established in is this latter version that was engraved by J -J. Pasquier (J-R 1447-1448), it

memory of her parents Alphonse and Eleonora cannot be regarded as any more canonical than the other, because the
de Rothschild in 1938.
engraving was not published until 1768, when it is possible that the version
VARIANT VERSION shown here had gone to England and was thus no longer available. Voss,
^Catalogue de Tableaux . . . &c. provenant du indeed, saw the picture here as the earlier one, and the other as a more
Cabinet de Af :::::: [Defeutre, brocanteur],
"

disciplined and considered revision of it.

Hotel d'Aligre (Bresse &C Joullain), 21 May ff.

1778, lot 23: "Un jeune homme aux genoux Pasquier engraved the composition with Elle mord a la grappe as its

d'une jolie femme. Ce tableau, d'une touche pendant (J-R 1449-1451); that painting, though lost, can be seen from the
tranche, a ete
Hauteur
fait a

pieds
son retour de Rome.
pouce largeur 2 pieds 6
engraving to have been later than the present one, however the version of —
&M
1
3
pouces. Toile" [bought by Le Febvre for 96 the picture exhibited in i860 was dated 1749 (S 1566). When the
livres]; Edmond de Rothschild, Paris;
baron present picture was in the sales presided over by Haro and Feral in 1874
baron Edmond de Rothschild, Chateau de and 1877, and in the collection of Mme C. Lelong, it had another pen-
Pregny, Switzerland.
dant, an adult version of La Marchande d'Oeufs (engraved with child
ENGRAVING (OF VARIANT VERSION) protagonists by Daulle, J-R 546; the adult version formerly with Cailleux,
Jacques-Jean Pasquier with the title De Trois
1975, no. 3, and now in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford). But this
Choses enferez-vous une?, dated 1768, and
too neither matched it in date (it must, from its coarser facture, have been
inscribed Grave d'apres Francois Boucher pre-
mier Peintre du Rot, Directeur de son Aca- a little earlier) nor in the character of the couple portrayed. What is more,
demie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture [J-R the two pictures had separate histories before they were united in the
1447-1448], with Elle mord a la grappe as a
Haro sale (La Marchande d'Oeufs first appeared separately in the sale of
pendant.
the Pillot collection, 6-8 Dec. 1858, lot 17). If the present picture were
COPY ever to have had a pendant, it is much more likely to have been The Birds-
Lovers in Conversation, 87 x 66.5 cm,
Nesters (fig. 103; photograph in the Witt Library, without any details; a
Sotheby's, New York, 13 Mar. 1985, lot 16
delicious pastel study by Boucher of the girl's head was in the Donald S.
[copied from the engraved version].
Stralem collection, sold Christie's, London, 13 Dec. 1984, lot 158, under
the name of J-A. Portail). Between these two pictures, the protagonists are
comparable in type and years; and the two compositions balance, while
contrasting an indoor and an outdoor scene.
The dating of the present picture is not immediately easy to establish,
for although it evidently relates in theme and format to the set of four
paintings of La Souffle use de Savon, Le Marchand d'Oiseaux, La

139
 The
Fig. 103. Bird's-Xesters. Whereabouts
unknown.

Marcbande d'Oeufs, and La Yendangeuse, engraved by Daulle and

published in 1748 (J-R 542-549), it is evident from the types of the
protagonists in these that, even though the paintings themselves are lost
and otherwise unrecorded, they dated from another period. The eager,
aspiring boy in the present picture, wearing his own flowing locks tied
behind with a ribbon, would on first sight appear to find his closest fellow
in the lovely pastel of a Boy Holding a Parsnip in the Art Institute of
Chicago, which is signed and dated 1738 (exh. 1973-74, Washington,
cat.

no. 32, color pi. p. xiv). Both handling and other elements, however, point
to a rather earlier date for De trois cboses en ferez-zous une? Its brushwork
is not very manifest, but the folds of drapery have the narrow pleated
form found in pictures painted rather sooner after Boucher's return from
Italy, such as La Pastorale (Voss, 1954, fig. 22) or Aurora and Cephalus,

:
4~
 and even in those painted as late as the grisaille Virtues in the chambre de
la Reine at Versailles (1735). The rather broad, small-featured faces of the
girl and of Aurora would also appear to have been based on the same
model, who may again appear, in profile, in the Woman at Her Dressing
Table engraved by Claire Tournay (J-R 1613) and in Les caresses
dangereuses engraved by Joseph de Longueil (fig. 71; J-R 1402), as well as
repeatedly in the engraved illustrations to Moliere (J-R 402-452).
Since all these features indicate a dating to around 1733/34, would be it

very tempting to see in this picture an idealized representation of Boucher

making his suit to Marie-Jeanne Buseau, whom he married on 21 April
1733. But if the girl in the present picture could very possibly be, like his
new wife, only seventeen, her blond hair and features do not otherwise
agree with those of his wife, as we believe them
from the
to have been
presumed portrait in the Frick Collection, while Boucher would have
been double the age of the boy. The painting should instead be seen as one
of his earliest treatments of the pastoral theme of juvenile love, albeit not

yet with rustic protagonists or setting.

20 Le repos desfermiers
Oil on canvas
34/4 X X 136 cm)
53/2 in. (87
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey E.
Horvitz, Hallandale, Florida

PROVENANCE
Baron Henri de Rothschild, Paris (exh. cat. It is perhaps a reflection of Boucher's inexhaustible fecundity that by the
1928, Paris, no. 47); baron James de Roth- time he died and his obituaries came to be written, one entire phase of his
schild, Paris (exh. cat. 19 5 1, Geneva, no. 3, as

La serenade villageoise); private colls., En-

development had been virtually forgotten, and was almost wholly
gland and U.S.A.; Claus Virch; art market, overlooked: that of his early scenes of peasant most of them vignettes
life,

New York, from which acquired by the of rustic domesticity in landscape settings functioning not just as a mere
present owners in 1985.
backdrop, but as a participatory element in the rural idyll that is there

DRAWING presented.
Study of a Hen with Wings Outstretched, There is, however, what appears to be one somewhat cryptic reference
drawing, red, black, and white chalks, 170 X
to these early scenes of peasant life in the very generalized Eloge written
200 mm, Count Carl Gustaf Tessin (acquired
in Paris, 1739-42), Akero (1749 ms. cat., IV, by Jullien des Boulmiers, published in the Mercure de France in

p. 20, no. 76); Kongl. Biblioteket, Stockholm September 1770 (pp. 181-89, esp. pp. 184-85):
(1790 cat., no. 2846); transferred to the Kongl.
[now National] Museum in 1863 (inv. NM But what must seem incredible in this astonishing fecundity is that he
2952/1863; Bjurstrom, 1982, no. 823; here only painted nature under its beautiful aspects, that he never portrayed
fig. 104).
it as anything but cheerful and agreeable; above all, he avoided that
absurd juxtaposition of objects that are never to be found together and
that are an affront to good taste, in that they require us to suspend our
critical faculties: if he sometimes diverted himself with bambochades, he
knew how to improve without distorting them, and never presented
hideous or disgusting objects, because he knew that our eyes find
repugnant what we cannot bring our hands to touch. . . . (Mais ce qui
paroit inconcevable dans cette etonnante fecondite, c'est quil ne peignit
la nature qu'en beau, quil ne la montra jamais que sous un aspect

141
 aimable & riant; il evita sur-tout ce melange ridicule d'objets qui ne se
sont jamais trouves ensemble & qui repugnent au gout en mettant le

jugement en defaut: s'il s'egaya quelque fois dans le genre de Bamboche,

il squt Vembellir sans le denaturer & n' offrit jamais des objets odieux ou
degoutans, parce qu'il savoit que les yeux ont horreur des choses que les

mains ne voudroient pas toucher. . .

.)

It is perhaps significant that the short biography in the Galerie Franqoise,

which clearly drew on this passage for a similar one of its own
(1771, p. 2), omitted the reference to Bamboche altogether —whether
because his was not thought Boucher with, or, more
a suitable brush to tar

probably, because the writer was uncertain as to exactly what works of the
artist were being referred to. He knew Marches de Bohemiens et

d'animaux in the manner of "Le Benedette" (i.e., Castiglione), in which

Boucher stuck closer to nature as a model than in the landscapes for which
he was celebrated (p. 3), but not apparently this other early group of
works.
Bambochade — a word seemingly first imported from Italian into French
when it was used to describe two of Pierre's exhibits in the Salon of 1743,
and applied to certain of Boucher's own productions in the list of painters'

specialties drawn up for the Direction des Batiments in 1745 (A- Michel,
1906, p. 52; A& W doc. 244), and derived from the nickname of the
Dutch painter active in Italy, Pieter van Laer (c. 1 592-1642), // Bambocao
— chiefly evokes the scenes of urban lowlife depicted by this artist and his

142
 imitators. Boucher — with the possible exception of a pastiche or two of
Teniers — never painted exactly this kind of scene, and the application of
the term to him must rather be taken to refer to his early depictions of the
communal activities of peasants out of doors (see the definition in Watelet
& Levesque, 1788), as opposed to his later pastoral fancies of amorous
couples, or the conventionalized depictions of fishermen, drovers,
washerwomen, or young mothers and children with which he was to
people his later landscapes. Yet, as Desboulmiers perceived, even in the

preceding and more naturalistic depictions of rustic domesticity, Boucher

was careful to avoid the coarse or grotesque features associated with the
Dutch tradition.
Boucher was already painting this kind of scene before he left for Italy.
One example is exhibited here, La vie champetre (cat. 9), and others are
cited in the entry on it. These pictures were, however, on a small scale,

painted with a rich, saturated palette and carefully controlled brush, and
visibly inspired by Dutch models. The present painting belongs, by
contrast, to a group of pictures painted shortly after his return, as was
first observed by Voss (1953, p. 85, fig. 46; his proposed sequence of

datings is, however, predicated on the mistaken belief that the painting of
La vie champetre just antedates the engraving after it). These are generally
larger, looser and freer in handling, their groups of figures are more open

and active, and their compositions altogether less homogeneous. Knowing

most of them only from reproductions, I offer the list with all due
caution, but it would appear to include La famille de villageois (first
recorded in the posthumous sale of Hubert Robert, 5 Apr. ff. 1809, lot 32
[in the description of the picture, the well is transposed from right to left];

subsequently Mrs. Young, London; Rodolphe Kann, Paris; baron Maurice

de Rothschild [Voss, 1954, p. 209, fig. 23; A 40]), which, but for &W its

discrepant format, could almost have been the pendant of the present
picture; and L'Abreuvoir (first recorded in the Penard-Fernandez collec-
tion, Buenos Aires, as London, 14 June
by Fragonard; Sotheby's sale,

,
1961, lot 73, retaining this attribution; art market, New York [A & 51; W
.^.' exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 2]). There is also what appears to be the sketch
^:
for another picture of the kind, although its handling is strange, suggesting
that it may not in fact be the original that was drawn by Saint-Aubin when
r -

it appeared in Natoire's posthumous sale of 14 December ff. 1778, lot 33

Fig. 104. Study of a Hen with Wings Out-
stretched. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. (art market, New York; A& W 69; exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 4; a closely
related composition recorded in an engraving by Joseph Varin [J-R
is

1619]). From these cabinet pictures it is but a short step to the set of four
large decorative paintings of village pastorals purportedly from the Hotel
de Richelieu (see cat. 27; A& W 41, 42, 82, 83). After that, the vein dried
up, replaced by the theater-inspired Pastorales for which Boucher was to
become famous.
What an early place these pictures take in Boucher's output after his
return from Italy can be seen from the landscape in the present example.
The view on the left still incorporates the castle and concave-
distant
—
thatched farmhouses ultimately derived via Watteau from the woodcuts —
of Campagnola; but the handling of these and of the distant hills now has
a broad, painterly application of pigment that is absent from the more
tentative landscapes in the earlier pictures. The closest parallels for both
sky and landscape in the present picture are to be found in the Putti

M3
 Playing with a Goat (Voss, 1953, p. 89, fig. 58; A 60; currently on &W
the Swiss art market), the pendant of Putti Playing with Birds in the
present exhibition (cat. 15). The foliage of the trees, by contrast, seems
somewhat less idiosyncratic and particularized than in these early putti

pictures, and already tends to the increased generality and conventionality

of the ex-Hotel de Richelieu village pastorals. Equally striking, perhaps, is

the change in the character of the figuresfrom those of Bouchers earlier

pictures. Whereas in the earlier works there were fixed types for men,
women, and children, and their poses suggest that they were largely
composed on the canvas, here each is an individual, and its basis in a
figure study can be sensed —very strongly in the case of the droll child

submerged under a large hat, which conveys the impression of a cutout

stuck down amid the rest. Regrettably, in the case of Le repos des fermiers
we do not know of any drawings for the figures, whereas for the closely
related picture of La famille de villageois we know of two (A & figs. W
234, 236). Their draftsmanship and the form of signature on the first of
them clearly indicate studies from the early 1730s.
There is, however, one drawing, which has been described as a study
not only for the present picture, but also for two other paintings, whose
probable dating might seem to call into question that proposed for the
picture here. This is a drawing aux trois crayons of a Hen with Wings
Outstretched in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (fig. 104; NM
2952/1863; AA no. 618, fig. 108; A& W fig. 251; Bjurstrom, 1982, no.
823, color pi. p. xvii). Originally described as a study for the present
picture, including by Ananoff himself in 1966, after this painting had
silently been omitted from the canon the drawing was instead described as

a study for Noah Entering the Ark (A & 29) and La fontaine (A & W W
46). There is nothing to prevent a study being used for more than one
composition —particularly in the case of the thrifty Boucher! But can one
accept what I am in effect proposing here, that the same drawing should
have been used at least twice with an interval of several years between,
during which time Boucher had made a journey to Italy and radically
transformed his style? I have argued earlier that both the original of Noah
Entering the Ark (cat. 10) and La fontaine (fig. 85) should be regarded as
works executed immediately before Boucher went to Italy, whereas the
present picture should be seen as dating from not long after his return. I
believe that if one looks at the use to which the study of the bird is put in
the various pictures, the hypothesis of a hiatus between the first two and
the last acquires additional strength.
In both La fontaine and Noah Entering the Ark, this Study of a Hen is

employed in conjunction with another of A Strutting Cock, also aux trois

crayons and in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (NM 2953/1863;

A& W fig. 253; Bjurstrom, 1982, no. 824). They are not placed in exactly
the same relation to one another in the two paintings, and indeed, the
Noah Entering the Ark takes altogether greater liberties with the two,
suggesting that, if anything, they were made as studies for the former
rather than for the latter. However, there is no particular motivation for
their inclusion, even in La fontaine, and the fact that they are — unusually
for Boucher's animal studies — elaborately carried out aux trois crayons
suggests that they were originally executed as studies in their own right,

with the ultimate end in view of their disposal to a collector such as Count

144
 Tessin, who acquired them from the Pans between 1739 and 1742.
artist in

In the present picture the hen is employed alone, without anything, such
as the dog in La fontaine, to provoke it into an attitude of self-defense
(although the original study must surely have been made from a hen
defending her chicks). What is perhaps most significant for the suggested
disparity in dating between La fontaine (and Noah Entering the Ark) and
Le repos des fermiers, however, is the difference in the handling of this hen
between the pictures. In the former the birds have many of the qualities of
the studies for them; the softness of chalk is translated into the liquidity of
paint. In the present picture the handling is much harder; the hen shares
the same bold, hatched brushwork of the rest of the composition and
stands out sharply from the ground in consequence.
A final note. It was not only drawings that Boucher put to use over an
extended span of years, but also studio or household props. The great
copper cooking pan features in numerous other paintings, both from
before Boucher went to Italy, such as in the Noah pictures (cat. 10, 11) and
La vie champetre (cat. 9), and from after his return, such as the Vieiv of
Tivoli (cat. 16), La belle cuisiniere (cat. 21), and La belle villageoise (see
fig. 105); with such an essential and picturesque object, this is not

unexpected. Rather more unexpected is to find the urn beside it cropping

up again as the support for the joined hands of the woman in the drawing
that served as a study for the old woman in La Lumiere du Monde (cat.

57) —but this is one of a number of indications that the drawing was
originally conceived for some other purpose, some years before.

21 La belle cuisiniere

Oil on panel
22 x 17 in. x 43 cm)
(55.5
Signed bottom right:/ Boucher
Musee Cognacq-Jay, Paris
(S&M1135) '(A&W75)
Paris

PROVENANCE
Acquired by an Englishman and taken off to The theme of amorous dalliance between adolescents was one that
London soon after having been painted, ac- Boucher rapidly made his own after his return from Italy, but it was some
cording to the advertisement for Aveline's
engraving of it in the Mercure de France, Apr.
—
time before with the aid of inspiration from the Theatre de la Foire he —
1735, p. 737; no further trace until included in settled upon the social character of his couples and the locus of their
the sales in Paris of the coll. of Sir William activity: shepherds and shepherdesses open fields. in the
Jackson, 25 Feb. 1848, lot 46 [unsold or
The present picture is one of a contemporaneous trio of scenes whose
withdrawn], and 12 Mar. 1849, lot 53; acquired
at an unknown date by Ernest Cognacq and setting is the kitchen. In two of them —
this and the Kitchen Maid and
his wife Louise
of Paris in 1929.
Jay, and bequeathed to the city —
Young Boy (cat. 28) the message is explicitly or implicitly erotic, while in
the third, La belle villageoise (fig. 105; engraved picture lost, last recorded

ENGRAVINGS in the sale of the due de Luynes, 1 frimaire [21 November] 1793, lot 46
1 La belle cuisiniere, engraved (in reverse)
. [with measurements inverted]; smaller modello, or variant, in the
by Aveline, published by Drouais, and subse-
quently by Jacob and by Basan; advertised in
Norton Simon, Pasadena, A &
collection of W fig. 341 and color pi.),
which was engraved by Soubeyran in 1738 as a pendant to Aveline's earlier

H5
146
the Mercure de France in Apr. 1735, June engraving of the present picture, it is simple domesticity.
1737, and June 1738 (when Soubeyran's en- It is commonly and rightly said that the inspiration of these paintings
graving after La belle villageoise was an-
nounced as its pendant); inscribed with the
was Dutch; while this holds true to the extent that they are indeed genre
following verses by the writer and engraver pictures and thus take their place in a tradition of painting that the Dutch
Bernard Lepicie: made particularly their own, and that was coming into special favor with
Vos oeufs s'echapent Math urine
Parisian collectors in these years, it should not be taken so far as to imply
Ce presage est mauvais pour vous,
Ce grivois dans votre cuisine dependence upon specific Dutch models (unlike, say, Boucher's lost
Pouroit bien vous les casser tous. Estaminet "in the manner of Teniers," as described in the Cayeux sale,
(J-R 205-206)
8 Jan. ff. 1770, lot 50). Not only can one point to no specific source, but
2. L'infortunee pourvoieuse, engraved (same
direction) by P. Duverbret [possibly a pseudo- also, whereas in Dutch pictures interest focuses upon the interior setting

nym adopted because of piracy], no publisher, and upon the protagonists as exemplifications of a social type, in Boucher
inscribed with the following anonymous the purely human interest of the scene comes first, carrying with it the
verses:
Suson, si sur votre Chemin
implication that in these humble settings uncomplicated happiness is more
Vous rencontrez encor quelqu'un, easily achieved (the moralizing content of the verses appended to the
qui vous lutine engravings after these pictures is inherent in this kind of engraving, rather
Je predis sans etre Devin
than necessarily a reflection of the intentions of the artist). So, too, such
Que vous ne porterez point d'oeufs
a la Cuisine commonplaces of Dutch "lowlife" painting as the amorous encounter in
Fillette doit toujours veiller the present picture, or the infant being held to piss by its mother in La
Sur ses Oeufs en son tahlier.
belle villageoise, are treated with a sympathy for the participants absent
(J-R 948)
3. Untitled, engraved (in reverse) by from most Dutch paintings.
R de Colle, Venice. It is in the teeming detail of the setting and the prominence accorded to
4.The Handsom Cook Maid, engraved (in
the still life most Dutch. In the case of La belle
that these pictures appear
reverse) by P. Benazech, published by Fr.
villageoise, the expert Pierre Remy actually attributed them to Willem
Vivares, London.
5. Eggs in Danger, glass picture (same Kalf himself when drawing up the posthumous inventory of the due de
direction) by J. Johnson, published by Luynes's collection in 1771 (see exh. cat. 1984, Paris, Musee Rodin, p. 61;
Fisher; example in the coll. of Stephen
J.
Boucher indeed owned a Kitchen Scene by Kalf, which was acquired by
Winkworth, Connoisseur, June 193 1 p. 349, ,

no. xiii.
the Crown at the comte de Vaudreuil's sale, and is now in the Louvre).
There are instances of kitchen scenes by Kalf with the original figures
painted out and others substituted by Lancret (Wallace Collection
Catalogues, 1968, p. 378), but this is clearly not the case with Boucher. In
his pictures, the main function of the still-life details is to underline the
message of rustic simplicity. The obvious symbolic allusions of the present
picture —the eggs held in the girl's apron, one of which has been dislodged
and broken, standing for virginity and a presage of its loss, and the cat
seizing the "bird," betokening the predatory urges beneath the young
man's naive ardor —likewise have Dutch precedents. Therese Burollet
~- ft (1980, p. 43) has compared the symbolism of the eggs in particular, which
-•

is taken up in Lepicie's verse under Aveline's engraving, to that of a

4 painting by Frans van Mieris the Elder that was to be directly drawn upon
by Greuze in his more moralizing picture in the Metropolitan Museum.
In view of the mastery that Boucher achieved in his genre scenes and —
indeed in his episodes of daily life in general — it is at first sight a little
* puzzling that he should have abandoned them after painting so few. The
1

answer may reside in the fact that his near-contemporary Chardin appears
to have diversified from still lifes into a similar kind of subject matter at
the verysame epoch. In Chardin's case the year would appear to have
T
Iff J"?
l

^fM'*^ }
been 1733 (see exh. cat. 1979, Paris, pp. 187 ff.). We have no means of
''-•*££> dating Boucher's pictures precisely, but the fact that Aveline's engraving
after theone here was advertised in the Mercure de France in April 1735
Fig. 105. La belle villageoise , engraved by and that the picture itself had already been borne off to England by that
Pierre Soubeyran after Boucher (1738). date suggest that it must have been painted no later than 1734.

J
47
PREPARATORY DRAWING Mariette related that Chardin was encouraged to essay genre painting,
"Une Etude de femme tres-spirituellement partly by the raillery of Aved (who was, significantly, active as a dealer as
faite pour la composition de la belle

Cuisiniere," sale of the Cabinet de M. : : :: well as a painter) and partly by the fear that he could not compete
[Huquierpere; July] 1771, lot 43
i [among
*
successfully with the already established Desportes and Oudry in his
framed drawings, bought by Lavocat for 6 original field. In pitting himself in turn against Chardin, Boucher was not
livres]; probably identifiable with a drawing in
challenging an established master of genre, but he was up against an
the Le Pelletier coll., Paris (A & W 75/4,
fig- 33 5)-
acknowledged -expert in its still-life component. Moreover, in undertaking

REPLICAS AND COPIES

this kind of subject, one of Boucher's chief strengths —
the displayed

i . Catalogue des Tableaux qui composent le

virtuosity of his brushwork —
probably ran counter to the tastes of the
Cabinet de M. le Comte de Merle, Hotel de potential clientele for such pictures: the collectors of actual Dutch
Bullion (Paillet & Julliot), 1 Mar. ff. 1784, lot paintings. It is admittedly evidence from much later in his career, but
20, on canvas, 20 x 17 pouces, with descrip- something of the kind is suggested by the pair of pictures that was
tion [bought by Cuvillier, Boucher's son-in-
law, for 125 livres].
commissioned from him in 1760 by that passionate admirer of Dutch Fein-
2. [Henri] Serrur sale, 15-16 Jan. 1866, malerei, Caroline Luise of Baden-Durlach, only to be banished from her
lot 117. Malereikabinett almost immediately after their arrival (see exh. cat. 1983,
The Declaration, 29 x 24 in., J. Forbes
3.
Karlsruhe, Schloss, pp. 135, 208). La belle villageoise, on the other hand,
Robertson coll. (exh. cat. 1902, London, no.
137, as "French School"; identified as
did pass as partly from the hand of Kalf and retained its place in the due
Boucher's La belle cuisiniere by Lady Dilke in de Luynes's cabinet of Dutch pictures.
her copy of the catalogue in the Victoria and
It is of some interest that La belle cuisiniere, like La vie champetre
Albert Museum Library, London).
4. J. E. Galloway, Ayr (photo of 1925 in —
was promptly carried off to England to which, by contrast,
(cat. 9),

Witt Library, London), on panel, 18^4 X Boucher's mythologies and amorous pastorals scarcely gained access. His
11V4 in.
most characteristic productions were not to find favor there in the
Brunner Gallery,
5. Paris, sold in 1921, [on

canvas?], 90 X 70 cm, as J-B. Huet.

eighteenth century, and it was really only as a draftsman that he was to be
6. Versailles sale, June 1968 (according to appreciated among the narrower circle of connoisseurs, including Charles
Therese Burollet, 1980, p. 45). Rogers, William Esdaile, and Sir Joshua Reynolds (see Denys Sutton, in
7. Musee Cognacq-Jay, Paris, red-chalk
exh. cat. 1984, Manchester, pp. 7-8).
drawing, 415 x 335 mm (Burollet, 1980,
no. 121). It is the apparently English provenance of the present picture that
8. Sotheby's, London, 3 July 1985, lot 171, reinforces its claim to be the original painting engraved by Aveline, for it

73.5 x 61 cm (copied from Aveline's engrav-

reemerged in the mid-nineteenth century in the collection of an
ing)-
Englishman, Sir William Jackson, was sold in Paris.
albeit that this

ANALOGIES Furthermore, it is in reverse of the original engraving by Aveline, as one

i. The figure of the kitchen maid re- would expect, and it is on panel, like the comparable painting of The
employed in a drawing engraved by S-F
Landscape Painter in the Louvre (cat. 22). By contrast, the version sold
Ravenet as Des Radix des Raves, in the set of
Les Cris de Paris, advertised in the Mercure de with the collection of the comte de Merle in 1784, which is commonly
France in May 1737 Q-R 1520). inserted into the provenance of the present picture, was on canvas. Too
Pose of the couple adopted by J-B.
2.
few details are given to identify the picture sold in a mixed lot (9) in the
Le Prince in a sepia drawing, La Vivandiere,
Masson sale. Hotel Drouot, Paris, 20 Mar.
posthumous sale of the collection of M. Davoust on 27 April 1772 with
1924, lot 92. any certainty, but it could equally well have been the half-length picture
3. The head of the kitchen maid, studied at a also shown here (cat. 28). The quality of the present picture undoubtedly
slightly different angle and in a more elaborate
denotes it as autograph, although there would appear to be an area of
kerchief, in a drawing from the cabinet of M.
de la Have, engraved by Demarteau, no. 25, unsatisfactorily restored damage around the farther eye of the girl. This,
and by Huquier fils (J-R 11 89). and the out-of-focus photograph by which it has so long been known,
may help to account for its unjustified dismissal by Ananoff and
Wildenstein, who consider the original to be lost.

148
 22 The Landscape Painter
Oil on panel
10/2 x 8>/4 in. (27 x 22 cm)
Musee du Louvre, Paris (M.I. 1024)
S&M 1063, 1228 A&W424
Pans

PROVENANCE
Catalogue de Tableaux des Ecoles dTtalie, de Since the Renaissance, whenever painters had depicted themselves or their
Flandre, et de France &c. formant
. . . le
colleagues at work, or had wanted to show artistic activity in general, it
Cabinet de feu M. COLLET . . . , rue de
Clery no. 96 (Le Brun), 14 May ff. 1787, lot 99
had been customary to do so in a way that exalted the artist s calling. This
[with impossible height; bought by Francois was achieved on one level by presenting the painter (as in the Middle
for 259 livres 19 sous]; Hubert Robert's post- Ages) as St. Luke Painting the Virgin or (as in the unique instance of
humous sale, Apr. ff. 1809, lot 33; sale of
5
Dosso Dossi) as Zeus Painting Souls. On a more mundane level, he might
Col. Devere, Paris, 17 Mar. 1855, lot 7 bis;
coll. of Dr. Louis La Caze, left to the Louvre be shown as the head of a studio or academy, or, in greater isolation, as a
in 1869. figure whose dress and demeanor clearly denoted him as the genteel and

PREPARATORY DRAWING
Painter at His Easel, red chalk, 355 x 260
22
mm: ?sale of baron d'lvry, Paris, 21 May 1884
[not in Lugt, but this drawing not in cata-
logues of 7 or 12 May]; private coll., Paris; Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (fig. 108).

Fig. 106. Le Berger Napolitain, engraved by

Jean Daulle after Boucher (1758).

149
 thoughtful exponent of a free art, manual practitioner of
rather than as the
a craft (for useful recent surveys of the topic, see the catalogues of the two
exhibitions mounted by Pierre Georgel, 1976, Paris, Louvre, and 1982-83,
Dijon). Even the more genrelike depictions of Gerard Thomas and
Balthasar van den Bossche presented the artist as in charge of a busy
workshop, sought out by his clients.
Boucher here broke with these traditions, by showing the artist alone at
his easel in a garret. In doing so, he appears to have drawn on rather
different kinds of depiction: on the one hand, that of the young pupil
drawing from some studio property, as in paintings by Michael Sweerts
and Wallerant Vaillant, and on the other, that of the singe-peintre, as
depicted by Teniers, Watteau, or Chardin (see Feinblatt, 1959). In both
these types of portrayal, however, the artist is shown, whether meta-
phorically or literally, as "the ape of nature," painstakingly imitating what
Fig. 107. La Petnture, engraved by Marie- is set before him. Boucher's bold stroke was to show his young artist
Madeleine Igonet after Boucher (1752).
conjuring a finished landscape out of the air, aided by no more than a
rough sketch in the sketchbook beside him. The sketchbook (which is not
present in the preparatory drawing for the composition) prevents the
message being as stark as in Rembrandt's Self-Portrait in His Studio
(Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), but it is surely no less implicit: that it is

from his imagination that the painter creates —or re-creates — his subject.
The message — and the piquancy of the contrast between the dingy
disorder of the studio and the bright vision on the — underlined by easel is

this picture within a picture, which is one by Boucher himself: Le Berger

Napolitain (lost, but known from the engraving, fig. 106, made of it by
Daulle in 1758 [A & W fig. 1216], when it was in the collection of the

chevalier de Damery). For this, as the title attached to the engraving

makes clear, was of a half-remembered, half-imaginary view of Italy,
painted after the artist's return, as in the case of the View ofTivoli (cat. 16)
and the View of the Farnese Gardens (cat. 23). We cannot, however,
deduce from this that the figure of the artist is a self-portrait, since he is
patently a young student, whereas Boucher would have been around
Fig. 108. The Painter at His Easel. Los Angeles
thirty at the time this was painted. The boy, indeed, appears to be one
County Museum of Art.
who served him as model on other occasions in these years (e.g., in Le
retour du marche, fig. 119, and Les bulles de savon, A & 96), just as W
some of the studio props also recur: the suspended candles (see cat. 28)
and the bottle stopped with a twist of oiled paper (see cat. 21, fig. 105).

The original model for this composition was, however, not this but an
older boy, who seems to have been used instead in the first of the two
pictures mentioned below.
This was not the only occasion on which Boucher depicted this subject,

though the other portrayals were less intimate. About the same period, he
painted another picture of a young man at his easel painting a landscape
(baron Edmond de Rothschild collection, Chateau de Pregny, A& W 76;
engraved, as La Peinture,by Marie-Madeleine Igonet in 1752
fig. 107,

[J-R 193], along with its subsequently painted pendant of La Sculpture by

1

Pierre), but this figure is witnessed by a trio of studio assistants. When the
picture appeared in the posthumous sale of the architect Pierre-Hippolyte
Lemoyne in 1828, the painter was identified as Boucher himself, the
woman as his wife, and the young pupil with a portfolio under his arm
(who was to spawn a host of similar depictions by Drouais, Lepicie, and

150
 others) as Deshays. Not only do the ages of these characters, in view of
the evident epoch of the picture, render these identifications wholly
fanciful, but they were not even hinted at when the picture was in the
posthumous sale of Pierre-Hippolyte's father, the sculptor Jean-Baptiste
Lemoyne, in 1778. It belongs instead to the satirical genre of the peintre-
barbouilleur, as represented by Paulus Fursts engraving after Ch. Walch,
Ays mendica gemit (exh. 1982-83, Dijon, pp. 123, 135, and fig. 223).
cat.

The other painting by Boucher of a painter in his studio was allegorical:

it was an oval oil sketch on paper, reputedly showing Boucher himself
receiving an inspirational visit from Venus and several cupids (de Sireul
sale, 3 Dec. ff. 1781, lot 30). This sketch is lost, but one may be permitted
to doubt whether even that was actually a self-portrait, since a drawing of
exactly this subject by Boucher in the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille (exh.
cat. 1974-75, London, no. 7, pi. 16) must date from the 1760s, yet still

shows the artist as a green youth.

Not the least interesting aspect of The Landscape Painter is the identity
of its earliest recorded owner, the diplomat, playwright, and censeur
Royal, Louis-Jean-Fran^ois Collet (1722-1787), since he may also have
been the owner of Le Berger Napolitain. It is not clear that he was, since it

was lot 296 in his posthumous sale, among the addenda. These would for
themost part have been additions to the sale collected by the auctioneer
(many were not so scrupulous in setting these apart from the collection
that they professed to be selling), but could have included accidental
omissions from the principal collection (see cat. 2 for the comparable
uncertainty over the parts of the Sorbet sale). Since Le Berger Napolitain
is recorded by Daulle's engraving as having been in the collection of that

notable patron of French artists, the chevalier de Damery, it is conceivable

that The Landscape Painter had been as well.

23 Capriccio View of the Farnese Gardens

Oil on canvas
25 x 3i 7/s in. (63.5 x cm)
81
Signed lower left: boucher 1734
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York; The Jack and Belle Linsky
Collection (1982.60.44)
A&W101
New York

PROVENANCE
Private coll., France (until 1952); Julius With this picture we reach the first dated landscape in Boucher's oeuvre.
Weitzner, London (exh. cat. 1959, Rome, The dating of his paintings (which appears to begin with the Venus and
no. 98); the Jack and Belle Linsky Collection,
New York (private coll., c. 1960-80; Founda-
Vulcan of 1732 [cat. 17], a picture manifestly pioneering in its scale and
tion, 1980-82); given with the collection to the ambitions) suggests that Boucher was now sufficiently established to wish
Metropolitan Museum in 1982.
to mark Whereas the pleas in the Mercure de
the stages of his output.
Trance (April 1735, p. 736; August 1735, pp. 1818-19) to engravers to date
their works went largely unheeded, Boucher henceforward adopted the
practice very consistently in his paintings, no doubt partly from

151
PREPARATORY DRAWINGS
i View of the Farnese Gardens, black commercial considerations. Ironically, in later years it was his undated
chalk, 255 x 375 mm. Reserve du Cabinet des
earlv works that were to be the most sought after, with their very lack of
Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
(fig. 1C9
dating permitting them to be ascribed to his supposedly best years, as a
2. View of the Farnese Gardens with Two pupil of Lemoine and in Rome.
Coxiherds, black chalk, 346 x 221 mm. Were it not to have been dated, the present picture would no doubt have
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, Paris
been similarly ascribed, on account of both its manner and its subject
(Guiffrey &: Marcel, II, 1908, no. 1409),
acquired before 1827 (fig. no). matter.Such occurred with the horizontal version of the Vieiv of Tivoli in
3. Seated cowherd, on a mixed sheet of Stockholm (cf. cat. 16), which we know to have been painted later, while
Studies after Abraham Bloemaert, red chalk,
certain lost pictures of Rome and its environs were likewise assumed to
Musee des Beaux- Arts, Orleans (fig. 112; the
two studies of the seated cowherd on this sheet
have been painted there, e.g., the smaller version of Le Tombeau de I'Ane
were etched by Boucher in reverse as plate 8 of a Sacchetti (misc. sale [Chariot & Paillet], 22 Apr. ff. 1776, lot 78, 26 x
his Litre d'Etude d'apres Desseins Ori-
les
21 pouces: "Ce Rome, dans le temps que Boucher
tableau a ete fait a
ginaux de Blomart [J-R 182]).
sortoit de 1'ecole de le Moine"; posthumous sale of M. Remond, 6 July ff.
4. Standing Co\l; red chalk, 215 x 330 mm,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (XM 2955 1863; 1778, lot 66, 27 x 22 pouces); La Vue du Temple de la Concorde (de Sireul
Bjurstrom, 1982, no. 832; brought from sale, 3 Dec. ff. and another painting that can be identified
1781, lot 26);
France by C. G. Tessin in 1-4 1 42: here
from Saint- Aubin s sketch of it as Le moineau appnvoise, which, to judge
fig. 113).
by the engraving of it by Daulle, is also likely to have dated from after

i5 2
 5. Sheet with Boy Holding a Basket (not Boucher's return {Cabinet d'un Artiste [M r
. Martin, Peintre], 13 Dec. ff.

recorded, but presumed to have been the copy Mr. and Mrs. Charles
1773, lot 173; Saint-Aubin's in the collection of
intermediate stage between Abraham
Bloemaert's Peasant Boy Holding a Basket in
Wrightsman, New York).
the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation We know nothing for certain of Boucher's output in Rome, but as a self-
Custodia, Institut Neerlandais, Pans, and financed student at the Academy without a protector, he is likely neither
Boucher's etching in the Livre d'Etude, no. 10
to have had anyone to send such paintings back to, nor to have been able
(fig. ii 4 ;J-Ri8 4 ).
to afford the materials to paint them and the costs of their transport. He is
far more likely to have made drawn studies on the spot, which he would

then have been able to exploit after his return home.

In the case of the present picture we have two drawings that would
appear to have served as the basis of the composition. The first of these, in
the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (fig. 109;
W
A & 101/6, fig. 396), is of the same format and adopts the same
viewpoint as the painting, but differs from it in several small particulars,
and quite radically in its foreground and staffage. The second drawing, in
the Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre (fig. no; Guiffrey & Marcel, II,
1908, no. 1409; Slatkin, i97i[b], pp. 399-400, pi. 41), is vertical rather than
horizontal, and also differs from the painting in a number of little details,

but otherwise faithfully echoes its foreground elements and human and
animal staffage. The natural assumption would be that the first is a study
from nature and the second, as Regina Slatkin maintained, a "precise
design" for the painting. The truth would appear to be a little more complex.
The drawing in the Cabinet des Estampes would indeed appear to
belong to a group of three drawings actually done in Rome, the other two
both inscribed Roma 1730: the View ofTivoli in the Rijksprentenkabinett,
Amsterdam (exh. cat. 1974, Amsterdam, no.
and the Study of a 14)
Waterfall in the Stadelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt (A & fig. 256). W
But even these have the appearance of worked-up compositions done back
in the studio rather than simple depictions done on the spot: the
inscriptions indeed denote them as finished works. Not that Boucher
appears to have taken many liberties with his motif in the case of the

Fig. 109. View of the Farnese Gardens. Cabinet drawing in the Cabinet des Estampes, to judge from Vasi's engraving of La
des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale. Cbiesa di S. Maria Liberatrice, taken from a very similar viewpoint

i ^ -
T

Fig. in. La Chiesa di S. Maria Liberatrice,

engraved by Giuseppe Vasi.

•*$»-

Fig. 112. Two Studies of a Seated

Fig. no.View of the Farnese Gardens with Cowherd (after Abraham Bloemaert).
Two Cowherds. Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre. Musee des Beaux- Arts, Orleans.

*53
 —

(fig. in). What he did was simply to suppress features in the foreground
the enclosing wall in front, and S. Maria Liberatrice (alias S. Maria
Antiqua) to the right— which detracted from the rusticity of the site. This
process he took even further in the drawing in the Cabinet des Dessins,
and in the present painting, by substituting a tumbledown thatched hut
for the bastion between the church and the villa.

Particularly instructive is the difference between the staffage of the two

drawings. Whereas the early drawing is enlivened by a small bov with a
windswept head, similar in character to those in such early paintings as the
Fig. 113. Standing Cow. Nationalmuseum,
Stockholm. pair of Noah subjects (cat. 10, 11) and La fontaine (fig. 85), the later
drawing and the present painting are peopled bv two substantial figures of
peasant lads that make direct use of Boucher's copies of drawings by
Abraham Bloemaert (fig. 112; see Slatkin, i97i[b], and 1976, pis. 1, 2),

which he then went on to etch in 1735 (fig. 114; J-R 176-186, esp. nos. 182,

184). There is also a study by Boucher for the foremost cow, in the
Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, as Ananoff first noticed (fig. 113; A & W
101/4, fig. 401). What does not seem to have been appreciated is that this is

no more a direct study from the life than are the two cowherds: the way in

which it is cut off at the legs and shaded indicates that it too must be a

study from another work of art — in this case no doubt a Dutch painting
that has yet to be identified.
It is this combination of a slightly capriccio view of a romantic Italian
site and the rustic (if borrowed) realism of the Dutch staffage that gives
this painting its particular charm. Knowledge of the various designs that
contributed to its genesis enables us to see, as with almost no other early
work by Boucher, the way in which even most "naturalistic" phase was
his

the product of considerable artistic preparation and manipulation. This

may help us to comprehend better the supposedly contrasted "artifi-
Fig. 114. Studies of a Boy Holding a Basket ciality" of his later landscapes.
and a Seated Girl, etched bv Boucher after Beverly Schreiber Jacoby is cited in the catalogue of the Linsky
Abraham Bloemaert (1735).
Collection (Metropolitan Museum, 1984, p. 120) as opining that the
drawing in the Cabinet des Dessins and its pendant View of Tivoli were
done after this painting and the picture in Stockholm respectively This
would have been an unparalleled procedure by Boucher, but while only
oblong versions of the two compositions were known, it was a not
unreasonable assumption. Now that another version of the View of Tivoli,
with an upright format, has been discovered in the Musee des Beaux-Arts
in Boulogne (cat. 16), however, it is less plausible. Instead, we are faced
with the question as to whether there might not also be or have been an
upright version of the present painting, forming a pendant to the
Boulogne picture, as in the case of the two drawings. There is no record of
such a thing (unless such were the two pictures in the Williot sale in 1788;

see cat. 16, Analogies 4) —or indeed of any other version of the present
picture —while both the inherent quality and the dated signature of this

make it unlikely that it is in any way a repetition.

worth noting that the buildings of the Farnese Gardens appear,

It is

observed from a different viewpoint, in a capriccio View of a Stone Bridge,

bearing a partial signature, fran., whose decipherment as a fragment of
francois Boucher is by no means self-evident, to judge by reproductions of
the picture (A & W
102; Sotheby's, London, Nov. 1978, lot 34; Galerie 1

Koller, Zurich, 18 Nov. 1983, lot 5065).

154
 *4 Les genies des Beaux-Arts
Oil on canvas
40 x 5
1V1 in. (102 x 130. cm)
5

Signed bottom right: Boucher

Musee des Beaux-Arts, Troyes
(inv. 835.8)
S&M916 A&W67

PROVENANCE This is a putto picture of a slightly more conventional kind than Putti
Chateau de La Chapelle-Godefroy; confiscated
Playing with Birds (cat. 15) since here the cupids and infants are more
in 1793; entered the Troyes museum in 1835.
clearly allegorical, being emblematic of the fine arts. The presence of a
winged child not engaged in the practice of any art himself, with one hand
resting on a quiver, who should probably be seen as Cupid, would appear
to carry the implication that Love is the motive force of Art (see exh. cat.
1982-83, Dijon, p. 261).

This is the first of several depictions of putti embodying the arts by

Boucher, of which the most ambitious and superb is the painting in the
Musees d' Angers (A &W wrongly locating it in Amiens), which was
545,
painted in 1761 to be translated into tapestry by the Gobelins. The
presence of a sketched-in oval painting with a medallion of Louis XV at
the center, implies that it is thanks to royal patronage that the arts
flourish.
Some such message might well have been anticipated from the present
picture, since was apparently painted for Philibert Orry (1689- 1747),
it

controleur general des Finances from 1730, and directeur general des
Bailments du Roi from 1737 until his disgrace in 1745. It was, however,

155
 painted for his country retreat, the Chateau de La Chapelle-Godefroy
near Nogent-sur-Seine, the iconography of whose decoration appears to
have been almost wholly hedonistic but for the unusually precocious cycle
of six paintings from French medieval history telling the life of Clovis.
The present picture was recorded in the inventory taken when the chateau
was confiscated at the Revolution as "enfants avec les attributs de la
peinture," serving as an overdoor in the antichambre du Roi et de la
Reine, where the sovereign and his consort were received on their visits in
1740 and 1744 (I am most grateful to M. Jean-Pierre Sainte-Marie for
communicating this information to me, from the entry in his forthcoming
catalogue of pictures in the Musees de Troyes).
t * J \* I }
- 1 } .
Virtually all the pictorial decoration of La Chapelle-Godefroy was by
\

Natoire (see exh. cat. 1977, Troyes, esp. pp. 54-60; Sainte-Marie, 1977,
pp. 14-20). It is therefore not immediately apparent why Orry should
Fig. 115. L'Ete, engraved by P. Avehne, after a
have commissioned this one picture from his rival. It would be nice to
destroyed painting by Natoire formerly in the

Chateau de La Chapelle-Godefroy. think that it was to celebrate his appointment as directeur general des
Bdtiments, since one of his first acts in office was to encourage the arts by
reviving annual exhibitions in the Salon of the Louvre. This painting can
scarcely, however, be datable as late as 1737. It is much more likely to date
from the time when Natoire was executing his first paintings for La
Chapelle-Godefroy, in 1731, or shortly thereafter. Orry might thus have
been trying out the two young artists, both recently returned from Rome,
before deciding to give all his patronage to Natoire. The latter painted
three pictures devoted to Cupid among the set of nine mythological
paintings comprising his first commission, including the Cupid Scattering
Flowers in the museum Troyes (Sainte-Marie, 1977, fig. p. 16), and
in

Orry may simply have preferred his more orthodox, light-bathed,

Lemoinean manner. There is always the possibility that the present picture
was not painted for Orry, but for one of the subsequent owners of the
chateau, the de Boullongne. They, however, only seem to have introduced
pictures by their painter forebears, or specially commissioned works, such
as the Cl-Fr. Desportes View of the Grand Avenue with Hounds and
Dead Game (1768). The probable date of the present picture, as well as its

subject and the fact that it was fixed as an overdoor, makes it far more
likely to have been a commission from Orry.
The bust being sculpted by the putto at the center of the picture is of
some interest. In most subsquent depictions of the theme Boucher was to
employ the bust known as the Fillette aux nattes by Saly, whose recurrent
use in Boucher's paintings, particularly those for Mme de Pompadour, has
never been satisfactorily explained (see Benisovitch, 1945; Beaulieu, 1955;
Levey, 1965).
Boucher employed the Antique bust
In the present, earlier, painting
known as the Vestale Zingarella, now in the Louvre (see Clarac, VI, 1853,
p. 193, pi. 1 105), which inspired heads in depictions by other artists as

various as that in G. M. Crespi's Charon Ferrying the Dead and Canova s

busts of Vestals. The precise significance of this bust in the present context
is not wholly clear, but there is an obvious piquancy in the coupling of the
god of Love with the bust of a priestess vowed to virginity

156
 25 The Rape ofEuropa
Oil on canvas, en camaieu brun
20 x 24 in. (51 x 61cm)
Musee de Picardie, Amiens
S&M143 A&W103

PROVENANCE
Catalogue d'une petite Collection de Tableaux It cannot be disguised that at this point, because of the restrictive
!
. . . &c. provenans du Cabinet de M. V** interpretation put upon Lady Wallace's bequest to the British
the terms of
[Vallet: possibly identifiable with the gold-
smith Vallat, the owner of a house at Pierre-
Nation by the Law Officers of the Crown, there is a gaping hole in this
fitte, "lie intimement avec les Artistes les plus exhibition. The two major pictures of Boucher's early maturity, Mercury
distingues en Architecture, Peinture, & autres
Confiding the Infant Bacchus and the Rape of Eur op a (figs. 39, 116), the
Arts utiles," who designed and executed for
latter of which was the only work of Boucher's to be singled out for
him an additional "sallon spacieux que . . . le

celebre Boucher voulut encore enrichir des specific mention by Mariette (I, 1851-53, p. 165), cannot be borrowed.
chefs-d'oeuvres de son pinceau" (Piganiol de la It is worth quoting in full what Mariette says of these pictures:
Force, 1765, IX, pp. 328-29) ], Grands-
Augustins (Joullain & Chariot), 7 Apr. ft. One could say that he [Boucher] was born with a brush in his hand.
1774, lot 40; one of posthumous Marcille sales,
One only has to look what he painted in his youth, and in particular
at
1857 (S &M 143); Lavalard coll., Amiens;
at that Rape of Europa owned by M. Watelet, which was one of a
given to the Musee de Picardie in 1894.
number of large pictures that he had painted for a marble mason called
RELATED SKETCH Dorbay, who had furnished his whole house with them, which was
?Dandre-Bardon's posthumous sale, 23 June
perfectly easy for him to do, since Boucher, not seeking to do anything
ff. 1783, lot 6, grisaille on paper, 14 x 18/2 in.
but make a name for himself at that period, would, I believe, have done
FINISHED PICTURE them for nothing rather than pass up the opportunity. I admire that
Francois Derbais, rue Poissonniere, salle de
billard (according to his inventaire apres decks,
picture every time that I study it. Everything in it is admirable — above
2 Mar. 1743); Watelet's posthumous sale, 12 all a brush manipulated with as much decision as grace. (On peut dire
June ff. 1786, lot 12; Brusle & de Morny sale, quit est ne le pinceau a la main. Il ne faut que voir ce qu'il a peint dans
Paris, 16-17 Dec. 1841, lot 61; Paul Perier sale,
sa jeunesse, et en particulier cet enlevement d'Europe qua M. Watelet et
16-17 Mar. 1843, lot 56 [bought by Lord
Hertford]; thence, by descent and bequest, to
qui faisoit partie du nombre de grands tableaux qu'il avoit fait pour un
the Wallace Collection. sculpteur marbrier nomme Dorbay qui en avoit garni toute sa maison, ce
qui lui avoit ete tres-facile, car Boucher, ne cherchant alors qua se faire
ENGRAVINGS OF FINISHED PICTURE
i. Enlevement d'Europe, by Pierre Aveline
connoitre, les auroit, je crois, fait s pour que d'en laisser
rien, plus tost

(J-R 248-249; advertised in Mercure de manquer V occasion. J' admire ce tableau toutes les fois que je le considere.
France, June 1748; exhibited in the Salon, Tout y est admirable, et surtout un pinceau aussi ferme qu'il est
1753; in reverse of painting).
grade ux.)
2. La Terre, by Louis Jacob (after Aveline, in
reverse, simplified, and with putto supporting
As has been said earlier, it is hard to see what the advantage of this
basket of fruit substituted for the bull and the
three figures on the left). arrangement was for Boucher. Were one not to have known the pictures in

3. Enlevement d'Europe, by Edme Bovinet question (see cat. 17, 18), one would have taken this account to mean that
(J-R 392; after Aveline, in reverse, A& W Boucher was painting pictures for a patron of inferior social standing, for
fig. 414).
virtually nothing, at the very outset of his career. It is evident, however,

PREPARATORY DRAWINGS that he painted them after his return from Italy, when he was already
Oblong drawings of this subject are recorded almost thirty, with several years' practice as a painter behind him. Only
in pen and wash (Lempereur sale, 24 May ff.
the four putti pictures were engraved in Derbais's lifetime, so it was not in
1773, lot 534; sale of "Un Artiste" [Clisorius],
31 Mar. ff. 1795, ic x 15 in.); red chalk (de
this way that Boucher's prowess received publicity. The crucial word in
Sireul sale, 3 Dec. ff. 1781, lot 86, 10 x ij/2 Mariette is, however, "large."
in.), and red and black chalk (ibid., lot 87, 12/2 It is above all a change in scale that sets off the pictures that Boucher
x 18 in.), but without sufficient indications to
painted after his return from Italy from those that he had painted before
decide whether they were for the present
picture or for that in the 1747 composition going there, and with this change in scale came a new breadth and
(cat. 54). Some slight indication that the draw- boldness of treatment. One of the problems for the aspiring painter in

l
W
ing in the Lempereur sale was tor the present France in those years was precisely that the opportunities for large-scale
composition mav be gleaned from the fact that painting were diminishing: as La Font de Saint- Yenne (1747, and
p. 19)
a tan design of this subject bv Boucher in the
Caylus Rosenberg, 1984^], p. 61) observed, ceilings painted with
(see
same sale (lot >-, S; A &: W tig. 413, where-

abouts unstated draws upon

|
it rather than pictures had been replaced, first by painted grotesques, and then by their
upon the other picture. S cc. M 49- identities equivalent in stucco on white. At the same time, as pere Laugier (1753,
gilt
the first of thetwo Lempereur drawings with
pp. 61-62), the abbe Le Blanc (1753, pp. 154-55), and abbe Gougenot
one in india ink in the sale of M. E 4-\ .

June iS?4, lot 2$; this was in a rich ornamental (1748, pp. 136-37) decried, hung by contemporary artists were
pictures
surround, and can therefore be excluded. being elbowed out, either by the
taste for carved boiseries and large

looking glasses, or by the taste for old masters. Even among those few
who did set aside galleries for the display of their paintings, small Dutch
cabinet pictures had the preference, and it was noted as a singularity in La
Live de Jullv that he made a point of collecting the contemporary "Ecole
Francoise."
In these circumstances, a house in which his new large-scale paintings
could be seen —precisely because of their owner's unexalted social
standing, visits by interested clients would presumably have been easier to
arrange — would have been an asset to Boucher; all the more so in that he

158
 —

could demonstrate his ability to adorn a whole room with them, to

maintain his own against the new modes of decoration. The room in

which they were placed in Derbais's house was the salle de billard,
according to the inventaire apres deces of the owner taken on 2 March
1743, generously communicated to me by Georges Brunei. This, to
deduce from the subjects of the pictures, was exclusively adorned with
paintings by Boucher: the Rape of Europa and the Birth of Bacchus (the
pair of pictures now in the Wallace Collection); large pictures of Aurora
and Cephalus and Venus Requesting Vulcan for Arms (cat. 17);
(cat. 18)

another large picture of the Birth of Venus (almost certainly the picture
last recorded in the possession of the comtesse de Behague: A& W 180,
Fig. 116. The Rape of Europa. Wallace Collec- whose true dimensions, 250X 300 cm, are recorded by Fenaille, 1925,
tion, London.
p. 55, and which is clearly contemporaneous with the Aurora and

Cephalus); and an overdoor of Cupids.

It is tantalizing only to be able to allude to the full-scale versions of the
present sketch and its Something of their revolutionary
pendant (fig. 117).

freedom of handling can, however, be imagined both from this sketch and
from their former companions (cat. 17, 18). Of the two, the Rape of
Europa is the more brilliant performance, and it is evidently the picture
that most struck Boucher's contemporaries. Not only do we have the
remarks of Mariette quoted above, there is also a reference, which seems
to havegone unnoticed, to one of the most striking parts of the picture in
Bachaumont's advice to Boucher when he came to paint Psyche Snatched
from the Wilderness by Zephyrs: "You paint Landscape like an Angel. I
can hear from here the sound of the waterfall; remember carefully
everything that you did at Mr. Derbais's" {"Vous fait e le Paysage comme un
Ange. J'entends d'icy le bruit du torrent; souvenes vous bien de tout ce que
vous aves fait che M. d'Herbais" [A & W doc. 130, quoted from a

manuscript in the Bibliotheque de PArsenal]). The waterfall can only be

that in the background to the left of the Wallace picture, which is already
indicated in the present sketch. It is, indeed, the introduction of strikingly
picturesque landscape details that distinguishes the two Wallace pictures

Fig. 117. Sketch for Mercury Confiding the

above all the —
Rape of Europa from the Venus and Vulcan and Aurora and
Infant Bacchus. Private collection. Cephalus, and from the putti pictures, and which suggests an advance over
them. The Europa is additionally enriched by the inclusion of an
astonishing profusion of vivid flowers: a detail that is not only inevitably
absent from the present very summary sketch but may also have been an
afterthought, since the most significant change between sketch and
finished picture is in the position and pose of the cupid holding on to the
garland around the bull's neck.
Hermann Voss detected a lapse of several years between the execution of
the Europa and the Bacchus (1953, p. 86), with the former appearing to
him and warmer in coloring, and more fluid and painterly in
richer
—
execution, making it the earlier because the more traditional of the —
two. Some difference between the two paintings there indeed is, and it is
underlined by the differing character of the two sketches for them, but the
time lapse should not be exaggerated, nor is it certain that the sequence
perceived by Voss is Whereas the concentration upon the
the right one.
figural group in the Bacchus attaches it to the preceding Venus and Vulcan
and Aurora and Cephalus, the landscape elements of the Europa look
forward to those in the Eeopard Hunt of 1736 (cat. 29).

159
 The difference in character between the sketches for the two composi-
tions does not simply reside in the fact that the present sketch is

monochrome, and the slightly larger sketch for the Bacchus polychrome
(New York artmarket; 58.5 x 73.5 cm; exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 9,
color pi.). The Bacchus sketch is executed in a technique more reminiscent
of the early finished pictures themselves, with emphatic dragging of the
brushstrokes in the flesh and drapery, and with startling applications of
color, particularly the reds. The present chocolate-brown sketch is not
only put on with a more liquid and loaded brush, many of the figures are
outlined with the brush in black rather than modeled an emphatic —
technique that was to be adopted form by Boucher's pupil and
in coarser

—
son-in-law Deshays with white heightening employed in a similar way to
a chalk drawing. Of the two techniques, it was the monochrome sketch en

cama'ieu hrun or en grisaille that Boucher was to adopt the more

frequently, apparently preferring to work in the warmer tonalities of
brown when preparing designs for paintings and tapestries, and working
in a more precise technique in gray when making designs for the engraver

(see the remarks in exh. cat. 1983-84, Rotterdam, no. 57). The present
sketch may be only an adumbration of the finished painting in the Wallace
Collection, but in boldness yet sureness of touch it is an astonishing
performance in its own right.

26 Rinaldo and Armida

Oil on canvas
53/2x 67 in. (135.5 x 170.5 cm)
Musee du Louvre, Paris (inv. 2720)
S&M256 A&W108

PROVENANCE
Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, This is the obligatory picture that Boucher painted to secure his reception
Paris; Musee Napoleon, and thus to its suc-
as a full member Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture on
of the
cessor, the Musee du Louvre.
30 January 1734. As was not infrequent with such productions, the picture
PREPARATORY SKETCH is in some ways more a reflection of the Academy's expectations than of

Notice de Tableaux . . . &c. provenant du Boucher's particular gifts. The literary subject is not of the kind to which
Cabinet de M. L[emonmer], Peintre, membre
he was often drawn; an architectural setting (here with Rubensian banded
de I'ancienne Academie Royale de Peinture &
de Sculpture, his apartment, rue de Vaugirard columns, such as were also used by Watteau, prominent in the fore-
no. 9 (Regnault de Lalande), 26 Nov. 1810, ground) was not a device that he cared to employ thereafter; and the
lot 2, 12 pouces x 16V2 pouces; Cabinet d'un
amateur, Paris, 18 Jan. i860, lot
painting is crammed with so much incident —armor, tiger skin, curtain,
10.
mirror, flowers, sculpture, etc. — to display his virtuosity that it appears
COPIES congested to the point of confusion.
Untrained picture brought to the Hotel
i.
The strengths of the picture are the parts of it that were to be more
de Pompadour (l'Elysee) after Mme de Pom-
characteristic of his regular output: the provocative half-draped figure of
padour's death, and placed in the antichambre
(Cordey, 1939, p. 84, no. 1163). Armida, and the lively putti seized in striking poses. Interestingly, almost
2. Sevres porcelain plaque signed d'apres every attitude of the figures is closely echoed in some other painting: that
F. Boucher, Dodin en 178J, presently let into
the front of a secretaire a abattant by Bernard
of Armida resembles the pose of Europa in the Rape of Eur op a in the
Molitor, in the Henrv E. Huntington Librarv Wallace Collection, inclined to the right rather than to the left; that of
and Art Gallery, San Marino, California (see Rinaldo employs in reverse the pose of the boy with the parsnips in Le

160
Wilson, 1977ft)]), but originally set in the retour du marche (fig. 119), with his left hand to his breast rather than
center of a table-guendon surrounded by outstretched, and is repeated in the pose of the ardent suitor in Les
grisaille plaques of other episodes from the
romance, given to the Duke of Sachsen-
cbarmes de la vie champetre (fig. 49; Louvre); that of the cupid in the
Teschen by Louis XVI in 1786 (see Cohen, foreground resembles, again in reverse, that of the foremost cupid in Les
1980, p. 6 no. 2). A copy of the tabletop, genies des Beaux-Arts (cat. 24); that of the cupid supporting the mirror is
giving an idea of the original arrangement, sold
echoed in the pose of the bottom putto in the grisaille of Charity in the
at Sotheby's, London, 6 July 1984. (I am most
grateful to Miss Rosalind Savill for extensive chambre de la Reine at Versailles; and that of the half-concealed cupid
help with this item.) Boucher's picture was lent holding the arrow recurs in Le sommeil de Venus (A &W 173; since sold
to Sevres by the Academie Royale, evidently
at Sotheby's Monaco, 26 Oct. 1981, lot 548). The effect of such a
for this purpose, on 1 Dec. 1783 (Fontaine,
1910,
concentrated display of contrived attitudes only enhances the feeling of a
p. 79 n. 2).

certain excess.
The theme chosen by Boucher was one of the most frequently depicted
episodes in literature. It is taken from Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme
Liberata, the romanticized account of the First Crusade, in which the
Circe-like Saracenmaiden Armida, having fallen in love with the Crusader
Rinaldo, keeps him in her enchanted domain. Two other Crusaders, Carlo
and Ubaldo, set out to rescue him, and the moment shown is of their

161
 coming upon him gazing at his own love-struck reflection in Armida's
eyes, while she sees hers reflected in a mirror. The elaborate architecture
stands for her enchanted palace, while the cupid holding an arrow that
points at Rinaldo underscores the latter's lovelorn state.
In choosing such an oft-depicted episode, Boucher was not simply
measuring himself against a long European pictorial tradition, he was
choosing a theme depicted by many of his seniors in France: notably the
just-deceased premier Peintre, Louis de Boullongne (in a recently
rediscovered painting of 1704, exh. cat. 1985, New York, no. 7), and Jean-
Baptiste Vanloo (Musee des Beaux-Arts d'Angers, from the collection of
the marquis de Livois). Louis de Boullongne's painting was used as the
basis for a tapestry (Fenaille, III, 1904, p. 124 and pi.), and immediately
after Boucher's morceau de reception, Charles-Antoine Coypel was
likewise to start painting a series of enormous pictures of episodes from
the story of Rinaldo and Armida for the Fragments d'Opera woven by the
Gobelins (Fenaille, III, 1904, pp. 323-44); while Boucher himself
subsequently proposed another series to the Gobelins in 175 1 (Fenaille,
III, 1904, p. 328) and executed a cartoon of Rinaldo Asleep for Beauvais,

which was first woven in 1752 (Badin, 1909, p. 62; A & 384). Much W
earlier in his career, Boucher had made a copy sketch of J-F. de Troy's

depiction of the preceding episode, of Armida Struck with Love for

Rinaldo when about to Kill Him (de Sireul sale, 3 Dec. ff. 1781, lot 28),
which may be identifiable with one or the other of the sketches
supposedly for this painting, that in the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille

(fig. 17; exh. cat. 1975, Brussels, no. 30), or that in an English private
collection on loan to the New
Mexico Art Museum (fig. 18; see exh. cat.
1980, Albuquerque, no. 63). When in Rome, he also appears to have
drawn a hasty sketch of Carlo and Ubaldo Surprising Rinaldo, which
subsequently remained with Subleyras and passed for his (exh. cat. 1983,

Paris, no. 115).

The reasons for the popularity of the story in France were less purely
literary than theatrical: Armide et Renaud was
most successful of all
the
the operas set to music by Lully. Known as the opera des dames, it was
first produced in 1686, but was revived no fewer than eight times up until

1761, as well as being the object of three parodies (Chouquet, 1873, pp.
321-22). Boucher himself collaborated with his son on the sets for the 1761
staging of it (see Dacier, 1920, pp. 14-16, 104), and may have designed sets
for the 1746 and 1747 revivals, since these fell within his second period of
employment by the Opera (see E. & J. de Goncourt, 1881, p. 223). In its
choice of theme the present picture was thus not merely the gauge of his
—
acceptance by the artistic establishment it was also a manifesto of his
future polymorphic activity as a designer.

162
 ^7 Le bonheur au village

Oil on canvas
96 x 100 in. (243 x 254 cm)
Signed on plank, bottom center:
f.
Boucher
Bayerische Landesbank, on deposit in the

Alte Pinakothek, Munich(BGM 2)

S &M 1472 A & W 41

PROVENANCE
Catalogue de Quatre Tableaux, Chefs This picture belongs to a now-scattered set of four that must once have
d'Oeuvre peints par Francois Boucher, prove- formed one of the most remarkable decorative ensembles produced by
nant de I'Hotel du due de Richelieu, dont lis
decoraient le salon de reception, Hotel des
Boucher in his earlier years. In the event, it has for various reasons proved
Ventes, Paris, 18 May 1852, lots 1-4 [bought possible to borrow only one of these village pastorals, which is all the
by M. de Rothschild]; baron
for 15,850 francs more regrettable in that they have never been shown publicly together
Edmond de Rothschild, Paris; divided between
since their first emergence at auction in the mid-nineteenth century.
his heirs:

Le retour du marche and L'heureux pecheur Because confusion reigns over the identity of the four pictures that form
passed to baron Alphonse de Rothschild; the set, and because they cannot sensibly be discussed in isolation from
Robert Lebel, Paris (1954); Walter P. Chrysler
one another, all four will be treated in this entry.
Jr. (by 1956), who sold L'heureux pecheur at

London, 26 June 1970, lot 87,

Christie's,
The set falls into two pairs of pendants. The larger, almost square pair,
whence it was acquired bv the Frick Art Le bonheur au village (cat. 27) and La halte a la fontaine (fig. 118), are still
Museum in Pittsburgh, but made Le retour du together, on loan from the Bayerische Landesbank to the Alte Pinakothek.
marche over to the Chrvsler Museum in 1971.
Le bonheur au village and La halte a la
The narrower pair, of the same height but only approximately five and a
Edmond de Roth-
fontaine passed to baron half feet (170 cm) wide, was sundered by Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., who
from whom acquired, via Colnaghi's,
schild, retained Le retour du marche (fig. 119) for the Chrysler Museum,
London, bv the Baverische Landesbank in
Norfolk, Virginia, but sent L'heureux pecheur (fig. 120) for auction,
1976.
whence it was acquired by the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh.
ENGRAVING The original location of this set of pictures is an enigma. They first
Le retour du marche engraved as the central
made their appearance, as the only paintings, in a sale held in Paris in
motif in an ornamental design for the leaf of a

folding screen, under the title Triomphe de 1852, with their dimensions given but no description beyond that implicit
Pomone, bv Cochin fils, [completed?] in Feb- in their titles, and accompanied by the assertion that they had adorned the
ruary 1737, and published bv the veuve
salon de reception of the due de Richelieu. Hence, in part, the numerous
Chereau and Huquier (J-R 517-51S).
confusions as to which pictures had constituted the set after it was broken
DRAWINGS up, including Ananoff and Wildenstein's strained attempt to associate
For Le retour du marche L'heureux pecheur and Le retour du marche with the two paintings of a
1. Studies for the Head, Legs, and Hands of
whole generation later from baron d'lvry's collection (here cat. 79 and 80),
the Boy Proffering Parsnips, red chalk height-
ened with white on buff paper, 260 x 360 in support of their equally farfetched yoking together of four other
mm, Antoine Vollon coll.; Leon Michel-Lew's pictures of disparate origins and date (A & W 70, 681, 682, 683) and their
posthumous sale, Galerie Georges Charpen-
formed the decoration of another room
assertion that these had in the
June 1925, [AA 537 and
tier,

fig.
Paris, 17

99; A& W fig. 360].

lot 33
marechal-duc de Richelieu's hotel (A & II, pp. 307-09). W
2. Standing Servant Girl, red chalk height- The 1852 sale catalogue itself contained the decidedly fantasizing
ened with white on brownish grav paper, 353 statement that the four pictures "were painted expressly bv Boucher for
X 224 mm, acquired by Count Carl Gustaf
the due de Richelieu, the joyous companion of his pleasures" ("ont ete
Tessin in Paris, 1739-42; Akero (1749 cat.,

livre 14, no. 91); Kongl. Biblioteket, Stock- peints expressement par Boucher pour le due de Richelieu, le joyeux
holm (1790 cat. no. 2820); transferred to compagnon de ses plaisirs"), which should perhaps caution one against
Kongl. [now National] Museum, Stockholm,
accepting uncritically the further statement that: "Until this day they were
in 1863 (inv. 2927/1863) [AA 131 and fig. 27;
A& W fig. 359; Bjurstrom, 1982, no. 836]
the principal adornment main salon of the Hotel de Richelieu"
of the
(fig. 121). ("Jusqu'a ce jour, ils ont fait Vornement principal du grand salon de Vhbtel
—
de Richelieu") all the more so in view of the similarly pretentious, but in
the event spurious, provenance from the Folie de Chartres attached to

163
164
 another set of pictures by Boucher in a sale some years before (see cat. 49
and 50).
For, as Denys Sutton has implied (exh. cat. 1980, New York, no. 36;
repeated almost verbatim in exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 6), the supposed
provenance from the Hotel de Richelieu presents problems. The building
that most commonly went under that name was the former Hotel de
Travers, or d'Antin, in the rue Louis-le-Grand. But this was only acquired
by the marechal in 1756. What is more, it was divided into lodgings in
1824, and demolished in 1839 —
too long before the sale for the claim of the
catalogue that the paintings had "until this day" adorned the Hotel de
Richelieu to be applicable. Prior to acquiring the Hotel d'Antin, the
marechal de Richelieu had lived in what are now numbers 21 and 23 of the
Place des Vosges, but since he sold it when he moved and it had had a
Fig. 118.Le hake a la fontaine Bayensche
.

succession of proprietors thereafter, it is unlikely to have retained his

Landesbank, on deposit in the Alte
Pinakothek, Munich. name in the mid-nineteenth century. He never inhabited the other hotel he
owned, on the Quai de Bethune, which came him from his stepmother- to
cum-mother-in-law, Marguerite-Therese de Rouille. The hotel in the rue
neuve des Mathurins inhabited by the then due de Richelieu up until the
Revolution of 1848, not having been one that had belonged to the
marechal, any provenance from there would scarcely substantiate the
claim that the fixed decorations in it had belonged to the latter.

Nonetheless, it is with reluctance that one abandons the purported

provenance of from the house best known as the Hotel
this set of pictures

de Richelieu. Not because of the supposed personal liaison between

Boucher and the marechal, who seems to have had neither the leisure nor
the resources from his embassies and campaigns to commission extensive
decorations until the acquisition of this hotel in the rue Louis-le-Grand,
but because of its previous proprietor, the due d'Antin. Not only were the
improvements that he made to the Hotel de Travers extensive and cele-
brated, butfrom 1708 until his death in 1736 he was dire cteur general des
Bdtiments du Roi. It is true that, as such, was he who, through his
it

Fig. 119. Le retour du marche. Chrysler partiality to his favorites already there, had denied Boucher the funds to
Museum, Norfolk, Virginia. take up his scholarship in Rome (Cochin, 1880, p. 100), but there are signs
that before his death his attitude had relented, and that he had come to
appreciate Boucher's talents. For it was while he was still directeur general
that Boucher had not only been invited to decorate the chamhre de la

Reine at Versailles with four grisailles of the Virtues, but also — since
d'Antin did not die until late 1736 —
was asked to contribute the
that he
Leopard Hunt (cat. 29) to the galerie des petits appartements du Roi. It is
tempting to wonder whether d'Antin did not himself enjoy the first fruits
of Boucher's talents before allowing him to work for the Crown, and
whether such a significant commission as that represented by the present
set of pictures does not owe its origin to such an important client.

—
The difficulties with this hypothesis which is purely speculative at
best —
do not merely reside in the hiatus between the demolition of the
Hotel d'Antin /de Richelieu and the appearance at auction of the pictures.
There is also the fact that, according to Patte (Piganiol de la Force, 1765,
III, pp. 484-85), the due de Richelieu had completely destroyed the grand
rooms, in which such decorations as these might have been placed: "on a

Fig. 120. L'heureux pecheur. The Frick Art

detruit & refait dans le gout regnant, e'est a dire petit & mesquin, la

Museum, Pittsburgh. decoration des pieces, qui etoit grande & majestueuse." Furthermore,

165
For Le bonheur an village according to Bruno Pons (to whom am I most grateful for communicating
Man Embracing Servant
i . Girl, red chalk
to me the results of his research in the archives), there is no trace of anv
heightened with white on brownish-gray pa-
set of pictures such as these in the inventories taken on the deaths of either
per, 345 x 248 mm. acquired by Count C. G.
Tessin in Paris, 1739-42; Akero (1749 cat., ,
the due d'Antin or the marechal de Richelieu.
livre 14, no. 93); Kongl. Biblioteket, Stock- Thus, for the time being, unless and until something is found in the
holm (1790 cat. no. 2821); transferred to the
inventories taken in houses of the deceased, or of emigres in the
Kongl. [now National] Museum, Stockholm in

1863 (inv. 2928/1863) [AA 217, fig. 38;

Revolution, we must remain in ignorance of the original destination of
A & \Y hg. 241; B|urstrom 1982, no. 829] these paintings. It happens that in such inventories there is an otherwise
(fig. 122).
untraced set of four paintings that it might have been very tempting to
2. Seated Woman Holding Long Handle, red
associate with these, the four Paysages d'architecture et figures confiscated
chalk counterproof, retouched, 343 x 228
mm, acquired by Count C. G. Tessin in Paris; from the Palais Royal for the Museum Central in 1796 (Furcy-Ravnaud,
Akero (1749 cat., livre 27, no. 188); Kongl.
1912, p. 314). But, whereas the height of these — 7 pieds 1 pouces — is
Biblioteket, Stockholm (179c cat. no. 2822);
transferred to Kongl. [now National] Museum
virtually exactly that of the present set of pictures, the width — 4 pieds— is

in 1863 (inv. 2929 1863) [A & \V fig. 242; too narrow for any of them. Nor can one readily imagine the due
Biurstrom 1982, no. 831; as Ananoff and d'Orleans of the epoch when these pictures were painted, the Regent's
\\ lldenstein suggest, the pose of the woman in
devout son, Louis (1703-1752), ever having commissioned decorations of
this drawing was inspired bv another studv
made by Boucher, on the left half of a sheet the kind (it was he who destroyed or mutilated his father's Correggios
now in the Albertina (inv. 12.1-4). Tfi' s > s not because of their eroticism). The pictures in question are thus much more
after Bloemaert, as they propose, however, but
likely to have been later works, commissioned by his son, the pleasure-
after a figure in the Bassano painting of The
Return of the Prodigal in the Doria(-Pamphilj)
loving Louis Philippe I, Gros (1725-178 5), whose own son
known as le

Gallery in Rome, where Boucher must have Boucher had painted in 1749 (Waddesdon Manor; A 5c 332). W
studied] (fig. 123). That the present commission was an important one for Boucher is
3. A Seated and a Sleeping Child, red and
suggested not merely by the size of the paintings themselves and the
black chalk, 212 < 225 mm, acquired by
Count C. G. Tessin in Paris. 1739-42; Akero wealth of effects crammed into them, but also by the number of studies
(1749 cat., livre 14, no. 96); Kongl. Biblio- for them that survive (see figs. 121-125). The handling of these, together
teket, Stockholm (1790 cat. no. 2832); trans-
with the early form of signature found on many of them (with a lowercase
ferred to the Kongl. [now National] Museum
in 1863 (inv. 293 S 1S63 [AA i~, hz,. 2;
"b"), agree with the style of the paintings themselves to suggest a date in
A& W fig. 24c; Bjurstrom 1982, no. 830] the first half of the 1730s —
somewhere between Le repos des fermiers
to
(fig.

An
124).
elaborated version of this was engraved
(cat. 20) and the Famille de villageois (A & 40), which, as I have W
by Gilles-Antoine Demarteau
argued, must have been executed shortly after Boucher's return from Italy,
as no. 562 in his

deceased uncle's series, and advertised in Mar. and the Leopard Hunt (cat. 29) of 1736. And though
background the
1777 CJ-R 859)- buildings in Le bonheur au village and La hake a la fontaine, and the
classical ruins and umbrella pine in the latter, are carried over from the
For La hake a la fontame
1. Study of a Goat, engraved in reverse bv kind of capriccio Italian landscape that Boucher was doing in the years
Lepicier [Bernard Lepicie] and published bv immediately after his return from Italy, up to at least 1734 (cat. 23), the
Odieuvre, as CHEYRE. 30 (fig. 12$ .

broader handling and less intense coloring of these pictures (even allowing
for their size and decorative function) suggest that they were painted much
closer to the Leopard Hunt of 1736 —
and even, conceivably, between that
and the Crocodile Hunt (cat. 32) of 1738/39. Their closest affinity and —
especially that of La halte a la fontaine, with its combination of slightly
exotic rustics and an Italianate setting — is with Boucher's earliest tapestry

designs for Beauvais, the so-called Fetes Italiennes, which he began

supplying around 1735 (cf. cat. 37, 86-89).
A terminus ante quern for one picture in the set,Le retour du march e,
is supplied by Cochin's feuille de paravent titled Triomphe de Pomone
(J-R 517-518), which places the composition of Le retour du marche in an
ornamental surround of rocaille and trelliswork. Cochin says that he
engraved February 1737 (Jombert, 177c, p. 14, no. 38). It is, how-
this in
ever, inscribed Boucher inv., not pinx., while Cochin also says that the
composition was "dessinee" bv Boucher, so that it seems fairly clear (as

one would indeed expect) that his engraving was based on a drawing.

166
Fig. 121. Standing Servant Girl. Man Embracing Servant
Fig. 122. Girl. Fig. 123. Seated Woman Holding Long
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Handle. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

Fig. 124. A Seated and a Sleeping Child. Fig. 125. Study of a Goat, engraved by
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Lepicier (Bernard Lepicie) after Boucher.

However, the drawing cannot have been a preparation for the painting, but
rather an ornamental design based on it. That such was the case is
reinforced by the fact that another screen leaf in the same series, the
Triomphe de Priape engraved by Duflos (J-R 875), is partially based on the
earlier painting of Putti Playing with a Goat. What is more, the original

drawing for another of the screen leaves engraved by Duflos, Rocaille

(J-R 872), is now in the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts (inv. 0.403; I am
most grateful to Peter Fuhring for sending a photocopy of this to me).
Another such drawing (last recorded in the collection of Maurice Fenaille
in 1932), which was engraved by Duflos as Hommage Champetre (J-R

873), was centered around an amorous couple evidently originally

employed in the Beauvais tapestry, La bohemienne, which was first woven
in 1736 (cf. the juxtaposition of A& W figs. 462, 464), thus further
underlining the close temporal conjunction between the present pictures
and the set of tapestries known as the Fetes Italiennes, of which La
bohemienne was a member.
In view of the time taken to make an engraving, Cochin's Triomphe de
Pomone suggests that Le retour du marche must have been painted by 1736
at the latest: probably not much before, in view of the affinities of its

167
 —

central male protagonist with the Kitchen Maid and Young Boy (cat. 28),

the pastel derived from which is dated 1738. The dating of one picture,
however, does not necessarily determine that of the whole set. This was a

large undertaking, and there is an evident evolution, not only in handling,

but even in conception, within the series. pronounce on It is difficult to
this now that the set has been broken up, but it would appear that Le

retour du marche, which is richer in color, more crowded especially with —

still life elements —
in composition, and has one of Boucher's fantasy plants

in the foreground, is the earliest of the four. This may not have been
immediately followed by its more loosely painted pendant, Vheureux
pecheur, but rather by Le bonheur au village, which shares its kind of
setting. Nevertheless, there is more that links the two Munich pictures
together in handling than associates them with either of the other two
pictures in the series. Of the —
two though the repair of past damage may
influence one's impression La hake a la fontaine seems the more success-
fully composed and fluidly painted, indicating perhaps that it is the later.
It is, however, Le bonheur au village which includes a figure reminiscent
of the inspiration behind the earliest of Boucher's depictions of peasant
life: the sleeping figure with a water flask, who looks as if he had come
straight out of a pictureby Abraham Bloemaert. The whole set of
paintings marks a transitional moment between what might be called
Boucher's bambochades, or straightforward peasant pictures, and his later,

sentimental Pastorales.

28 Kitchen Maid and Young Boy

Oil on canvas
34 x 49/; in. (87 x 125.5 cm )

Signed bottom right: Boucher /.

Dr. Ferav, Samte-Adresse

PROVENANCE
}Notice de plusieurs beaux Tableaux . . .
, In the mid-i730s it is evident that Boucher struck out in a number of different
maison de feu M. Davoust (Basan), 27 Apr.
directions, before finding the kind of subject matter that was most congenial
1772 [the handwritten breakdown of lot 9 in
copy
both to him and to his public. Thus, in addition to putti pictures and
the in the Bibliotheque Nationale in-
cludes as (e) Une cuisimere avec un jeune mythologies, we find him trying his hand at pastoral themes (see cat. 27),
homme par Boucher (Boileau 261 livres 19 half-length galant subjects (cat. 19), quasi-Dutch interior scenes (cat. 21), and
sous). This could, however, equally well have
hybrid combinations of the last two, as in the present picture. Interestingly, as
been the version on canvas of cat. 21]; Ch. E.
Riche coll., Paris; Nouveau Drouot, Paris, with his interiors, this appears to be a field where his experiments overlapped
30 Mar. 1984, lot 58, acquired by present with Chardin's (see, above all, the Woman Sealing a Letter [1733?], Schloss
owner.
Charlottenburg, Rosenberg, 1983 [b], no. 79; Le Souffleur [1734], Louvre,

ANALOGY Rosenberg, 1983, no. 99; and a series of depictions of children at play,
Bust of a Young Boy Holding a Parsnip Rosenberg, 1983, nos. 97-112). But whereas Chardin from the first avoided
(occasionally described as a carrot), pastel, 306
the galant bias of Bouchers themes, and went on to minuter pictures with
x 242 mm, signed/ Boucher iyj8; Dezallier
full-length figures, Boucher was to make galant themes the focus of his art in
d'Argenville's posthumous sale, 3 Mar. ff.

1766, lot 72 [sold for 14 livres 1 sol]; Randon his pastorals, while expanding to the full-length treatment of figures still on a
de Boisset's posthumous sale, 27 Feb. ff. 1777, large scale.

168
lot 201 [bought with Greuze pastel by Millon
a The present picture has not been universally accepted as a work of
Dainval tor noi livres]; Bruun-Neergaard sale,
Boucher's since it was first published by Voss (1953, p. 90, fig. 66), despite its
29 Aug. ff. 1814, lot 45 [height misprinted;
perfectly convincing signature, and in spite of the fact that, since Voss wrote,
sold for 25.95 francs]; anon, sale, Palais
Galhera, Pans, 7 Dec. 1970, lot 1; Art Institute an evidently related pastel stud}' of the Boy Holding a Parsnip has come to
of Chicago. Art
light (fig. 126; Institute of Chicago; see exh. cat. 1973-74, Washington,
no. 32, color pi. p. xiv). The chief gainsayers of the picture, Ananoff and
W'ildenstein (A &W 83/6, p. 217), are indeed driven to assert that the
signature and date on the pastel are spurious, and to doubt its authenticity.
despite its exceedingly distinguished pedigree, and have come up with an
unargued, and scarcely sustainable, attribution of the present painting to
Bouys.
That there are weaknesses in the picture is undeniable. There is an area of
damage around the play of hands in the center, and past ill-treatment of the
paint surface may account for certain rather lifeless details, such as the

suspended candles upper right and the pair of onions bottom left. In general,
however, the touch of the brush is excitingly broad and free and can be
compared with that of other paintings of the mid-i730s. The least satisfactory

aspect of the picture is the profile head of the kitchen maid, but profiles were
evidently something that could occasion difficulty to Boucher at this stage, as

witness that of the Woman Applying a Mouche (fig. 43; exh. cat. 1980,
London, Agnew's, no. 28). The treatment of half-length figures in general

was something that he never resolved entirely satisfactorily see — also La dame
allant au bal (London art market, A&W 113) —hence, perhaps, his ultimate
abandonment of the genre.
It might be thought that the pastel of the Boy Holding a Parsnip, which is

dated 1738, was a study for the picture, and thus provides a means of dating
the latter. The careful signature and date, however, indicate what the finished
character of the pastel itself suggests that
: it is a composition in its own right.

Fig. 126. Boy Holding a Parsnip (1738). Art As in other instances in Boucher's oeuvre, it is much more likely that it took
Institute of Chicago. the bust of the boy in the painting as its point of departure, rather than the

169
 other way about. The breadth of handling of the present picture suggests that
it should even date from one or two years before, from around the time of
the ex-Hotel de Richelieu village pastorals, with two of which, Le bonheur
au village (see cat. 27; A & W 41, but unaware of provenance) and Le retour
du marche (fig. 119; A&W 83), it has an obvious affinity of subject matter as
well as of handling.
It is possible -that the present picture was conceived with a pendant, for in
its protagonists and dimensions (especially if its apparent truncation on top is

taken into account) comes very close

it to the Boy and Girl Blowing Bubbles
in the Antenor Patirio collection (A & W 96). However, the fact that in both
pictures the girl appears above and to the right of the boy probably militates

against their having been hung together. The rapprochement, however, is a

fruitful one, because it returns us to the parallel activity of Chardin, whose

own composition of Les bouteilles de savon (Rosenberg, 19831b], no. 97) was
thought by Mariette to have been his first treatment of the human figure,
even though the engraving of it was not made until 1739, and the picture was
probably nearer to this date; whatever its exact date, it must have been closely
contemporaneous with these experiments of Boucher's.

*9 The Leopard Hunt

Oil on canvas
68/2 X X 129 cm)
50'/, in. (174
Signed bottom right: Boucher i/j6
Musee de Picardie, Amiens
S&M1728 A&W125
PROVENANCE
Galerie des petits cabinets, Versailles (installed In 1735 Boucher received his first commission from the Crown. As part of
1736, dismounted 1767); ?H6tel de la Surinten- the modernization of the chambre de la Reine at Versailles, undertaken for
dance, Versailles; sent by Napoleon to the
Hotel de Ville of Amiens for the peace
Marie Leczinska from 1730 onward (Gallet & Bottineau, 1982, pp. 144-48),
negotiations of 1802; transferred to the Musee he was invited to execute grisailles of four Virtues in the ceiling, to replace
de Picardie in 1874. darkened paintings by Gilbert de Seve (Engerand, 1900, pp. 39-40). Although
they had only been commissioned the year after Belle, de Troy, and Natoire
ENGRAVING
La cbasse au tigre, by Jean-Jacques Flipart, had executed the overdoors, and for a remoter location, Bouchers delicious
with Carle Vanloo's Chasse a Vours as its grisailles (sadly traduced by the available photographs of them) must have
pendant, dedicated to the marquis de Marigny,
made an impression. For the next year he and de Troy, along with four other
exhibited in the Salon of 1773 (J-R 1007).
artists (but including neither the deceased Belle nor Natoire), were each
SKETCH invited to paint one of the six Chasses des pays etrangers, to be set in rich
}Cbasse au lion, Pillot sale, Paris, 6 Dec. 1858, frames and paneling by Jacques Verberckt in the galerie des petits cabinets in
lot 15; ?Cbasse au tigre, sale of comte de
M***, 29 Dec. i860, lot 2; }Chasse au lion,
the newly created interior apartment of Louis XV at Versailles (Engerand,
Lefevre-Soyer sale, Beauvais, 6Juneff. 1864, 1900, p. 40; Gallet & Bottineau, 1982, p. 151; Hazlehurst, 1984).
lot 19; Cbasse au tigre, Seligmann &
Co. sale This Leopard Hunt must have met with royal approval too, since in
(part I), Paris, 11 Mar. 1914, lot 374 (74 X
1738/39 Boucher, along with Carle Vanloo and Charles Parrocel, was asked to
55.5 cm) [these are the measurements of the
Cologne picture, to which this, and one or produce an additional exotic hunt for the series: in his case, the Crocodile
more of the preceding citations, may in fact Hunt (cat. 32, for which see a more general discussion of the set). Boucher's
refer].
success —which is immediately apparent today, when one views all the
paintings in their present home at Amiens —was all the more remarkable in

that he was not, unlike Parrocel, a painter given to depicting animals and

170
i7i
PREPARATORY DRAWINGS riders, nor even, unlike Carle Vanloo, particularly fond of painting dramatic
i. La chasse au tigre, plumbago drawing, episodes. Indeed, though the drama and poses of the Exotic Hunts are tense,
sale of the marquis de Calviere, 5 May
it is above all their landscapes that delight and astonish. Although the rocks
ff. 1779, lot 393.
2. Offset of Deux Cavaliers, "avec quelques and gnarled shrubs are recognizably from the same hand as those in Putti
changemens," ibid. Playing with Birds (cat. 15), they are painted with a new liquidity and
Studies of a Head and Hands (mostly for
3.
movement that rise to a climax in the exotic distant view, which has all the
huntsman extreme with variant head-
gear, red, black,
at right,

and white chalks, 370 X fouillis (literally "jumble") — to use the technical term of the day — that
280 mm, Pierre Dormeuil coll., Paris (A & W Boucher's contemporaries found so exciting in his early works. Of all
fig. 451). Boucher's landscapes, that in the Leopard Hunt is the one that gives most
delightfrom the sheer vitality of the paint, and only the landscape in the
EXHIBITED
Probably the painting of Ammaux, one of Rape of Europa in the Wallace Collection comes close to rivaling it in this
three tableaux de fantaisies done for the king, respect.
shown at the Academy on 6 July 1737, on the
There is a confusion inherent in the Leopard Hunt, in that what Boucher
occasion of Boucher's promotion to full

professeur (see Mercure de France, July 1737,

was invited to paint was a Tiger Hunt; and that is how the picture was
p. 1620). described in the supplement to the inventory of the king's pictures drawn up
the year after it was delivered ("Un tableau representant des Turcs qui
combattent contre des tigres, dont un paroit tres effraye . . ."), as well as in

the engraving after it. Yet the beasts in this picture are clearly leopards. It was
Lancret who was asked to paint a Leopard Hunt, but the animals in his

picture are equally evidently tigers. The switch may well have occurred (and
the confusion of title have persisted) because of the fact that in the eighteenth
century (and even today, according to Le Grand Robert) tigre was used for
spotted felines as well as striped: Furetiere's Dictionnaire Universel (1727)
defines a tiger simply as an "Animal feroce & cruel qui a des griffes, & la
figure d'un chat, mais qui est plus grand, & qui a la peau tachetee," and gives
an almost identical definition of a leopard.
This taxonomic confusion has extended to the supposed oil sketch for the
present picture, in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne (see Klesse,

1973, pp. 29-30). For although it is there called a Tiger Hunt, and cautiously
put forward as a sketch for the present picture, and indeed signed /.Boucher,
all these indications are misleading. What is shown in the sketch is a lioness at

bay; there is no compositional relationship with the present painting; and the
hand is not Boucher's.
A seemingly more plausible candidate as a sketch for the present picture is

an Exotic Hunt in a private collection in Paris (fig. 127), bearing an old label
as "Carl Vanloo" (a spelling of the christian name that also suggests a German
provenance). In this the beasts are leopards, and their poses, together with
those of the man defending himself on the ground and of the foreground
rider, are related (sometimes in reverse) to their equivalents in the present

picture. Disconcertingly, however, not only is the half-naked figure at the

left-hand side of the picture repeated verbatim in or from the figure in the
same position Cologne sketch, but the two sketches (allowing for the
in the

better preservation of the Paris one) would appear to be by the same hand.
Their kinship with one another, coupled with their remoteness from (or at
most dependence on) the finished picture, seemingly concur with stylistic
discrepancies in precluding Boucher as their author.

The hand visible in these sketches looks as if it is one that recurs in another
composition, two versions of which have been attributed to Boucher, and for
which a connection has also been proposed with the decoration of the salle a

Fig. 127. Anonymous sketch of a Leopard manger adjacent to the petite galerie at Versailles. This is the Repas de chasse,
Hunt. Private collection, Paris. of which three sketches of different sizes are known, but no finished picture:

172
 one in the Musee Nissim de Camondo (1983, no. 441); another exhibited by
Cailleux, Paris, in 1964 (exh. cat. 1964, Paris, no. 13); and a third in the
Andre Meyer sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 22 October 1980, lot 11.
The same hand would appear to have been the author of a sketch of A Sultan
with Three Ladies in an Interior (Mrs. Charles Wrightsman s Palm Beach
house sale, Sotheby's, New York, 5 May 1984, lot 25, as by Leprince). It
would be tempting to see this hand as that of Charles Parrocel, either making
sketches for a commission with which he may have been entrusted with
overall control (see Hazlehurst, 1984, p. 234), or as the subsequent author of
two small rectangular pictures of a Lion Hunt and a Tiger Hunt that were
exhibited in the Salon of 1745, but it is hard to equate their style with that of
the two sketches for Parrocel s contributions to the commission, which now
hang alongside the finished pictures Amiens (Hazlehurst,
in 1984, figs. 2, 22).
Whatever the answer to the conundrum of these sketches, it is clear that

Hazlehurst (1984, pp. zzj-k)) is right in seeing Parrocel as the major

influence upon how Boucher depicted this unfamiliar scene. Not only are
such details as the pose of foremost horse and rider clearly derived from
Parrocel s earlier depiction of this subject for the due de Mortemart, engraved
by Desplaces in 173 1 (Hazlehurst, 1984, fig. 11), but so are such technical
on the ground. These, as the caption to Desplaces's
details as the glass balls

engraving elucidates, were designed to distract the attention of the tigers: their
own cubs having been taken away, they were supposed to be deceived into
playing with the glass balls, which reflected their own diminished images, as

if they were their removed young. The charming naivete of this idea is an
unintended indication of how seriouslv these exotic hunts were to be taken.

30 Le pasteur galant
Oil on canvas
58 x 78 in. cm)
(147 x 198
Signed lower right:/ Boucher
Archives Nationales (Hotel de Soubise), Paris
(S&M1529) A&W159

3 1 Le pasteur complaisant
Oil on canvas
56 x x 189 cm)
74/2 in. (142
Signed bottom right: Boucher
Archives Nationales (Hotel de Soubise), Paris
(S&M1529) A&W160
PROVENANCE
Salle d'audience of the appartements du prince, In 1732 the sexagenarian prince Hercule-Meriadec, due de Rohan-Rohan,
Hotel de Soubise, Paris; displaced in the
married for the second time, and to celebrate the event, got Boffrand to
mid-i9th century through destruction of the
room by transform the hotel that had been built for his father a generation before (see
the Archives Nationales; now dis-
played in the cbambre de parade de la prin- Babelon, 1969, pp. 24-48). Boffrand's chief efforts were devoted to the
ce sse. creation of a pavilion containing two oval salons for the prince and princess,

r
73
 one above the other, and to the transformation of the adjoining apartments
(see Boffrand, 1745, pis. lxi-lxix). To paint the salon de la prince sse and
overdoors in the other rooms the services of the foremost members of the
new generation of artists were obtained: Natoire, Boucher, Carle Vanloo,
Restout, and Tremolieres. If Natoire was accorded the single most prestigious
room, the salon ovale de la princesse, on his own, Boucher was awarded the
lion's share of the commissions for overdoors: seven all told, ranging from

Fig. 128. Pastoral Landscape, overdoor in the

mythological scenes, through pastorals, to a pure landscape — his very
versatility helps to account for his preeminence. Not that he appears to have
Hotel de Soubise, Paris.
been an immediate choice, to judge by the fact that, whereas the other artists

began to exhibit their contributions in the first of the revived Salons in 1737,
he only did so in 1738. The reason for this may partly have been his prior
employment by the Crown, but it may also have been due to a prejudice of
Boffrand s, who is recorded as disapproving of "les peintres entraines par un
gout deprave" —by which, one should hasten to add, he meant not their

morals, but their use of irrational and asymmetrical ornament; for he ascribed
the corruption of architectural taste to the introduction of forms borrowed
from painting. Patte records him as specifically singling out Boucher for
censure (see Dezallier, 1788, I, pp. 427-28).
Fig. 129.Venus and Cupid at the Bath (1738), Of all the overdoors that Boucher painted for the Hotel de Soubise, these
overdoor in the Hotel de Soubise, Paris. two were the most novel and (thanks to the engravings after them) the most

r
74
 influential. Whereas his other pictures (see figs. 128, 129) were conventional
mythological scenes and a landscape (though it should be noted that this

landscape may have been his first to abandon capriccio views of Italy for

something more suggestive of common nature in France), these two pictures

appear to be his first surviving pastorals. "Pastoral" is employed here in the

narrower sense that it came to have when used with reference to paintings in
France in the eighteenth century, to mean idealized depictions not simply of
the life amorous activities in particular. Pictures of
of shepherds, but of their
country life merely, such as Boucher had painted for the petits appartements
du Roi at Fontainebleau and exhibited in the Salon in 1737, were referred to
as "sujets champetres," if not simply as "paysages."
It is curious that such novel subject matter should have been introduced
DRAWING
Le pasteur complaisant, plumbago, [Huquier]
without any allusion being made to it at the time. One reason is no doubt
sale, 14 Sept. ff. 1761, Amsterdam, lot 1025 that it was done in a private hotel, without the pictures being exhibited, and
[bought by Yver for 10 florins 5 stuivers]. that by the time they came to be described in guidebooks such as those of

ENGRAVINGS
Dezallier d'Argenville (1749, pp. 139-43), they had become so commonplace
Le pasteur galant and Le pasteur complaisant, in Boucher's oeuvre that they were not thought worth remarking. A more
engraved by Andre Laurent (Andrew Law- telling reason at the time they were painted may have been that Boucher's
rence), published by Huquier, advertised in
stroke of inspiration was, precisely, not to invent anything utterly new, but to
the Mercure de France in Dec. 1742. Le pasteur
complaisant [and Le pasteur galant}] pirated assimilate into painting something that had long been familiar elsewhere — in
by J. G. Hertel in Augsburg. this case, in poetry and upon the stage. It was no mere figure of speech when

US
 Boucher was called the Fontenelle of painting (Lettre, 1757), for he had
followed the recommendations of this author in presenting the simplicity of
pastoral love, without the poverty of peasant existence (Fontenelle, 1688).
Those, such as the abbe Le Blanc, who did recognize Bouchers originality in
creating the painted pastoral in France (Le Blanc, 1753, p. 18: "un genre, dont
M. Boucher est le createur"), while appreciating the affinity with Fontenelle,
nonetheless insisted on the new vein of sentiment tapped by the painter. His
immediate inspiration was nonetheless more probably the stage than poetry,
and, in particular, the early and unacknowledged operas comiques of his
friend Favart.
These theatrical antecedents are visible in the costumes of the protagonists
in these two pictures, from the (admittedly laundered)
which are still far

peasant simplicity of Bouchers mature works, particularly those of the men.

They even suggest the permissive words of Fontenelle, who allowed that the
clothes of peasants in ballets "are of much finer stuff than those of true
peasants, they are even adorned with ribbons and with ornamental stitching
Fig. 130. Les charmes de la vie champetre,
engraved by Jean Daulle after Boucher.
. .
." (Fontenelle, 1688, p. 130). The same overrich dress and overcoiffed hair
can be found in another picture of these years, albeit of uncertain origin, Les
charmes de la vie champetre (fig. 49; Louvre; A&W 147, 148),
subsequently cut down to form a slightly inconsequential pendant to a more
thoroughgoing rustic picture, Les presents du herger (A & W 146). By the
time of his next securely datable Pastorales, by contrast, the three painted for
the marquis de Beringhen in 1743, the shepherds, though still dressed with
impossible richness, are bare legged and footed (if not wearing Antique
buskins), and wear hair cut short (A &W 260-262).

VARIANT
Boucher's idealization of his shepherds is the more surprising when one
Le pasteur complaisant, signed and dated 1742, considers the context in which they were originally placed, which accounted
dimensions and whereabouts unknown (looted for the choice of subject matter in the first place. For it would appear that
in World War II? Photograph in the Zentral-
they were originally two overdoors in the salle d'audience of the prince on the
institut fur Kunstgeschichte, Munich) [in re-

verse, with numerous variants, and the types ground floor of the Hotel de Soubise, the walls of which were adorned with
of the boy and girl updated]. three tapestries from the first set of the Fetes de village a 1'italienne woven at

Beauvais (Babelon, 1969, p. 35). This first set of tapestries boasted quite
COPIES
Le pasteur galant convincingly rustic protagonists (see cat. 86, 87), but without any emphasis
1. Christie's, London, 23-24 May 1928, lot upon the amorous activities that brought the present pictures within the more
265; Vermeer Galleries, London, 1937 [in ambit of the eclogue.
artificial It is these activities that give the protagonists of
reverse].

2. Painted on a Sevres vase hollandois of

the present pictures more affinity with those of the second set of tapestries

1762 in the Wallace Collection (Savill, 1982, (see Standen, 1977^]). Nonetheless, it would appear Favart may have stood
p. 167, and fig. 12). A copy of Laurent's print godfather to tapestries and pictures alike, since his Loire de Bezons (1735)
survives in the Sevres archives.
included "la scene episodique d'un Savoyard montrant la lanterne magique"
3. Painted by Dodin on a Sevres pot-pourri
vase of 1763 in the Rothschild Collection at (Favart, 1808, I, p. x), precisely the central scene of La Cunosite, which was
Waddesdon Manor (Eriksen, 1968, no. 56). one of the three Beauvais tapestries in the salle d'audience (and is now in the
4. Painted by Chabry/z/s, on the saucer of a
Sevres goblet calabre, Jones Collection, Vic-
Philadelphia Museum of Art). When a variant composition of Le pasteur
toria and Albert Museum, London (778-1882). galant was engraved by Duflos after a drawing by Boucher in his set of Les
5. By Kandler, as a Meissen group, Victoria amours pastorales in 1751/52 (J-R 931), it was inscribed with verses written by
and Albert Museum, London (C.141-1931
Favart commenting upon the triangular situation. This was one such as he
and C.50. 1962).
Meissen group (exh.
was to describe in Annette et Luhin (1762). In this opera comique the
6. cat. 1970, Lenin-
grad, no. 96). protagonists have different names from those of the etching, and it was
7. Vincennes group (listed in 1752 in- anyway written later than the compositions in question; nor, of course, can
ventory); examples in Forsyth Wickes Collec-
one safely argue from Duflos s much later print to Boucher's painting here of
tion, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and in the
Mentmore sale (Sotheby's), 24 May 1977, lot about 1738/39. Nonetheless, the verses suggest some earlier redaction of the
2010. theme, and the possibility that Boucher took his inspiration from one of

176
 .

S. Red-chalk drawing, inside a pen and wash Favart's earlier works for the Theatre de la Foire, which the latter neither
drawing tor a frame, 135 x 225 mm, close,
acknowledged nor published, is at least worth entertaining. The general
but not corresponding exactly, to that in which
it is now set, Paris art market, 1985.
derivation of these, Boucher s earliest pastorals, from the stage seems beyond
question.
Le pasteur complaisant
1. Mme Debacker sale, Paris, 1 June 1908, 5. Painted by Dodin on a Sevres pot-pourri ANALOGY
lot 32 [in reverse]. vase of 1763 in the Rothschild Collection at Drawing by J.
A. Portail of Le pasteur galant
2. Blumerel Bordeaux, 1-5 April 1913,
sale, Vaddesdon Manor (Enksen, 1968, no. 56). A holding up a (?) sheet of paper, red, black, and
lot 290, shaped overdoor, 100 x 85 cm [in copy of Laurent's print survives in the Sevres white chalks, 133 x 171 mm, Funck-Brentano
reverse]. archives. sale, Paris, 29 Apr. ff. 1921, lot 48 (as 18th-

3. Ibid., lot 326, panel, 40 x 32 cm [in 6. Painted on lid of Ottweiler terrine, in century French School); given to the British
reverse]. Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg Museum in 1926 bv Henry Oppenheimer
4. Sale, Christie's, London, 6 Mar. 1936, (Keramos, 84, p. 11, fig. 2). (facsimile published by the Vasari Society, as

lot 5 1 J-A. Portail).

5-2 The Crocodile Hunt

Oil on canvas
71/4 X cm)
50/2 in. (181 X 128
Signed bottom center: Boucher 1739
Musee de Picardie, Amiens
S&M1728 A&W126
Paris

PROVENANCE
Galerie des petits cabinets, Versailles (installed The original set of six paintings of Chasses etrangeres commissioned in 1736
1739, dismounted 1767); Hotel de la Surinten- for the galerie des petits cabinets at Versailles (for whose plan and elevation,
dance, Versailles; sent by Napoleon to the
Hotel de Ville of Amiens for the peace
see Racinais, 1950, pis. 30, 32, 67) was allocated as follows: Boucher, Chasse
negotiations of 1802; transferred to the Musee au tigre [recte au leopard, cat. 29]; J-F. de Troy, Chasse au lion; Carle Vanloo,
de Picardie in 1874. Chasse a Vours; Lancret, Chasse au leopard [recte au tigre]; Pater, Chasse
chinoise; Charles Parrocel, Chasse a Velephant (see Hazlehurst, 1984). It is
ENGRAVING
La Pesca del Crocodilo, engraved by P. P. evident from the finished paintings, all of which are now in the Musee de
Moles in 1770-74: Dedicada a la Real Junta Picardie at Amiens, that the artists must have been given instructions over
Particular, y Consulddo de Comercio, Fabricas,
such matters as their palette and the size of their figures, so that their
y Agncultura del Puncipddo de Cataluna &a
por P. P. Moles su Pensionista en Paris (J-R contributions should harmonize with one another; only Pater seems to have
1432; Cochin's letter to de Marigny about been incapable of adhering to the guidelines. Nonetheless, the pictures by
Moles's choice of this picture and Vanloo's
Boucher and Vanloo show that they alone possessed the imagination to go
Chasse a I'autruche [which he never executed]
to engrave, out of all the pictures in the cabinet
beyond a trivial fascination with the exotic aspects of their allocated hunts to
du Roi, printed in Furcy-Raynaud, 1905, seize their dramatic potential.
P t93)-
It was surely this manifest superiority that led to their being selected to
provide two of the additional three hunts required in 1738, along with the
DRAWINGS
i . Tete d'un Turc dans la Chasse au Croco- other painter much favored by the king (as witness his continuous employ-
dile, sale of the marquis de Calviere 5 May ff. ment at Choisy), Charles Parrocel (though it should be remembered that
1779, lot 393.
Pater had died, while de Troy had gone to take up the post of director of the
Academie used for rear figure with pole,
2.

red chalk, 251 x 307 mm, with stamp of Carl French Academv in Rome, and that he and Lancret had alreadv been asked
Hirleman, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm to paint the Dejeuner d'huitres and the Dejeuner de jambon for the salle a
(Bjurstrom, 1982, no. 854; here fig. 131). manger). At first sight more surprising is the fact that neither of the two
outstanding animal painters of the age, Desportes and Oudry was asked for a
contribution to either the first or the second commission. This would appear
to indicate that Louis XV (who was a passionate huntsman) commissioned

U7
i
78
 the series less for the sake of the depiction of the animals involved than as
opportunities for the depiction of action and emotion —hence his having
chosen a team made up of history painters and painters of fetes galantes.
It is this lack of scientific intent that also accounts for the painters chosen
having preferred to go for inspiration to such sources as the engravings after
Stradanus of the Venationes Ferarum (see Hazlehurst, 1984, passim) rather
than to the Jardin des Plantes (in this connection it is worth mentioning that
the royal collections included eighteen drawings of often exotic Hunts made
by Stradanus; see exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Orangerie, no. 105). More
puzzling as an influence is that of Rubens's Exotic Hunts, also alluded to by
Hazlehurst, but never demonstrable as a specific source. For if these four
Study of a Man Wielding a Pole.
Fig. 131.
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
hunts, sometimes representing the pursuit of more than one species of exotic
beast, which were painted for the elector Maximilian I of Bavaria (see exh.
cat. Munich, nos. 801-03), would seem likely to have inspired both
1980,
Louis XV's choice of subject matter and Boucher's unwonted display of male
anatomy, it is less easy to say in what form these pictures, which were then all

in Schleissheim and had never been engraved, were known to king and
painter.

The reasons for the commissioning of three additional pictures in 1738 are
also not immediately apparent. They may have had something to do with the
enlargement of the gallery, since we know that in 1737 its form had already
been altered by heightening (Gallet & Bottineau, 1982, p. 151). For his second
contribution, Boucher would appear to have drawn even more heavily on
Stradanus for specific details, such as the mastiff at the right and the idea of
gagging the crocodile with a pole (fig. 131; see Hazlehurst, 1984, pp. 233-34),
yet the overall impression of the seething mass of beasts and straining bodies
is even more Rubensian than in the Leopard Hunt — albeit again without
specifically demonstrable borrowings. The palm trees in the middle ground
(coexisting with one of Boucher's favorite fir trees in the foreground!) and the
small overacute pyramid in the distance were intended by him to locate the
scene in the cataracts of the Nile. I am grateful to M. Christian Baulez for
having communicated to me an unpublished memorandum from Boucher to
the Batiments du Roi (Archives Nationales O 1802, piece 729) that contains
1

this statement. It was drawn up to support his claim that he should be paid as

much for this picture as for the Leopard Hunt, since it cost him much more
time.

33 Le dejeuner
Oil on canvas
32 x x 65.5 cm)
253/, in. (81.5

Signed bottom right:/ Boucher 17J9

Musee du Louvre, Paris (R.F. 926)
S&M 1157, 1184 A&W165
PROVENANCE
Catalogue d'une grande Collection de Ta- Confronted with this delightfully detailed but informal scene of a family at
bleaux des meilleurs Maistres . . . &c, Grands breakfast, one cannot but regret Boucher as a genre painter manque. Perhaps,
Augustins (Gersaint), 26 Mar. ff. 1749, lot 50:
however, this is to look at this picture and its few fellows in the wrong way:

U9
1 8c
 —

rather than asking ourselves why Boucher should have abandoned such
subject matter, we ought to be looking for the circumstances that occasioned
his few essays in this field. For, as we know from the history of The Milliner
(cat. 51), it was not for want of urging that Boucher left such pictures
unpainted.
Since Tourneux, taking up an identification originally made in the Duclos
sale, proposed it with proper diffidence in 1 897, Le dejeuner has generally
been regarded as depicting the painter himself and his young family. There is

much that speaks for this: the ages of the father and mother and of the two
young children (Boucher had married the then seventeen-year-old Marie-
Jeanne Buseau in 1733; their first daughter was born in 1735, and their only
son in 1736; their other daughter was not to be born until 1740) do not
contradict it, and, since it is the woman drinking coffee who appears to have
the features of Mme Boucher, Georges Brunei's discovery (which he has
kindly communicated to me) that Boucher had a sister might resolve the
identity of the other woman, feeding the child. The main drawback is the
figure of the man, for there is a drawing of him by Boucher with the same
Fig. 132. Study of a Man Serving Coffee. Art
Institute of Chicago.
features as in the painting that by its very character can scarcely be a self-

portrait (fig. 132). What is more, he is wearing the apron of a servant, and
was called a "garc,on Limonadier" when the picture was sold for the second
time. It is true that Louis XV took special pleasure in making coffee in the
intimacy of the petits appartements and Boucher might have worn an apron to
do the same, and the placing and attitude of the figure in the picture are
scarcely those of a deferential servant or waiter; but on balance it is probably
wiser to see this as a genre picture, in which Boucher may have taken his
family as convenient models, rather than an actual family portrait.
This way of regarding the picture is reinforced by a previously unnoticed
fact about its history. The painter whose works this painting most strongly
echoes is Jean-Francois de Troy, for it was he who made a specialty of

depicting gatherings of figures from the higher reaches of society, in minutely

descriptive representations of their surroundings. It is therefore of some
interest that when this picture, described as a "Sujet galant & agreable," first

appeared at auction —only ten years after it was painted, and one of the
Fig. 133. Overmantel mirror and painting, earliest paintings by Boucher to do so — it was in company with a picture by
plate 67 of J-F. Blondel's De la distribution des Raoux of identical dimensions, described as "un autre Sujet galant" of Deux
maisons de plaisance, vol. II (1738).
jeunes Hommes et deux Dames dans un Jardin (lot 51), and two paintings by
de Troy, only one pouce shorter, of Plusieurs personnes qui s'habillent pour le

"Sujet galant & agreable. ... II represente Bal (lot 48). These lots were grouped together in the catalogue, giving the
deux Dames ausquelles on sert de caffe, avec
impression of a set of paintings of polite society commissioned by one person
deux Enfans"; Catalogue des Tableaux Ori-
gmaux des Trots Ecoles , . . &c., du Cabinet de from different hands. Furthermore, the other picture by Boucher in the sale,

M. PROUSTEAU, Capitaine des Gardes de la of Cupid and Psyche (lot 49), was of exactly the same dimensions as another
Ville, sa maison, rue des Tournelles (Remy),
picture by de Troy of Diana at the Bath (lot 47), suggesting a similar
5 June 1769, lot ji: "Deux femmes, deux
ff.
proceeding.
enfans, &
un gar^on Limonadier qui a servi du
caffe, dans une chambre a cheminee agreable- The sale was one of mixed properties, held by Gersaint, and in the event
ment ornee: sur ce Tableau est marque l'annee according to a copy of the catalogue in the Cabinet des Estampes of the
1763 [sic].

M. Boucher, sont
Les ouvrages de ce celebre Artiste,
si generalement au gout du
Bibliotheque Nationale — the two Bouchers and Raoux were not on view.
the

public, qu'il n'est pas necessaire de faire l'eloge Since the de Troys were apparently sold, this might be thought to weaken the
du morceau que nous annoncons" [sold for argument for some connection between them and the Bouchers. However,
200 hvres]; Catalogue de Tableaux, Dessins,
twenty years later, the pair of pictures by de Troy, now called La toilette pour
Miniatures, Estampes . . . &c. du Cabinet de
M***, Hotel de Bullion (Paillet), 9 Dec. ff.
le bal and Le retour du bal, reappear in the same sale as Le dejeuner. This
1783, lot 3, E Boucher, en 1739: "Un Tableau was of the "Cabinet de M. Prousteau, Capitaine des Gardes de la Ville,"

181
bien peint & du meilleur ton de couleur; il according to the catalogue. The Bruno Pons (to whom I am most
research of
represente l'interieur d'un appartement, dans
grateful for communicating this information to me) has identified this
lequel est une dame assise devant une table, &
prenant son dejeune que lui apporte un jeune individual as Salomon-Pierre Prousteau (d. 178 1), a marchand de vins. It
garcon: autre dame & 2 enfans ajoutent a would appear, however, that Prousteau's dealings extended from wine to
Pagrement de cette composition"; Catalogue pictures, on the evidence not only of this sale midway through his life (which
d'une Collection interessante de bons Tableaux
might, of course, also have been occasioned by a crisis in his business), but
des Trots Ecoles, Hotel Bullion (Bons &
Bonnefonsj, 22-23 Mar. 1827, lot 18; posthu- also of the fact that he owned two replicas of Bouchers made for engravers (a
mous sale of Gueting, carrossier de la Cour Rape of Europa possibly identifiable with the picture now in the Museum of
Impenale de France, 19 Feb. 1848, lot 11; sale
North Carolina at Raleigh [cf. cat. 54] and The Milliner [cf. cat. 51] now in
of Camille Marcille, 12-13 Jan. 1857,1016;
relics of the collection of Jfules] Duclos, Hotel the Wallace Collection), and that he owned two further pictures by Boucher
Drouot, 20-21 Nov. 1878, lot 50, as Inteneur that were neither in his sale nor recorded in his inventaire apres dices (Venus
de sa famille
sale (exp.
(le Dejeuner); anon, posthumous
George), 13-15 Apr. 1881, lot 1; Dr.
donnant du nectar a VAmour and UAmour instruit par Mercure, engraved by
Achille Malecot, Paris, by whom left to the
Basan [J-R 263, 262] and Mme Dupont [J-R 944, 945]), which would
Louvre in 1895. originally appear to have been overdoors in the Hotel de Mazarin, according
to the drawings for them in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (Bjurstrom,
ENGRAVING
Le dejeune, engraved by Bernard Lepicie, with 1982, nos. 850, 849). The engraving of Le dejeune, without the name of any
verses by him: owner or dedicatee, by the Lepicie in 744 already carries with it a certain
1

Caffe charmant ta liqueur agreable suggestion that the picture was on the market then (the de Troys were
De Bacchus calme les acces
engraved by Beauvarlet). Whatever the true explanation, it would appear that
Ton feu divin dissipe de la table

Et les degouts et les exces. so apparently spontaneous an exercise in this, for Boucher, unusual genre was
(J-R 1380-1381) in fact a commissioned work, and possibly even a commercial speculation.
[Engraving (in reverse) and verses copied by an
None of this detracts from the great qualities of the picture itself. The
anonymous contemporary print inscribed with
the curious assertion that "L'Original est dans impression of a family seized at one of the most informal and intimate
le Cabinet du Roy."] moments of the day is brought to a point in the gaze of the child being fed,
by which we are fixed, almost as if the scene had been caught by the instant
PREPARATORY DRAWINGS
i. Seated Woman Taking Coffee, Hermitage,
eye of the camera, rather than by the laborious hand of the painter. This
Leningrad (inv. 10632), red, black, and white feeling of a photographic record is enhanced by the myriad details caught by
chalks, 246 x 225 mm, signed boucher (exh. the painters brush: the bourlet worn by the small child on the right to protect
cat. 1970, Leningrad, no. 17).
it from knocks, its little doll (prophetic of the cutout pantins that Boucher
2. Seated Woman Taking Coffee, inscribed
Chardin, red chalk, 392 x 287 mm, formerly himself was to color at the height of their vogue seven years later), the
Liechtenstein coll., Vaduz (Schonbrunner & bulbous high-spouted silver coffeepot (so shaped the better to retain the
Meder, II, 1897, p. 131), sold after the Second
grounds) held by the man, and the teapot and pagod on the etagere behind
World War to an unknown buyer.
3. Man Serving Coffee, red, black, and him —the pagod reminiscent of the kind of Chinese porcelain that we know,
white chalks, 345 x 195 mm. Art Institute of from his posthumous sale, Boucher himself owned. But most of all, what this
Chicago (exh. cat. 1973-74, Washington, no.
picture conveys is the impression of an up-to-date Rococo interior. In fact,
36).
the forms of the chimneypiece and of the overmantel mirror incorporating a

ANALOGY picture of the Ponte Salario (a less curvilinear version of one of the more
Interior with a Woman Taking Coffee: misc. modest designs in J-F. BlondePs De la distribution des maisons de plaisance,
sale (Le Brun), 19 Jan. 1778, lot 103: "L'inte-
II, 1738, pi. 6y, p. 73; here fig. 133), and of the console table, dated back a
rieur d'une chambre, oil l'on voit une femme
couverte d'une pelisse, qui prend du
decade or more, and are certainly less advanced than the interiors shown in

chocolat," 18 x 14 in.; misc. sale [Dulac & Bouchers Oeuvres de Moliere (1734/35); only the cartel
illustrations to the
Lachaise], 30 Nov. ff. 1778, lot 212: "Une clock and the sconces manifest real asvmmetrv and rocaille. Nonetheless,
J J *

Dame assise devant une table, prenant une

tasse de chocolat."
from no other picture do we gain so vivid an idea of life in an up-to-date, if

not modish, household in the Paris of the day.

COPIES
i. Bourgarel coll., Paris.

2. Mrs. A. James coll.; sold Christie's,

London, 15 Oct. 1948, lot 87, 31 'A x iy/z in.

(in reverse).

182
 —

34 View of a Mill with Distant Temple

Oil on canvas
49 /4 X 63 in. (126.5 x 160 cm)
5

Signed on rock, lower right:

/ Boucher 1/40
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
Kansas City (59-1)
S&M1738 A&W175

35 Forest Scene with Two Roman Soldiers

Oil on canvas
51/2 x 64 in. (131 x 163 cm)
Signed on rock, lower right:
/ Boucher 1J40
Musee du Louvre, Paris (M.N.R. 894)
S&M1750 A&W176
PROVENANCE
Exhibited in the Salon of 1740, nos. 10, 11, In 1744, after writing about the oeuvres of Lancret and Pater in the catalogue
with no name of owner; Catalogue de Ta- of the posthumous sale of Quentin de Lorangere (Gersaint, 1744, pp.
bleaux Onginaux . . . &c. apres le deces de
197-98), Mariette digressed to regret the fact that:
Madame veuve de M. DE LA HAVE, Fermier-
General, Hotel Lambert (Remy), 1 Dec. ff.

"Ces deux tableaux sont

there is a fairly strong feeling in our day, of how much the Landscape
1778, lot 30: . . .

riches & interessans de composition, d'unfaire side of things has been too neglected. In no Country is anyone being
savant & d'un coloris clair, mais agreable & bred up to this specialty, which is agreeable (in its own right), and very
bon. Francois Boucher qui en est l'auteur, les a
often a necessary complement to the other aspects of Painting. Our best
fairs en 1740, dans son bon terns"; Catalogue
de Tableaux . . . &c. apres le deces de Madame Masters rarely devote themselves to this kind of study: they regard the
LANCRET, & de M**'\ Hotel de Bullion pieces of Landscape that they deign to chance to spend a few moments
(Remy), [postponed to Apr.
3 5] ff. 1782, lots
on, as an amusement and distraction: it is uncommon to see such things
156, 157; coll. of M. Pinard (exh. cat. i860,
Paris, nos. 85, 86), after which separated:
from their hands, despite the beauties that are appreciated in them, and
View of a Mill: private coll., France (exh. the unanimous approval that such productions generally earn.
cat. 1932, Paris, no. 74); coll. of the duchesse (On sent assez de nos jours, comhien on a trop neglige depuis quelques
d'Harrincourt; sold anonymously, Sotheby's,
terns la partie du Paysage. II ne se forme dans aucun Pays, nul eleve dans
London, 2 July 1958, lot in (bought by
Leggatt, from whom acquired bv the museum ce genre, qui est agreable, & tres-souvent necessaire pour les autres
in 1959). parties de la Peinture. Rarement nos meilleurs Maitres s'appliquent-ils a
Forest Scene: M. Jacques de Chefdebien
cette etude: Us ne regardent que comme un amusement, & un
(exh. cat. 1932, Paris, no. 73); third Dubois-
Chefdebien sale, Paris, 13-14 Feb. 1941, lot 17;
delaissement les morceaux de Paysage, auxquels Us veulent bien par
recovered after the war, and presented to the hazard passer quelques momens: il n'est pas commun d'en voir sortir de
Louvre by the Office des Biens Prives in 195 1.
leurs mains, malgre les heautes que Von y reconnoit, & les suffrages
universels que ces productions leur attirent ordinairement.)
PREPARATORY DRAWINGS
?"Deux sujets de soldats, dans la maniere de
S. Rose, au bistre," Mariette's posthumous
There was an element of exaggeration in what Mariette said, but it was in

sale, 15 Nov. ff. 1775, lot 11 58; "deux Desseins essence true in France at least: none of the leading history painters of the
a la plume, sur
des groupes de Soldats, dans
la meme feuille,

le
representans
genre de
day —not Coypel, Vanloo, Natoire, or de Troy—painted landscapes or even
allocated a significant role to landscape in their compositions. There was no
Salvator Roza," Blondel d'Azaincourt sale,
10 Feb. ff. 1783, lot 195.
figure comparable to Claude or Poussin of the previous century, and there
were barely any minor practitioners of the genre — at most, such peripheral
figures as the primarily architectural painters Lajoue or Lallemand. Yet we
know that Vleughels had encouraged his pupils at the French Academy in

Rome to go out and sketch in the Campagna, and one of them —Natoire
183
34

made numerous landscape drawings and watercolors, at least after his own
appointment as director of the Academy in Rome. Xatoire, while still in

France, belonged to a circle of artists that also included Boucher and Portail,
and later Pierre and Ville, who followed Oudry's lead in going to sketch in

the romantically abandoned grounds of the chateau of the prince de Guise at

Arcueil (see exh. 1982-83, Paris, pp. 231-44). Apart from Boucher,
cat.

however, only Oudry produced and exhibited any significant quantity of

landscape paintings. Mariette not only knew and appreciated Oudry, he
owned four of his drawings of Arcueil (see Opperman, 1977, cat. nos.
D.1C51, 1063-64, 1074); nonetheless it is unlikely that he had that artist in
Fig. 154.The Mill of Quiquengrogne at mind when he uttered his lament, since Oudry's devotion to landscape was
Charenton, signed and dated 1739. Private
far from intermittent, and he was not a history painter. It is much more likely
collection, England.
that it was Boucher whom Mariette had in his sights.
This was less than wholly fair to Boucher, who, as we have seen (cat. 16,
23), had been painting landscapes since his return from Rome. He had
included tableaux de fantaisies of landscape among the three pictures that he
showed at the Academy on his election as full professeur in 1737 (see Mercure
 de France, July 1737, p. 1620), no doubt from the set of landscape subjects
that he had painted for the petits appartements of Fontainebleau that year
(Engerand, 1900, p. 42), and he had exhibited four sujets champetres in the

first of the revived Salons, later in the same year (possibly again the pictures
for Fontainebleau).
Boucher's earliest landscapes were, however, all reminiscences of Italy.

Opperman ascribes a crucial role to Oudry and to his involvement of

Boucher in the design of tapestries for Beauvais, in the latter s switch to

painting from actual motifs in the environs of Paris (exh. cat. 1982-83, Paris,
no. 90). How true is this? Boucher's earliest datable landscape not of Italian
or Italianate seems to be the panel painting of The Mill of
sites
Fig. 135. Seconde veue des environs de Quiquengrogne at Charenton, formerly in the collection of Mrs. Derek
Charenton, engraved by
Boucher.
J-P. Le Bas after
Fitzgerald, and now in an English private collection (fig. 134; A&W 167),
apparently signed and dated 1739. This composition was engraved in 1747 by
J-P Le Bas as the Premiere veue de Charenton Q-R 1342), with a Seconde
veue des environs de Charenton as its pendant
J-R 1343; possibly
(fig. 135;
based on the picture paired with The Mill of Quiquengrogne in the

185
 —

collections of Mrs. Meyer Sassoon and Mrs. Derek Fitzgerald, and now in

the Kunsthalle in Hamburg [A &W 170]; but the difference of support,

which is copper rather than panel, and the absence of a date from the
signature on the picture in Hamburg, together with the lack of anv early
record of either picture, enjoin caution oyer accepting it unconditionally as
such). The engraying of the Premiere veue is, significantly, dedicated to one
of the sketching party at Arcueil, Portail, and that of the Seconde veue to the
amateur artist and historiographer of the art of the Low Countries [J-B.]
Descamps. Perhaps of even greater significance is the fact that there is a
drawing by Oudry in the Louvre (Duclaux, 1975, no. 286) of the same mill
which was celebrated for its picturesqueness, since there were also three
paintings of by Lancret (G. Wildenstein, 1924, nos. 41-43), and there
it are
what would appear to be two drawings of it by Yleughels, one in the
Pierpont Morgan Library (exh. cat. 1984, New York, no. 34) and another at

present untraced (Hercenberg, 1975, no. 324, fig. 174).One cannot prove that
Oudry s drawing has the priority and that it was he who had led Boucher to
the motif, but this would at least be consistent with his later primacy at

Arcueil, where he "primoit comme un professeur au milieu de son ecole"

(Gougenot, 1761 [1854], p. 378).

Even more telling for the hypothesis that it was his association with Oudrv
at Beauvais that led Boucher away from Italianate views and into deriving his
inspiration from local sites is the other pair of landscapes engraved by Le Bas
in 1744 (J-R 1340, 1341). These are after paintings of 1742 and 1743 of the
environs of Beauvais itself (the fact that both the original painting of 1742, and
the engraving after it, were exhibited in the Salons of 1742 and 1745
respectively, as depictions of that locality, and that a third painting, employing
the same pointed tower as the first view of Beauvais, but in a slightly altered

setting, was shown as a pendant to the second view of Beauvais in the Salon
of 1743, suggests that all three pictures at least took motifs from Beauvais as

their starting point. This is despite the fact that Chedel appears to have
engraved the third picture as Yeiie ci'une Tour pres de Blois [J-R 494; see also
exh. cat. 1974, Amsterdam, no. 15], which must have been an error or a flight
of fancy on his part). What is more, the mill in the Seconde vue de Beauvais
is precisely the building depicted in the present picture from Kansas City In

this earlier painting, however, Boucher still shows himself reluctant to commit
himself entirely to the representation of a rustic local site. Instead, he
combines it with a romantic vision of the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli in the
distance. In exactly the same way, the strikingly naturalistic view of a forest
glade in the pendant in the Louvre (not a little reminiscent of the forests seen
in Oudry s Chaises,) is peopled by two soldiers who look as if they have

strayed from a painting by Salvator Rosa. A group of three banditti taken

from the same source can be seen in the middle distance of the Kansas picture
(it is worth recalling here that Boucher even painted a pastiche Salvator Rosa

landscape, currently on the Paris art market [A & W 73]).

The present pair of landscapes is first recorded in the collection of Mme de
la Have (d. 1776), widow of the immensely rich fermier-general Marin de la

Have (d. 1753), l ^ e owner successively of the Hotel de Bretonvilliers and of

the Hotel Lambert, where her posthumous sale was held. Only an unspeci-
fied copv of a Boucher had been mentioned in her husband's posthumous

sale; but this pair, of strikingly large dimensions, was no doubt painted for

him and retained bv his widow. A brother of his, Salomon de la Have

186
 — —

Desfosses, had one daughter who was married to Bergeret de Frouville (see
cat. 84, 85), and another who was married to the most avid collector of
Bouchers drawings, Blondel d'Azaincourt. Either Salomon de la Haye or,
more probably, his son, Charles-Marin de la Haye, the "Benjamin" and heir
of the childless Marin de la Haye, had a notable collection of Boucher's
drawings, which we know from the engravings after them by Demarteau and
Ouvrier.
The two landscapes were put on the market only as recently
fact that these

as 1778, however, makes it doubtful that, when they reappeared in the

posthumous sale of the painter Lancret's widow in 1782 (see M. R. Michel,

1969), they had really belonged to her. It is much more probable that they
were inserted into her sale by the auctioneer Pierre Remy, who had also held
the posthumous sale of Mme de la Haye.

36 Psyche Declining Divine Honors

Oil on canvas, grisaille

16/2 x 21/4 in. (42 x 54 cm)

Musee des Beaux-Arts du Chateau de Blois
A&W186
PROVENANCE
Coll. of M. Rosat, by whom left to the On 30 September 1737 a memorandum was drawn up recording the Crown's
museum in 1882.
decision to order tapestries from Beauvais that could be used as diplomatic

RELATED WORKS
gifts. The existing compositions being regarded as insufficiently "elevated,"

i. Psiche refusant les honneurs divins, Oudry was to provide pictures for new sets, beginning with the Story ofJason
etching by Philippe Parizeau (J-R 1441). and Medea, and, since history pieces were by definition more demanding, he
2. Psiche recevant les honneurs dwins,
was only required to produce six every three years instead of his previous
"esquisse tres-avancee en grisaille. Cet aimable
tableau, par F. Bouchet, a ete grave par N. contractual obligation of eight (see Fenaille, IV, 1907, pp. 99-100). In
Pariseau. II est peint a Phuile sur papier, & transmitting this memorandum to Oudry, however, Fagon as administrator
porte 16 pouces en tout sens"; Catalogue de
made it clear that he was not expected to produce these pictures himself (his
Tableaux &c. provenans du Cabinet de feu
A&W
. . .

M. SALY, &c, sa maison, rue du Doyenne talents scarcely lay in that direction), but to get Boucher to do so (see
(Joullain fils), 14 June ff. 1776, lot 9 (sold for doc. 89). In the event, somebody else (apparently Dandre-Bardon, who
150 livres).
exhibited one in the Salon of 1739) produced a set of five pictures (see Badin,
3. Psichee qui refuse les honneurs de la
Divinite, "Un tres-beau Dessein de Fr. 1909, p. 90), but they were not used, and the Story ofJason was ultimately
Boucher," sale of the abbe Guillaume, 18 May woven at the Gobelins instead, after seven pictures painted by J-F. de Troy in
1769, lot 268 [sold for 90 livres]; Psiche Rome between 1743 and 1746 (see Fenaille, IV, 1907, pp. 101-35).
refusant les honneurs divins, "riche composi-
tion a la plume & au bistre; ce Dessein a ete
Two months later, on 2 5 November, another memorandum was drawn up
grave par M. Pariseau," Jacqmin sale, 26 Apr. recording the choice of the Story of Psyche for the second set of hangings, and
ff. 1773, ' ot 843 [sold for 300 livres]; Psyche emphasizing that they were to be of "six less hackneyed subjects, affording
refusant les honneurs divins dans le temple de
the greatest scope for richness and charm, and the most apt for exhibiting the
Venus, "belle et riche composition, connue par
l'estampe gravee par M. Parizeau; elle est a la
skills of the weaver" (see Fenaille, IV, 1907, p. 100). These Boucher did
plume, lavee de bistre. Hauteur 16 pouces, undertake, but not immediately. The first set of the Fetes Italiennes had to be
largeur 21 pouces," [Bellanger] sale (Le Brun completed beforehand La pecheuse was not put on the looms until 1738
& Constantin), 17 Mar. ff. 1788; Le Brun &
Constantin sale, 31 May and it was not until 1739 that he exhibited in the Salon the full-scale painting
ff. 1790, lot 144,
"dessein tres-termine a la plume, lave de bistre; that was to serve model for the inaugural tapestry in the new series, Zephyr
as
il est grave par Mr. Parizeau. Hauteur 17 Ushering Psyche into Cupids Palace, and as late as 1741 when the first three
pouces, largeur 20 pouces"; Cab de Ci-
tapestries were woven and 1742 before the set of five was completed.

187
toyen''"-"' sale (Regnault), 25 brumaire, l'an III Faced with the demand for novel and rich episodes from the story,
Nov. ff 794), lot 13.
( 1 5 .
1
Boucher turned for advice to the writer and journalist Petit de Bachaumont
4. Psichee qui refuse les honneurs de la

Divimte, "un Dessein par S. Quentin, d'apres

(later to become one of his severest critics). By this point the commission had
Fr. Boucher . . . dans sa bordure doree," sale expanded to nine compositions, and though de Bachaumont calls them
of the abbe Guillaume, 18 May 1769, lot 261 "tableaux" (pictures), it is clear from what he says about the ninth and last of
[sold for 42 livres 16 sous].
them, that it was tapestries that were being envisaged (see A & W doc. 130).

Otherwise, one might easily have supposed that Boucher was seeking advice
because he was in competition with Natoire for the commission to paint the
spandrels of the salon ovale de la princesse in the Hotel de Soubise, which the
latterwas decorating with eight scenes from the Story of Psyche in these very
years (1737-39). These paintings by Natoire (and the engravings after Raphael
recommended by de Bachaumont) aside, there were few available precedents
to follow; most French painters (such as the Coypel) had only depicted
Psyche Examining Cupid by Lamplight or Cupid Abandoning Psyche. There
were, however, sets of tapestries telling the story of Psyche, that were woven
in Paris before the creation of the Gobelins (Fenaille, I, 1923, pp. 287-92),

188
 and in Brussels in the early eighteenth century (Gobel, 1923, I, vol. i, pp. 361,
597)-
Neither de Bachaumont s proposals nor Bouchers compositions make any
allusion to these paintings by Natoire (despite the fact that Boucher was
simultaneously contributing overdoors to the Hotel de Soubise, see cat. 30,

31); one reason for this was probably that, unlike Natoire, Boucher and de
Bachaumont were in search of subjects that afforded the greatest opportunity
to bring on rich settings and a tumultuous cast of characters (for a contrary
assessment, which also exaggerates the correspondence between the subjects
suggested by de Bachaumont and those painted by Natoire, see the otherwise
very rewarding article by Kathryn Hiesinger, 1976).
De Bachaumont s garbled recommendations to draw for inspiration on the
Fig. 136. Psiche refusant les honneurs divins,
collaborative trage die -ballet by Moliere, Quinault, and Pierre Corneille, and
etched bv Ph. Parizeau after Boucher.
the trage die -op era variously ascribed to Thomas Corneille or to Fontenelle,
both of which had music by Lully, were probably particularly welcome to
someone of Bouchers theatrical bent. That just two of the five scenes
eventually depicted in Boucher's tapestry designs were suggested by de
Bachaumont may reflect not only the fact that the latter had omitted certain
central episodes, but also that the set of tapestries as it stands —which in turn

omits other key scenes — is incomplete. It was a cycle scarcely ordered by

private customers (most went, as intended, to the king or as diplomatic gifts)
and for this reason may have been abandoned without intended further
scenes having been added.
De Bachaumont had already told Boucher that the story afforded the
possibility of depicting many more than the nine episodes for which he had
been asked, and had suggested that he make drawings for a set of engravings,

which de Bachaumont predicted would outstrip even those for the Oeuvres
de Moliere (1734-35) in popularity. Regrettably, Boucher never took this

advice, but he did produce a Psyche Declining Divine Honors that was etched
by Philippe Parizeau (fig. 136; J-R 1441). This does not correspond exactly to
the present picture but is a square composition derived from it. An oil sketch
on paper of the same square format as the etching was in the posthumous sale
of the sculptor Saly (whose bust of the Jeune fdle aux nattes Boucher had so
Fig. 137. The Apotheosis of Psyche, grisaille
often depicted in his putti pictures of the Arts), and it was probably this that
sketch. Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.
is recorded by the etching, albeit at one remove. That the present grisaille was
an earlier version of the oil sketch on paper is suggested not only by its

evident closeness to the etching, but also by the fact that the details in which
it differs (e.g., the fanciful head scarf of one of the priestesses) appear to have

been improved in the etching (to a more correct mantle). What is more, the
final drawing for the composition (often mistakenly held to have been the
model for the etching when it appeared in sales in the eighteenth century) was
of the same format as the present oil sketch, suggesting that it was in this

form that the composition was first elaborated. The change in format was not
achieved simply by truncating the sides: the foremost girl making a burnt
offering was excised from the center as well, and a prostrate supplicant
substituted, an excision that makes the gestures of Psyches companion hard
to comprehend.
It is evident that from the outset Boucher was making this sketch with a
print, not a tapestry, in mind. Not only is it a true grisaille, unlike the two
sketches en camaieu brun for the tapestries of La toilette de Psyche and Les
richesses (fig. 206; A &W 191, 193, now in a private collection in the United

189
 States; illustrated in color in exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, nos. 19, 20; knowing the
sketch of do not know
Le Varmier only from an unlocated photograph, I

whether it is truly a grisaille, as was said when it was in the posthumous sale
of M. de Livry in 1772), but it is also, necessarily, much more precise in
execution than sketches that Boucher would himself elaborate into finished
compositions. In this it differs from another true grisaille, the Apotheosis of
Psyche in the Musee des Arts Decorarifs in Paris (fig. 137; A &; 194; exh. W
cat. 1983-84, Rotterdam, no. 58), which, though commonly regarded as the
sketch for a sixth (and unexecuted) tapestry in the set, would appear to be
not only in an earlier, bolder manner, but also out of character with the other
compositions, and indeed more suited to the decoration of a ceiling (it may
even have helped to inspire Pierre's ceiling painting of this subject in the Palais
Royal). The present sketch is, in any event, clearly significantly earlier than
another grisaille prepared for an engraving, the design for the frontispu - \

etched by Laurent Cars for Poullain de Saint-Foix > C,::alogne des CbevaUers
. . . &c. du Samt-Esprity 1760 (J-R 460-461), now in the Musee des Beaux-
Arts in Lille (A & W
3 ^9).

on though the present sketch and the final version in the Saly sale were
made to be engraved, Parizeau appears to have had recourse to an
intermediate drawing, but not the one frequemly cited as such in the
eighteenth-century sales, since it was of the wrong format —though the
mistake is revealing. Not only does the careful hatching of the etching suggest
that it was made via a pen drawing, the F Boucher inc., as opposed to pinx. or
del., also points to the existence of an intermediate stage. It is even possible to
point to a probable trace of this missing link. In the abbe Guillaumes sale in
1769 there were two drawings of this
one by Boucher himself, which
subject:
was sold for 9c livres, and the other which, though it went for only hall the
amount, still fetched a very healthy 42 livres 16 sous and was in a gik frame;
it was by Bouchers faithful pupil J-P-J. de Saint-Quentin (b. 1738) and was

probably the intermediate drawing used by Parizeau for his etching.

Nothing was said in this sale about the composition being engraved, but
four years later a pen and bister drawing in the Jacqmin sale was said to have
been the model for Parizeau s engraving. Since this sold for 30c livres, it was
probably the autograph drawing from the abbe Guillaume s sale and the
oblong drawing that appeared in subsequent sales, so the assertion must have
been mistaken; nevertheless, the two facts indicate that the etching had been
made between 1769 and 1775. Parizeau was only born in 174c, so he could
not have done such an accomplished etching much earlier than 1760.
None of this is of much help in dating the present grisaille, and indeed,
such indications as there are, are contradictor)". The style and features of it

suggest a date not far removed from that of the sketches for the tapestries,
possibly a little later, closer to the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche (A & W
196),which shows that Boucher was still preoccupied with the story in ijju.
This would be consonant with the ownership of the final finished sketch by
Saly, since the sculptor s collection seems to have consisted largely of things
acquired from his contemporaries before he Copenhagen in 1755. He left for
did not return to France, howevq until the summer of 17^4- In which ca>
,

how could either Saint-Quentin (who was only born in 1738) have made a
drawing from his oil sketch, or Parizeau (who was only bom in 174c) have
made an etching from it by 17734 Either Saly must have acquired the grisaille
in the two vears between his return to France and his death, or the sketch

: -:
 must have been inserted into the posthumous sale of his effects by the
auctioneer, a not uncommon practice.

The subject of this grisaille was not suggested by de Bachaumont, nor was
it depicted by Natoire, yet it is in fact crucial to the whole story of Psyche
since it shows the tale's beginning (it was, however, included in the set of
Brussels tapestries, and in an eighteenth-century expansion of the pre-
Gobelins Paris set [see Gobel, 1928, II, vol. i, p. 53]. I am most grateful to
Edith Standen for drawing my attention to this). What we see are Psyche's
compatriots paying to her beauty the tributes that were due to Venus, so
infuriating the latter that she dispatches her son Cupid to make Psyche fall in

love with an outcast —only for succumb to her charms himself. The
him to
episode is not one that was developed by any of the sources recommended by
de Bachaumont, but it is to be found in the original recording of the story in

Apuleius's Golden Ass (as the inscription under the engraving makes clear).

This has already — albeit too contrivedly, I believe —been proposed as the

source for the tapestry design known as Le Vannier (Hussmann, 1977), but in
the present case the correspondence is almost entire: "When the young
princess went out on her morning walks through the streets, victims were
offered in her honour, sacred feasts spread for her, flowers scattered in her
path, and rose garlands presented to her by an adoring crowd of suppliants
who addressed her by all the titles that really belonged to the great Goddess
of Love herself" (translation by Robert Graves). It says much for Boucher's
erudition —or for his openness to advice from his friends that he should —
thus have gone back to consult the Urtext of his story.

37 The Little Pedlar

Oil on canvas
6yA x 63/2 in. (161 x 161 cm)
Musee Baron Martin, Gray
W
A & 132/1 (as La Curiosite)
PROVENANCE
^Catalogue d'une Collection de Tableaux et Around 1735 Boucher was entrusted by Oudry, the new director of the
Dessins composant le fonds de marcbandise de
tapestry manufactory at Beauvais, with the task of supplying designs to the
M. SAMSON, Hotel de Bullion (Chariot &
weavers on a regular basis. This was to be one of the outstandingly successful
Henri), 27 and 28 Oct. 1812, lot 17 [described
but without dimensions; sold for 9.10 francs]; episodes of his career, making the fortune of this commercial enterprise. As
Billardet coll. (as Fragonard), entered the the directors of the rival state-run establishment of the Gobelins wrote when
museum at an uncertain date (see Mirimonde,
desperately pleading for his services in 1754: "for almost the last twenty years
1955). A.D.L.
the Beauvais Manufactory has only been sustained by the appealing pictures
TAPESTRIES made for it by Mr. Boucher. . . . Leaving the merits and demerits of these
i. Combined with La danse, a title that was
works aside, private individuals without much connoisseurship will always go
woven twelve times between 1744 and 1753,
without its being possible to say when on its
for novelty and be satisfied with designs exhibiting the composition and
own and when in combination (Badin, 1909, manner of the said Mr. Boucher." {"la Manufacture des Beauvais ne s'est
p. 60). Some surviving examples of La danse
soutenue depuis pres de 20 ans que par les tableaux gratieux que luyafait le Sr
do not include The Little Pedlar. Those that
do (but exclude the figure of the Savoyard) are:
Boucher. . . . Que ces ouvrages soient hien ou mal, le particular peu
a. Sale of M. X., Galerie Georges Petit, connaisseur donnera toujours la preference a la nouveaute et se contentera des
Paris, 23 May 1927, lot 1 (Standen, 1977^], sujets traittes de la composition et du goust du dit Sieur Boucher" [Fenaille, IV,
fig- 15)-
1907, p. 226].) It is for this reason that, in addition to showing examples of

191
 the tapestries themselves, we have sought to include at least one painting with
a claim to be considered one of those supplied by Boucher to Beauvais, even
though the exact status of such pictures remains open to question.
What format of painting did Boucher supply Beauvais with? Documenta-
tion of Bouchers work for the manufactory is wretchedly inadequate (see
Badin, 1909, passim), but much sense has been made of what there is by the
lucid studies of Edith Standen (see, in addition to the essay and entries in this

catalogue, esp. i977[a] and [b]) and by Hal Opperman's work on Oudry

La danse, Beauvais tapestry. Re-

Fig. 138. (1977, pp. 87-89, 93-98, and exh. cat. 1982-83, Paris, pp. 109-10, 126,
produced from the M.X sale catalogue, Galerie 149-50, 156). When Oudry was appointed official painter to Beauvais in 1726,
Georges Petit, Paris, 23 May 1927, no. 1. he was initially required to supply six pictures a year, each three to four feet
high, from which full-size patrons (cartoons) were to be made at the
manufactory's expense. Two years later, to avoid duplication of work and
cost, the arrangement was changed: after presenting preliminary sketches to

the controleur general des Finances, Oudry was himself to supply full-scale
pictures, at the rate of eight every three years. In the low- warp method of
weaving employed at Beauvais, the actual cartoons had to be cut up into

192
 b. Comte Greffulhe sale, Sotheby's, strips about a yard wide, which were placed under the warps upon which an
London, 23 July 1937, no. 62. individual weaver worked. Whether what Oudry supplied was treated in this
c. Baron Guv de Rothschild, Paris.
way, or was used by the painters in the regular employ of Beauvais to make
2. Perhaps on its own: woven in 1752 for
M. Camusat, as Le marchand bijoutier copies that were so treated, is not clear; the absence of any surviving full-scale
(Standen, i977[a], p. 113, no. 21), but perhaps pictures by Oudry suggests that it was these that were used, and that they
part of La danse woven for him in that year
perished because of being so cut, and through wear and tear.
(Badin, 1909, p. 60).

3. Combined with La danse, with the figure Boucher never appears to have had a formal contract with Beauvais; he
of the Savoyard: Gaston Menier sale, Paris, 24 seems rather to have been invited by Oudry to fulfill his obligation, after
Nov. 1936, lot 115 (A & W 132/2, fig. 470); Oudry had been appointed director in March 1734. Once he had received the
sold again at Christie's, Geneva, 8 May 1973,
lot 116b (Standen, 1977(3], fig. 18), one of more prestigious invitation to supply pictures to the Gobelins in 1733, Oudry
three pieces of a single La danse. E.A.S. had ceased to make fully original designs for Beauvais, drawing on earlier

pictures and drawings instead, and it was no doubt dissatisfaction with the
chore of making full-scale pictures from these (even with studio assistance),
combined with recognition of the commercial failure of his designs (for
instance, only one set of the Metamorphoses ever appears to have been
woven, in 1734), that prompted him to appeal to Boucher, whose ambition
was precisely to work on a large scale, as we have seen with the pictures
painted for Derbais (cat. 17, 18).

Boucher does not appear to have painted cartoons, but rather full-scale
pictures from which cartoons could be copied to be cut into strips for the
weavers. What is more, he appears to have seized the essence of tapestry
design in a way that few of his predecessors had: that tapestries were bought
to furnish particular rooms, that these rooms differed in their dimensions and
in the division of their walls, and that what was therefore needed was a
supply of groups of figures of similar character that could be put together in

differing combinations to yield tapestries of the required dimensions and

number. Piquantly, it may have been the insight he acquired into Watteau s
method of composing paintings from his drawings, which Boucher acquired
when etching the latter for de Jullienne, that gave Boucher this idea.
The evidence for this insight of Bouchers resides in the combinations
found in the tapestries from the Fetes Italiennes series themselves, and in
what are apparently the four paintings made for the series to survive the :

present picture, La bohemienne, La pecheuse (New York art market; A& W

129/2, 131/2, figs. 463, 468; exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, nos. 14, 15), and La jeune
mere deux enfants (?H. Winterfeld sale, London, 9 Dec. 1936, lot 86;
et

allocated to the Louvre by the Office des Biens Prives in 1950; on deposit
with the Mobilier National since i960 [M.N.R. 79]; A 134/3, fig. 473). & W
All the pictures have suffered, as one would expect from their having been
kept in the less than ideal conditions of a manufactory, and have evidently
had pieces added and subtracted. The widths of the present picture and La
bohemienne are, however, the same, while that of La pecheuse (whose height,
260 cm, is identical to that of La bohemienne) is very close (152.5 cm).
Whereas the present picture and La jeune mere (which is of approximately
the same height) appear exactly as they occur in the tapestries, except in

reverse, the other pair of pictures has undergone much more substantial
modifications to make them into self-sufficient compositions. The fact that

this is sometimes gratuitous (as in the transformation of the setting and the
removal of the supporting from La bohemienne, and in the substitution
girl

of a tree for the temple in the background of La pecheuse) suggests that loss
and damage to these must have been more substantial, which would help to
account for any apparent defects of quality. An interesting fact, which does

193
 a

not seem to have been observed, is that there is a picture (S & M 1426; exh.
cat. 1952, London, no. 1) that appears to have been an example of the kind of
combination predicated bv Edith Standen: it shows the group of La
bohemienne in its proper setting (which was derived from a lost painting by
Boucher, known from a copv in the Munier-Jolain sale, Pans, 9 Dec. 1910,
lot 2, and a circular gouache in a sale at Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York,
5-7 Dec. 1974, iot 575), associated with the group that is combined with it in
all the surviving tapestries, a galant couple of quite a different social class, in

which the bov is holding a crown over the girl; an amusing feature is that the

gaze of the boy has been changed and he has been given a rather crude wig,
no doubt in an early attempt to repair some damage.
All four pictures appear to be very broadly handled, with none of the
subtleties that characterize Bouchers handling of paint at this period. Since
Boucher was painting directly for the tapestry manufactory — unlike his work
for the Gobelins, to which were lent finished pictures that entered the royal

collections in their —
own right it is uncertain how much this reflects studio
assistance, and how much a deliberate intent to simplify for the sake of the
weavers. Seeing that it was stated in the case of the Chinoiseries alone that the
sketches were bv Boucher and the full-scale pictures bv the manufactory's
own artist, and that is the only instance where we have such sketches (the
grisailles for some of the Psyche series were stages in Boucher s own
resolution of the compositions, lacking the essential element of color that
would have guided other artists), whereas in the case of the Fetes Italiennes

the full-scale pictures at least purported to be from Bouchers own hand — this

early in his career they are likely to have been so to a great extent.
Edith Standen has pointed out that although The Little Pedlar was mostly
woven with La danse into one composition (fig. 138) from what she has
identified as the second set of tapestries forming the Fetes Italiennes, which
was composed of galant depictions of the amusements of higher strata of

society than the more huckstering scenes that the

first, it is to the first set of
present group of a pedlar offering his wares to two country girls and a resting
Savoyard belongs in spirit. Nevertheless, the way in which La danse is found
tlanked by the pedlar and his customers on the one side, and by the peasant
Mere et deux enfants on the other, suggests that in the second set there was a

deliberate piquancy in the combination of two spheres, whereas Bouchers

first set only had rustic protagonists (and may partly have been designed as a
replacement of the set of tapestries after Teniers, which had last been woven
in 1725; see Badin, 1909, p. 56). So, just as the early tapestry of L'operateur
combined a motif from Dutch genre painting with souvenirs d'ltalie in the

setting (Slatkin, 1977, pp. 130-32), the completed series afforded the

possibility of combining actual country people with fashionable folk playing

out a game of pastoral love. The number of weavings of each tapestry —
dozen or more in everv case —
but two testifies to the success of the formula.

194
 —

38 Woman Fastening Her Garter, with

Her Maid
Oil on canvas
20 3/, X 26/4 in. (52.5 x 66.5 cm)
Signed bottom left:/ Boucher ij42
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano
A& W 208
PROVENANCE
Count Carl Gustaf Tessin, Paris [acquired for Of all Boucher's clients, the Swedish envoy Count Carl Gustaf Tessin was
648 livres]; shipped to Stockholm
June in
surely the most congenial to him and thus also the one who extracted the best
1742; his posthumous sale, Akero, 4-16 Feb.
1771; L. Masreliez, Stockholm; Baron E.
from him in a variety of modes. One can almost believe it when Harleman
Cederstrom, Lofsta; Baron Nathaniel de wrote to Tessin from Paris after the latter 's return to Sweden, on 28 February
Rothschild, Vienna (Rothschild, 1903, no.
1745: "Poor Boucher, his pretty wife . . . and so many other artists, ask me
249);Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, Vienna;
with tears in their eyes if they cannot go and join your Excellency in Sweden,
Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York; acquired by
the present owner in 1967. and it is with great regret that I realize that our resources are too small for
such great figures" (see Proschwitz, 1983, p. 34). Tessin appears to have had a
PREPARATORY DRAWINGS
special admiration for Boucher, not simply as a painter of women, but of
i . Standing Girl Seen from Behind
[emploved for the lady's maid, with several
women in their domestic surroundings, to judge from his ownership not only
variations], red, black, and white chalks, 353 of the present picture but also of a (now lost) grisaille of a Woman at Her
X 199 mm, Institut Neerlandais, Paris (exh.
with a Parrot (Sander, 1872, pp. 57, 63; probably the original of the
Toilette
cat. 1964, Paris, no. 86).
engraving by Petit called Le Matin, J-R 1456); of a finished oval variant of
2. Seated Woman Fastening Her Garter, red,
black,and white chalks. 325 X 232 mm, this, showing her looking at the miniature of a man in her patch box (Sander,
posthumous sale of [Sebastian II] Le Clerc,
Hotel d'Aligre (Joullain 17 Dec. ff. 1764,
1872, p. 66, and exh. cat. 1980, London, Agnew's, no. 28 — if these are, as
fils),
seems likely, one and the same picture); and of the pen and wash drawing of a
lot 351: "une jolie femme habillee a la Fran-
chise, elle est assise & occupee a remettre sa Young Woman Being Dressed by Her Maid (Bjurstrom, 1982, no. 946
jarretiere" [revealed by notes in the copy in the capriciously reattributed to Durameau). At the same time, he was closely
Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, Paris,
involved with Lovisa Ulrica s commission for a set of four pictures of the
actually to have belonged to (Blondel)
d'Azaincourt, and to have been sold to Le
Times of the Day, each denoted by a woman at some characteristic
Brun for 9 livres]; Le Brun sale. Hotel occupation of the hour (see cat. 51), possibly inspired by the inclusion of the
Serpente, 23 Dec. ff. 1771, lot 14: "L'etude engraving after his grisaille in just such a set. It is surely also not devoid of
d'une femme a sa toilette, mettant sa jarretiere,
aux crayons rouge & noir" [bought by Bautriie
significance that the present picture was not among those that Tessin sold to

for 9 livres 19 sous]; Clement sale, Paris, 15 Lovisa Ulrica in 1749, despite her having been thwarted in her desire to have
Feb. 1864, lot 3; P. Fourche, by whom the set of pictures, but was retained by him until his death in 1770. Yet one
donated to the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Or-
wonders whether Bouchers failure to complete the commission for Lovisa
leans, in1907 (with an attribution to Fra-
gonard; here fig. 139). Ulrica does not indicate that Tessin was inducing Boucher to go against his
natural bent in painting such pictures.
RELATED WORK This is hard to believe when faced with the present composition, which has
Painting, 45 x 36 cm, [Bon & others] sale,
Hotel Bullion, 22-23 Mar. 1827, lot 17: "Dans
every appearance of having been painted by someone who relished detailing

un interieur d'appartement, une jeune dame the disorder of fashionable bric-a-brac behind the scenes of an elegant lady's
assise pres du feu met sa jarretiere" [sold for toilette. Most conspicuous are the items from the Far East: the stuff of the
27.50 francs; lot 18 was Le dejeuner (cat. 34)];
Col. Devere sale, 17 Mar. 1855, lot 7; Marcille
folding screen (identical to the one in the presumed portrait of Mme Boucher
sale, 12-13 J an - 1857, lot 7?; [Maulaz] sale, 29
in the Frick Collection in New York; fig. 149) and the fire screen (note also
Nov. 1875, lot 33; Cailleux, Paris; Jesse I. the hand-screen on the floor, of a form for which Boucher had made designs
Strauss coll.. New York (1930); Irma N. for Huquier), the tea set, and the cassolette on the mantelpiece. There is thus
Strauss coll., New York, Parke-Bernet sale,
a special aptness in the fact that the playful kitten is repeated in the chinoiserie
New York, 22 Oct. 1970, lot 13 (color illus. on
cover). overdoor en camdieu bleu of Le the a la chinoise of the same year (exh. cat.

1964, Paris, Cailleux; now in the collection of the Earl of Chichester), as well
as (in reverse) in Aveline's engraving after a Boucher chinoiserie drawing, Le

T
95
 merite de tout pais (J-R 199). Also of interest is the half-concealed painting of
the head of a woman on the wall, which Allen Rosenbaum has plausibly
suggested might represent a pastel by Rosalba Carriera (exh. cat. 1979-81,
Washington, no. 49) —though it should also be remembered that Boucher
himself did pastels in the same vein.
Whether the picture is more than a simple genre scene is something that
has exercised many commentators. There is no good reason for supposing
that it was intended, like The Milliner (cat. 51), as one of a set, in this case

depicting the occupations of a courtesan, as in Hogarth's Harlots Progress,

but without the moralizing sequence of degradation, as suggested by Charles
Sterling (see Sammlung Thyssen-Bornemisza, 1971, no. 39). Sterling's further
suggestion, that Mine Boucher might be the protagonist, is more arresting. It
certainly looks as though the woman fastening her stocking is the same as in

the Woman Holding a Pug, formerly in the collection of Mme Petin (A & W
no good grounds for supposing the latter to have been
268), but there are
Mme Boucher. She is much more plausibly identified with the sharp-faced,
dark-haired woman in the portrait of a woman on a daybed of 1743 (A & W
Fig. 139. Stud\ of .1 Woman Fastening Her 263) in the Frick Collection. And although it is evident that Tessin had a
Garter. Musee des Beaux-Arts, Orleans. tendre for Mme Boucher (Lundberg, 1972, p. 130), the story that he got

196
COPY Boucher to design the illustrations for his fairy tale, Faunilhzne, in order to
Painting, 39.5 x 49.5 cm. Mrs. Meyer Sas-
create opportunities of tetes-a-tetes with her (Montaiglon, 1858-60) becomes
soon; Christie's sale, London, 2 Apr. 1976,
lot 9c. less plausible in view not only of the uxoriousness recently revealed by the
publication of Tessin s letters from Paris to his own wife, but also of his
addressing the latter as if she were a character in the tale (see Proschwitz.
19S3, pp. 33—34, 242, 343). The fact that Tessin s shipments back to Sweden
included a pastel of Mme —
Boucher perhaps the very pastel peeping over the
folding screen — further supports the supposition of his fondness for her; but
it would also argue very strongly against the anonymous woman fastening
her garter being her, since the identity of the two would have been readily
apparent and a shocking affront to Tessin 's wife — let alone a singular
prostitution of Boucher's wife. Boucher might conceivably have turned a
blind eye to his wife's fascination of an important client, but to suppose two
such mutually complaisant spouses outruns even the license of the eighteenth-
century French novel.
There is one further argument for supposing that the woman por-
trayed was intended as a portrait, even if that portrait cannot be of Mme
Boucher: that is the evident difference between her features and those of the
woman in what is apparently the preparatory study for her (though Sterling
thought it a copy), a drawing aux trois crawns in the Musee des Beaux- Arts
in Orleans (fig. 139: A 6v \\ fig. 644). Yet what the comparison between the
two suggests is that the features of the woman in the painting are a

fashionable mask — the depiction of a type rather than an individual, as has

been proposed by Denys Sutton (exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 23). Somewhat
disconcerting is the existence of another painting, of the woman alone, much
more closely based on the drawing. However, not only does the handling of
this appear from reproductions to be uncharacteristic of Boucher, there are
also elements of the furnishings — the fire screen in the shape of a hand-screen
and its placing, the grotesquely curved overmantel mirror, the form of the
chair and its capitonne buttoning— arouse that disquiet. Yet the apparent first
record of this picture would seem surprisingly early for any pastiche, so that
until the painting is subjected to scrutiny, it must remain an enigma — ]ust as

must the full story of how Tessin 's picture ever came to be painted.

39 Diana at the Bath

Oil on canvas
22 > : x 73 cm)
n. (56
Signed bottom left: 1742 f. Boucher
Musee du Louvre, Paris (inv. 2712)
S&M13G AccW'215

PROVENANCE
Exhibited in the Salon of 1742. without name For Boucher, 1742 was something of an annus mirabilis. He was at the peak
of owner; Catalogue des Tableaux &c.du
. . .
of his powers, and he exhibited more pictures in the Salon than he was ever to
Cabinet de M*'~'~ [Blondel d'Azaincourt],
Hotel de Louvois (Paillet, Julliot & Dufresne).
do again. These pictures included the eight chinoiserie sketches for Beauvais
ic Feb. ft. 1783, lot 41: "Deux autres Tableaux, (cat. 41-44), the Leda40, the Frere Luce (cat. 45), a sketch for a
(cf. cat.
pendans. . . . L'autre represente le Repos de stage set for the Opera, a Landscape in the Environs of Beauvais, and the

197
Diane au retour de la chasse; la Deesse est present picture. Dated works not shown in the Salon included the Clio in the
assise sur une drapene dans un paysage. .x
Cabinet des Medailles, the Toilette de Venus in the Rothschild collection, the
accompagnee de ses Nymphes dont une vient
de lui on y voit pour
oter ses brodequins;
Education of Cupid at Charlottenburg, and Woman Fastening Her Garter
~oires de la composition, deux chiens et (cat. 38).
du gibier mort. Hauteur 26 pouces 6 lignes, Of all these, the present picture is the most celebrated (so much so as to
largeur iz pouces 6 lignes. Toile. Ces deux
have aroused the covetousness of Ribbentrop in World War II), and it is
morceaux sont agreables de composition, & du
bon terns de M. Boucher" [sold for 409 livres something of a surprise to realize that this was not so in the eighteenth
to Hamont]; ? sale of baron Thibon, 14 May century. It aroused no special comment at the Salon (but this was because
ir or 1841 (inscribed on destroyed stretch.
Salon criticism was not properly launched); it was not engraved in the
sale of the comte de N[arbonne], 24 Mar. 1851,

lot 6; M. Van Cuyck, from whom acquired by

eighteenth century; and we do not know who owned it. It would perhaps be
the Louvre in 1852. more accurate to say that we are not certain who owned it, any more than we

are certain that it is this picture that was exhibited in the Salon. For if a literal
ENGRAVING
Diane sortant du bain, bv Edmond Hedouin
reading of sales catalogues were to prevent us from identifying this picture
in 1864 (J-R 1073). with any in eighteenth-century sale catalogues, consistency requires that we
should be as strict in our reading of the catalogue of the 1742 Salon; in which
case, one would have to note that Diana is not "leaving the bath" in the

present picture, while its dimensions are marginally too small for it to be

198
PREPARATORY DRAWING readily identifiable as the Salon entry. These, however, are obviously
Seated Nude (study for Diana), red chalk
quibbles, and to deny that the present picture was the one in the 1742 Salon
heightened with white on pinkish paper, 318 X
267 mm; Maurice Delacre coll., Ghent; his would not only fly in the face of their common date but would also invite the
posthumous sale, Gutekunst & Klipstein, objection that the composition described in the Salon catalogue is not
Berne, 21-22 June 1949, lot 44; Walter Baker
otherwise known, even in the form of a copy. The same objection obtains if
coll., New York (Virch, 1962, no. 74); his
bequest, Metropolitan Museum, New York,
one attempts to deny the identification of the present picture with the one
1971 (exh. cat. 1973-74, Washington, no. 46; with which it is most natural to connect it, the Repos de Diane in the
here fig. 140).
posthumous sale of Blondel d'Azaincourt.

COPIES
The crucial discrepancy between the present picture and the description of
(Purportedly eighteenth-century only) the Repos de Diane in the Blondel d'Azaincourt sale is that in the latter Diana
1. Painting, 71 x 58.5 cm, Evensen sale, is "accompanied by her Nymphs, of whom one has just removed her
Konserthus, Halsingborg, 13-15 Sept. 1934,
buskins." The action is the one suggested here, but there is only one nymph.
lot 16.

2. Painting, oval, Union sale, Berlin, 8 May The obvious explanation is that the fault lay with an overhasty redaction of
1937, lot 158. the catalogue, and that what was intended was: "accompanied by one of her
Painting, 27 x 33 'A in., Christie's,
3.
Nymphs, who has just removed her buskins." This emendation made, the
London, 27 July 1962, lot 113.
rest of the description fits perfectly, down to the dimensions, once it is

realized that these are inverted (an error that itself makes another error more
plausible).

That the dimensions of the painting were inverted we know from its having
been sold with a pendant, the Repos de Venus, whose description enables us
to identify it with the picture engraved by Duflos (J-R 939) and recently
acquired by the Staatliche Museen in Berlin (A & W 217; exh. cat. 1982,
Tokyo, no. 24). Perhaps the most significant fact about the two pictures is

that, though an attempt was made to sell them as a pair because of their

) affinity of subject and identity of dimensions, the attempt failed, and they
were in fact sold to separate buyers for quite discrepant prices. The Repos de
Venus went to Paillet for 680 livres, while the Repos de Diane went to
Hamont for 409 livres. The lower price may seem surprising, but of the two
A the Repos de Venus is palpably the earlier picture and the one that would
therefore have been regarded in the 1780s as belonging to the "bon terns de
M. Boucher" (see Provenance), consequently fetching the higher price. The
fact that it alone was engraved (evidently before it entered Blondel

Fig. 140. Seated Nude. The Metropolitan d'Azaincourt s possession), and that it was not exhibited in the Salon, is

Museum of Art, New York; Bequest of Walter additional confirmation that the two pictures were not true pendants.
C. Baker, 1971.
Today, we can only marvel at the comparative esteem in which the two
pictures were once held. The pose of Diana, in particular, is one of Boucher's
happiest inventions. It is closely related to that of the girl removing a stocking
in the lost picture of Le fleuve Scamandre, which may well have been painted
in the same year, since de Larmessin's engraving after it J-R 1254)
(fig. 141;

was shown at the Salon of 1743, and thus also related to a whole group of
depictions whose original inspiration may have been a sculpture (see cat. 49,

50). In the present variation, however, it derives from a drawing, whose

quickness and delicacy suggest a product of Boucher's imagination rather than
the study of any model (fig. 140).

Fig. 141.Le fleuve Scamandre, engraving by

Nicolas de Larmessin after Boucher, exhibited
at the Salon of 1743.

199
 40 Leda and the Swan
Oil on canvas
23/2 x 29 (60 x 74 cm;
in.

Signed:/ Boucher
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
(NM 771)
A&W222

PROVENANCE
Acquired by Count Carl Gustaf Tessin in Pans The loves of Jupiter were to be numbered among Bouchers favorite themes;
for 372 livres and shipped to Sweden in June were one to be cynical, one might suggest that Jupiter's metamorphoses
1742; sold to Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrica in
happily resolved Boucher's apparent difficulties in depicting the adult male
1749; Drottningholm; transferred to the
Nationalmuseum in 1865. physiognomy. Certainly the fact that Jupiter and Callisto was the amour that
he chose most frequently to depict must have owed something to the fact that
OTHER VERSION
in this Jupiter disguised himself as another deity, Diana. It thus perhaps is a
22 ponces by 26 ponces C59.5 X 70.5 cm,,
exhibited in 1742 Salon (21 bis,; Harenc de little surprising that Boucher only depicted Leda in one composition, even
Presle coll. (engravedby W. W. Ryland in though, by depicting Leda with a companion, he had resolved the inherent
1758); Aranc de
first Presle sale, 16 Apr. 1792,
implausibility of the episode by relegating Jupiter, in the form of the swan, to
lot 59 [presumably bought in]; his sale, n

floreal, l'an III (30Apr. 1795;, lot 67 [bought a mere intrusion. There are not even the cupids that, in the drawings engraved
for 1, 20c livres by Le Brun]; Theodore Pa- by Demarteau (J-R 82c) and Leveille (J-R 1395J, allude to the amorous
tureau coll., Paris; privately sold before 1857
outcome of the episode, from which Castor, Pollux, Clytaemnestra, and
Lombard, Liege fd. iS6z); posthumous
to Dr.
comte d'Hane de Steenhuyse et de
sale of
Helen were to be born.
Leuwerghem of Ghent, Hotel Drouot, Paris, Nevertheless, the success of this composition of Leda was such that he
27 Mar. 186c, lot 3; Carlton Gates, U.S.A.; his painted it twice. One would have expected the first version to have been the
sale, New York, 21 Dec. 1876, lot 4
one exhibited here, since this was shipped to Sweden by Tessin in June 1742
Countess of Pembroke, Rome ("this ownership
is recorded for the first time in the catalogue of (Sander, 1872, p. 6c, no. 116), whereas the other was exhibited in the Salon in
the Paolini sale; it is possible that it was taken August-September of the same year. It is the Salon version that was engraved
from a label and that the Countess of
by Ryland (J-R 153 5 — 1 5 39). The inscription on the engraving reveals
in 1758
Pembroke in question was the divorced wife,
nee Principessa Octavia Spinelli, of the 12th that the painting was already in the collection of the banker Hareng, Harenc,

Earl, who was a pioneering collector of eigh- or Aranc de Presle (the name is spelled in numerous ways; see Duvaux, 1873,
teenth-century French art. She died in 1857, so
whose sales it appeared at the time of the Revolution. It then
I, p. cclxxvij, in
would have owned the picture between Harenc
disappeared from view, but its reemergence and subsequent history can be
de Presle and Patureau. No other Countess of
Pembroke is known to have lived in Rome.); traced very fully, from the middle of the nineteenth century down to the
Prof. Paolo Paolini sale, American Art Gal- present (see exh. cat. 1985, New York, no. 15). X-rays showing that it was
leries, New York, Dec. 1924, lot 112;
11
originally begun the other way up on the canvas, several pentimenti, and its
George F. Harding Museum, Chicago; on the
dissolution of this, included in a Sotheby brushwork all declare it to be the prime version, despite overzealous
Parke Bernet sale, New York, 2 Dec. 1976, lot restoration in some parts.
153 [sale annulled]; reoffered for sale,
One of the interesting quirks of Boucher's output was that he seems to have
Sotheby's, New York, 6 June 1985, lot 147, as

"studio of Francois Boucher," when acquired been more prepared to produce and sign a second autograph version of a
by the present owners (exh. cat. 1985, New painting if the first had gone to a foreign client, so that the possibility of
York, no. 15).
invidious comparisons was avoided. In the present case, Tessin must have
COPIES
seen the first Leda in Boucher's studio and have ordered a replica for himself,
Ananoff and Wildenstein dozen copies list a stipulating that it should be the work of the artist's own hands. This is evident
(222/4-222/1 5), including the Harenc de Pre- not merely from its high quality and the signature, but also from the bill of
sle picture, which should not have been so

described. It has not been possible in the time

lading when it was shipped to Sweden. For although its valuation (which was

available to check which of these were indeed evidently its original price; was only about three-fifths that of the unique and,
copies of the present composition. The follow- no doubt, specially commissioned Woman Fastening Her Garter (cat. 39), it

ing copies may be added to that list:

which was
was over six times that of the Capriccio View ofTivoli (cf. cat. 16),
1 . 24 ponces by 26 ponces, Vincent Potocki
coll., Warsaw, 178c, cat. no. 192 Cpaired with
described as "retouched by Boucher," and over ten times that of a copy of an
lot 191, a Venus). oval Venus and Cupid (Sander, 1872, p. 57).

200
 2. No dimensions, sale of the due de Gra- Of the gallery pictures that went to Sweden (as opposed to the overdoors
mont, 21 nivose, l'an II (n Jan. 1794), lot 41 painted for the Royal Palace, which were already somewhat unoriginal
(paired with a Femme couchee).
Large picture, misc. sale, rue Saint-Lazare
jugglings with stock motifs, such that the autograph status of one of them,
3.

76 bis, Paris, 28 Apr. 18 19, lot 112 bis (paired the Venus, Graces,and Cupids Bathing, has been doubted despite its
with a Venus and Adonis): possibly identical documentation; see Chomer, 198 1, p. 82), only the Venus on the Waters and
with the picture subsequently in the [comte de
Morny] sale, Meffre aine, Paris, 25 Feb. 1845,
Woman Fastening Her Garter went uncopied, probably because they were
lot 6 [bought by M. d'Herambault]; Dr. both suggested and commissioned by Tessin, whose intense enthusiasm for
Benoist sale, 19 June 1867, lot 19 [according to the former, in particular, gave Boucher no chance to do so before he removed
S&M 189].
it and dispatched it to Sweden. Curiously, Moitte s later engraving of the
4. Painting called "Ecole de Boucher,"
Adolphe Warneck sale, Paris, 20-21 Aug. Venus on the Waters does not appear to have inspired subsequent copies of the
1849, lot 106. picture; Ryland's engraving of the Leda, by contrast, seems to have prompted
Miniature attributed to Charlier, 50 X 72
5.
several, although in many cases in early sales, the description is too terse to
mm, Wallace Collection, London {Wallace
Collection Catalogues, 1980, no. 77).
make it certain that this was the composition in question.

6. Miniature, diam. 77 mm, Wallace Collec-

tion (Wallace Collection Catalogues, 1980,
no. 84).
7. Miniature, Morosini sale, American Art
Association-Anderson Galleries, New York,
10-15 Oct- 1932, lot 1583.

201
 41 L 'audience de I'Empereur chinois
Oil on canvas
x 25/4 in. (41.5 X 64.5 cm)
i6'/4

Musee des Beaux-Arts, Besanqon

S&M2474 A&W225

A2 Lafoire chinoise
Oil on canvas
16/4 X 25/4 x 64.5 cm)
in. (41.5

Musee des Beaux-Arts, Besan^on

S&M2474 A&W226

43 Le jardin chinois
Oil on canvas
16 x x 48 cm)
19 in. (40.5
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Besan^on
S&M2474 A&W230

44 La peche chinoise
Oil on canvas
16/2x 22 in. (42 x 56 cm)
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Besanqon
S&M2474 A&W228

PROVENANCE
Exhibited with tour of the other sketches in Such was Bouchers enthusiasm for depicting things Chinese that in 1748 one
the Salon of 1742; Catalogue des Tableaux des
of his admirers felt constrained to say: "Those who support him nonetheless
Trots Ecoles . . . &c. qui composoient le Cabi-
net defeu M. BERGERET . . . Receveur-
fear lest the constant study of the Chinese mode, which appears to be the
General des Finances, son hotel, rue du Tem- ruling passion of M. Boucher, will ultimately affect the grace of his contours.
ple, 24 Apr. ff. 1786, lots 55 {La Peche They will no longer have the same charm, if he continues to design figures of
Chinoise with La Danse Chinoise), 56 {Le
this kind." ("Ceux qui s'interessent a lui, craignent done que I'etude hahituelle
Jardin Chinois with La Chasse Chinoise), 57
(La Foire Chinoise), 59 {L 'Audience with Le du gout chinois, qui paroit etre la passion favorite de M. Boucher, n 'altere enfin
Repas de I'Empereur Chinois) [all ten sketches la grace de ses contours. lis n'auroient plus la meme douceur, s'il continuoit a
bought by Pierre-Adrien Paris for 270 livres];
dessiner des figures de ce genre" [Saint- Yves, 1748, p. 28].) His output in this
bequeathed by Paris to the Bibliotheque de
Besanqon in 1819, whence transferred to the
vein was indeed extraordinary, ranging from paintings through tapestry
museum in 1843, with the exception of Le designs and stage sets to engravings, and would on its own have been enough
which did not reappear until it
jardin chinois,
to sustain the career of a lesser artist, yet it would appear only to have
was exhibited in Tokyo in 1982 by MM.
Wildenstein, from whom it was acquired in
preoccupied him over a relatively limited number of years at the peak, of his

1983. career, when the fashion was at its height. In these years, however, one could
say that he was to "make China into one of the regions of the Rococo"
(E. & J.
de Goncourt, 1881, I, p. 244).

202
20 3
 4& r^L**

_:_
Fig. 142. Le manage chinois. Musee des Fig. 143. La danse chinoise. Musee des Beaux- Fig. 144.La chasse chinoise, engraved by
Beaux-Arts, Besan^on. Arts, Besanqon. Huquier /i/s after Boucher.

The taste for chinoiserie in Europe, though fed by items such as silk and
porcelain imported from the East, evolved rather into one of the licensed
forms of the grotesque, permitting fantasy and the breach of established
aesthetic rules, than into any serious attempt to discover and imitate its

supposed originals (see Honour, 1961; exh. cat. 1973, Berlin; M. Jarry, 1981).

Appropriately, it was thus the Chinese figures contributed by Watteau to

grotesque decorations by Claude Audran in the Chateau de la Muette, and
the engravings after these by Boucher, Jeaurat, and Aubert (J-R 164-175),
that appear to have given the chief impetus to the genre in France in the

eighteenth century. The vogue was not immediate, but the most telling sign of

it was the name that Gersaint gave to his shop on the Pont Notre-Dame, A la

Pagode, for which Boucher designed an appropriately chinoiserie trade card

in 1740 (fig. 46). Huquier had already advertised a set of a dozen engraved
designs for hand-screens "dans le gout Chinois" in July 1737, which may
have been versions of Bouchers Scenes de la vie chinoise in ornamental
surrounds (J-R 1125-1133, see esp. note on 1131); and in July 1740 he
advertised a set of the Five Senses, in the form of "differens Amusemens
chinois" after Boucher; these were engraved by Pierre Aveline, who also
exhibited L'Eau and Le Feu in the Salon in August, from a chinoiserie set of
the Four Elements published by Huquier. In January 1744 Boucher himself
presented to the Academy the set of six Figures chinoises engraved by Ingram
after his drawings in order to secure their copyright. None of the numerous

other engravings after Boucher's chinoiseries are securely datable, but the
Fig. 145. Le chinois galant, signed and dated
1742. Davids Samling, Copenhagen.
character of almost them is so similar as to make it evident that their
all of
originals were all produced within this relatively short time span. One of
them, indeed, Le merite de tout pais, engraved by F. A. Aveline (J-R 199),
contains features relating it closely to the rocaille overdoor Le the a la chinoise
(fig. 146; Earl of Chichester's collection, Little Durnford Manor, Wiltshire;

exh. cat. 1964, Paris, Cailleux, no. 40). Although the date was misread as 1747
when it was exhibited, this is in fact one of a pair of overdoors en camaieu
bleu (the other, Le chinois galant, is in the Davids Samling in Copenhagen
[fig. 145; see Honour, 1961, pi. 40]), both of which are dated 1742. That is the

year in which the present sketches for a new set of Beauvais chinoiserie
tapestries were exhibited in the Salon.

Beauvais already possessed cartoons for one set of chinoiserie tapestries,

Fig. 146. Le the a la chinoise. Earl of
Chichester's Trustees, Little Durnford Manor, the joint product of Guy- Louis Vernansal, Blin de Fontenay, and Jean-
Wiltshire. Baptiste Monnoyer in the 1690s (see Standen, 1976). Though popular enough

205
 in its day, it does not appear to have been woven after 1727, and a set still

remained unsold in 1732 (Badin, 1909, pp. 18, 21, 24, 56). The cartoons were
also barely legible by then (M. Jarry, 198 1, p. 16). There was thus a clear need
for a fresh set that would also escape from the old-fashioned Berainesque
appearance of the previous one. This need Boucher supplied, with ten
sketches, eight of which were exhibited in the Salon of 1742 (the remaining
two were the pair of small vertical panels, each centered upon the single
figure of a woman, which were no doubt thought insufficiently important to
exhibit).

This exhibition of sketches for Beauvais tapestries betokens a change of

procedure in Boucher 's role. Previously, as his exhibition of a large picture of

Zephyr Ushering Psyche into Cupid's Palace in the 1739 Salon indicated, he
had conformed to Oudry's practice of supplying full-scale paintings to the
Fig. 147. La peche chinoise, Beauvais tapestry.
Philadelphia Museum of Art; Given by
manufactory. In the present case, as we know from the registers of Beauvais,

Mr. William Fahrenstock. Boucher's sketches were worked up into full-scale pictures by a certain
Aumont (Weigert, 1933, p. 232), or Dumont (A & W doc. 581), whose
traditional identification with Jean -Joseph Dumons of Tulle presupposes an
improbably peripatetic existence between Aubusson and Beauvais, as Edith
Standen implies (see cat. 90). However, the fact that this limitation of

Boucher's role to the production of sketches was expressly mentioned in this

engravi-. one case alone indicates that it was exceptional; it had more to do with the
All four included in the set of six engravings
crescendo of demand for Boucher's services in the 1740s, of which we are
after the sketches by Huquier fits (J-R
1 1 64- 1 170).
only too well informed via Scheffcr's despairing letters (see cat. 51), than with
some permanent change of working practice at Beauvais.
ANALOGIES
One of the most intriguing questions about Boucher's chinoiserie tapestries
Le jardin copy of engraving (Hum-
bert, 1982, fig. p. 28).
chinois,
concerns their source. They give so convincing if inaccurate a picture of — —
La peche chinoise: Chinese life that it has been felt that they must be based upon some firsthand
Offset of a red-chalk drawing after the
1.
visual record of China (but for a more judicious assessment, see the excellent
group in the boat, 450 x 405 mm. National
discussion of the problem by Denys Sutton, exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, pp.
Gallery of Scotland, Fdinburgh (A & W 688)
[seemingly an adaptation of Boucher's design 231-32). This has traditionally been believed to have been a group of
made with the pirated Aubusson version of the drawings sent back by the Jesuit artist Brother J-D. Attiret. The suggestion
tapestry in view].
Autonomous
must have had special appeal for the museum in Besanqon in that Attiret,
2. variant of group in boat, oil

on canvas, 40 x 29 cm, Ch. Michel coll.. who was born in Dole, was also from the Franche-Comte, although the
Pans, in 1932 (A & 234). W presence of Boucher s sketches in the museum was of course due to no more
3. Autonomous variant of group around old
than a mere accident of ownership by another Franc-Comtois, the architect
fisherman, oil on paper laid down on canvas,
38 x 51 cm. Boymans van Beuningen Mu- P-A. Paris. That Attiret was furthermore a professionally trained artist (he
seum, Rotterdam (A & W 235). was also uncle of the sculptor Claude-Franqois Attiret) must also have made
4. Old man with net and boy. drawing,
some sort of connection with Boucher seem more plausible. However,
engraved bv Aveline as L'Eau in 174c ( J-R
Brother Attiret was only sent out to China in late 1737. His first extended
233)-
5. Ornamental painting in rocaille frame, account of what he found there, a description of the emperors "Garden of
31/2 x 46 in., attributed to Pillement, sold Gardens," was in a letter to M. d'Assaut written in November which
J. 1743,
at Christie's, London, 8 July 1983, lot 83,
was only published volume 27 of the Lettres edifiantes
in ecntes des . . .

paired with another chinoiserie scene of musi-

cians [related to pirated Aubusson adaptation missions de la Compagnie de Jesus in 1749, too late to have been of use to
of La peche]. a.d.l. Boucher, while Attiret s drawings used for the Victoires et Conquetes de
I'Empereur de Chine (1770-74) were only sent back in 1765.
TAPESTRIES
The only complete
To suggest that Boucher had private channels of communication of hisown
set of six pieces appears to
be that in the Palazzo Reale, Turin, which was with the Jesuit mission in China stretches belief too far, particularly when he
presumably one of those delivered to the king, did not even draw upon the illustrations to the recent 1735 reedition of the
though it lacks the royal arms. The five pieces
Description de V Empire de la Chine by the Jesuit Father Du Halde. What
. . .

in the collection of the Earl of Rosebery may

is more, it is unnecessary. For if we look closely at Boucher's sketches, we see
also be a complete set, as one of this size is

recorded. that each is an inspired pot-pourri of exoticisms, built up around some

206
 Individual tapestries with the designs of perfectly western motif. The Chinese elements in them are no more than
sketches in this exhibition are as follows:
what he might have seen painted on the porcelain, lacquer, and wallpaper for
La foire chinoise, see cat. 90.
Le jardin chinois, see cat. 91.
sale in Gersaint s shop or in his own possession, and in such much-plundered
L 'audience de I'Empereur: sources as the illustrations to Nieuhoff s Het Gezantschap . . . aan den
The title is not in the list of the tapestries of Grooten Tartarischen Cham (1670). In L 'audience de I'Empereur, for instance,
the series (Badin, 1909, p. 61) nor in that of the
the potentate is surmounted by the kind of baldachin found over a lit a la
set in Turin. The design is known only from
the sketch in this exhibition and the engraving polonnaise, and flanked by two more based on the baldachin in St. Peter's.

by Huquier (A & W
225/1, fig. 680). The guards on the left wear exotic straw hats out of paintings by Bassano,
The tapestry versions of it woven at
while the incense burner in front of them upon a plinth of the purest
sits
Aubusson may have been copied from the
print: one is in a set in the Museum of Fine
Antique form. So too, La foire chinoise is no more than the Foire de Saint-
Arts, Springfield, Mass., and one in the Musee Germain transformed by the addition of chinoiserie staffage, and such
Nissim de Camondo, Paris (1983, no. 456, standard indications of exoticism as elephants, camels, and palm trees. More
paired with Le jar din cbinois); others were in

sales at the Palais Galliera, Paris, 9

convincing are Le jardin chinois and La peche chinoise, perhaps because in
June, 1961,
no. 105 (A & W 225/2), and at the Palais these the setting gave more opportunity to depict such things as plants, boats,
d'Orsay, Paris, 6 Apr., 1978, no. 79. and garden pavilions that could be imitated from Chinese decorative painting.
La peche chinoise:
In the final analysis, however, what is remarkable about Boucher's
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 340 x 335
cm, with the roval arms, very close to the chinoiseries for Beauvais is not simply that they create a Chinese never-never
sketch (fig. 147). land that is perfectly plausible in its own terms, but that they also give the
Amalienborg, Copenhagen; from the
impression of a new "Chinese" style of painting. This no sense an
is in
Moltke made (A & W 228/10).
set in 1759
X 520 cm, with
Turin, Palazzo Reale, 370 imitation of actual Chinese pictures — it must remain doubtful that Boucher
additions to the design of the sketch on left would ever have seen such things (but see exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, p. 231, for
and right, showing the boats in their entirety,
with water beyond them and a large basket
instances of their occurrence in France) — it is an invention of Boucher's own.

behind the kneeling bov (Chierici, 1969,

These sketches are unlike any others that Boucher ever painted, in both
pi. 10). handling and palette —so much so as sometimes to have occasioned doubts
Daniel Wildenstein (A &W 228/6, fig. 687); (remembering that the actual paintings that the tapestries were executed from
previously sold at the Palais Galliera, Paris, 10
Dec. 1973, no. 122; less tall than the sketch
were by Aumont or Dumont) that they are by him at all. It is above all their

and with the figures at each side curtailed (exh. spiky linearity that is uncharacteristic of Boucher's voluptuously loaded
cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 133). brush; and it is this that has vanished in their translation into tapestry by
Rosebery coll., Dalmeny House, Scotland
other hands (in which some of their pullulating detail was also sacrificed). If
(Mentmore, 1884, illus. p. 23), inscribed Besnier
et Oudry a Beauvais (Wingfield Digby, 1950,
Saint- Yves had these sketches in mind in 1748, his fears for Bouchers style
p. 50); compressed but complete. are indeed understandable.
E. T Stotesbury sale, Parke-Bernet, New Perhaps the most piquant aspect of all about these chinoiseries concerns the
York, Nov. 1944, nos. 36, 37, two separate
18

tapestries, showing the left and right sides of

tapestries that were woven from them. Not only did the second weaving of
the sketch; from the Stettiner coll. (exh. cat. three of them {La danse, La peche, and La foire) in 1744 go to the future
1921, London, p. 7). owner of the sketches, the financier Pierre-Jacques-Onesyme Bergeret, who
American coll. or dealer in 1926 (Hunter,
adorned his salon with them (see G. Wildenstein, 1961, p. 42, corrected by
i926[b], p. 88, illus.; Badin, 1909, pi. facing

p. 48), left half only, but not the same as the reference to Badin, 1909, p. 61), but a complete set went via the Jesuit mission
Stotesbury piece. in China to the emperor. He is reputed to have admired them so much that,
Palais Galliera sale, 18 June 1965, no. 238
after originally intending to place them in a temple, he proposed building a
(A & W 228/7, 228/8), possibly the Stotes-
bury pieces. special palace for them instead. He was presumably blissfully unaware and —
Prince Murat sale, Nouveau Drouot, Paris, the Jesuits too tactful to tell him —
that he was himself supposed to be
14June 1983, no. 213, right side only, with the
represented in them! (For the whole improbable story, see Leroy, 1900, and
mark of A-C. Charron (1753-1780) and the
exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, pp. 231-32.) Either the whole set, or a single tapestry
royal arms; said to be from the set sent to
China. of La foire chinoise, was looted in the sack of the Summer Palace in i860 and
Little Durnford Manor, Wiltshire, England, returned to France, a not inappropriate event, since this disgraceful episode
owned by the Earl of Chichester.
Aubusson partial adaptations: 1. with
epitomizes the predatory new realism in attitudes toward China that thrust

J. Klausner & Sohn, Berlin (Gobel, 1928, II, aside the gentle fantasies that had given rise to Boucher s chinoiseries.
vol. ii, pi. 275); 2. sold at the Palais des Con-
gres, Versailles, 3 Mar. 1968, no. 168B (A & W
228/9 ar>d fig- 60). E.A.S.

207
 4 j Frere Luce
Oil on copper
26/2 x x 55 cm)
21/2 in. (67
Signed bottom right on a stone:/ Boucher 1 1742
Pushkin Museum, Moscow (inv. 2765;
S&M 1735, 1739, 1788. A&W223
Paris

PROVENANCE
Exhibited in the Salon of 1742, as L'n Paysage Boucher and his contemporaries frequently depicted episodes of La
de la Fable de Frere Luce (no. 21 bis), without Fontaine's Contes et Nouvelles en vers (1664 ff.), and when they did so it
any owner given; Louis- Antoine Crozat,
was almost invariably the tales with some amorous interest that they chose
baron de Thiers, Hotel Crozat, Place Ven-
dome, cabinet a la. suite de la Bibliotheque (La to illustrate (see cat. 7).Boucher and Vleughels appear to have been alone
Curne de Sainte Palaye, 1755, p. 59); his in depicting the same episode from L'Ermite, but Boucher is singular in
posthumous inventory, 1771, no. 37c (Stuff-
using it essentially as a pretext for a landscape painting, making the hermit
mann, 1968, p. 126, no. ic8); acquired with the
totality of the collection by Catherine the and his hermitage establish the mood for the wilderness that he depicts in
Great in 1772; the Imperial Palace of Gatchina; the foreground, and contrasting this with the sunbathed river valley in the
removed to the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg,
distance. There is an English parallel that suggests itself (although there,
in 1882; transferred to the Pushkin Museum,
Moscow, in 193c.
neither of the pictures in question is known to illustrate any particular
story or poem), and that is with two of Richard Wilson's most popular
ENGRAVINGS compositions, Solitude (first exhibited in 1762 as a Landskip with Hermits)
Le devot hermite, engraved by Chedel, and
and The White Monk. Comparison is perhaps apter with the latter than
published by August 1753 (J-R 482), with no
owner's name given. with the former, despite the fact that in it the eponymous monk (or pair of
monks) is removed to a distant eminence, in that Wilson, like Boucher,
COPY
there creates an antithesis between the apparent austerities of the hermit's
Gouache, 15^ x 12/2 in.: Earl of Rosebery
Dalmeny (formerly in the Blarenberghe
coll.,
life and setting, and the worldly figures and smiling landscape beyond. In
Room at Mentmore; see Mentmore, 1884, II. neither Boucher nor Wilson is there any persistence of the element of the
p. 15, no. 31, called Landscape; 2 girls crossing
grotesque that characterizes previous depictions of hermits, by such artists
a stream, not illus.).
as Magnasco and the Ricci.
The story as told by La Fontaine (which was not taken, as he advertises,
from Boccaccio, but from the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles) is, however, far
—
from austere or gloomy in intent even though the ostentatious devotions
of Boucher's friar are enough to have convinced one commentator that the
ribald Frere Luce was none other than the self-mortifying Greek anchor-
ite, St. Luke the Younger (exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 26). It concerns a

hypocritical hermit who was taken with the charms of the dowerless virgin
daughter of a neighboring widow. To enjoy her, he devised the stratagem
of counterfeiting the voice of God, which instructed them to yield the girl
to Frere Luce in order that a pope might be born of this union. The girl
finally complied and became pregnant, but so enjoyed repeating the
experience that she succeeded in disguising her pregnancy from both
mother and hermit for seven months. All were undeceived when the child
was finally born, however, since the promised future pope was a girl! —
What is shown in the painting is the trusting mother encouraging her
timid daughter on their first visit to the hermit.
Frere Luce is first recorded as having belonged to Louis-Antoine
Crozat, baron de Thiers (1699-1770), and it may well have been he who
both proposed the subject to Boucher and invited him to treat it as a

landscape — having no doubt selected him on account of this aptitude. The

picture was certainly the result of a specific commission (even though no

208
209
 owner was named when it was exhibited in the Salon) since only a wealthy
client would have insisted on the employment of a costly copper support
for a painting on this scale. If that client was indeed Crozat de Thiers, the
composition is nonetheless likely to have been elaborated by Boucher in
consultation with him rather than simply dictated to the artist, since there
is other evidence of long-standing links between the two.
Boucher had designed de Thiers's bookplate (Deroy, 1952, fig. p. 61;
graphite drawing, Pereire sale, Paris, 25 Mar. 1921; acquired by the Art
Institute of Chicago, 1984.627). This bookplate may even have been
engraved by de Thiers himself; he certainly later made a number of
etchings after drawings by Boucher (J-R 1 598-1610; A& W figs. 321,

1470, 1 5 12), mostly of rustic scenes and figures, but also of landscapes
(e.g., Paignon Dijonval, 1810, cat. no. 8534). The catalogue of the
posthumous sale of Huquier's stock of engravings (Paris, 4 Nov. ff. 1772,
lot 44) includes no less than twenty-four different compositions etched by
de Thiers after Boucher. Two of these are of galant themes (J-R 1599,
— one of them version of La
1600) a herebelle cuisiniere (cat. 21),
importuned by youth of rather higher
a standing than the social in

Boucher — again suggesting some measure of complicity between

original
the draftsman and his etcher.
We also know Boucher was pressed by de Thiers to sell The
that in 1746
Milliner (cat. 51) to him for double what it had been commissioned for by
Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrica, although in the event the painter was not
persuaded to go back on his original undertaking (Scheffer, 1982, p. 144).
What are lacking, however, from the evidence of contacts between
Boucher and Crozat de Thiers are pictures painted by the one for the
other. The posthumous inventory of de Thiers's pictures drawn up by
Tronchin prior to their acquisition by Catherine the Great in 1772 (see
Stuffmann, 1968, pp. 115-35, es P- P- I2 ^) only contains a Landscape
apparently identifiable with one of 1746 now in the Hermitage (A & W
300), the present painting of Frere Luce, and two drawings. What is more,
only the Frere Luce appears earlier in the printed catalogue of de Thiers's
collection (see La Curne de Sainte Palaye, 1755, p. 59). It is of course true
that in this collection, having inherited and kept the pick of the Italian-
and Dutch-oriented picture galleries of his uncle and brothers, Crozat de
Thiers devoted only one room to works of the French school, the cabinet
adjacent to the library, and that in it his aim appears to have been to
represent each major figure by one painting, or at most a pair of pendants,
as some connoisseurs recommended.
What is particularly curious about the scarcity of paintings by Boucher
in Crozat de Thiers's collection is that, according to the author of the life

of Boucher in the Galerie Franqoise (1771, p. 1), Crozat de Thiers was one
of the artist's earliest patrons, during the very period he was etching
Watteau's drawings for de Julhenne, when, indeed, he "painted some
pictures for the cabinet of M. de Thiers that did not seem at all out of
place in that magnificent collection." Quite what these paintings can have
been, and why Crozat de Thiers should have divested himself of them
later, is unclear.
There one picture that it is tempting to identify with one of those
is just
painted by Boucher for Crozat de Thiers in these early years, which
would certainlv not have seemed "at all out of place in that magnificent

210
 1

collection," because it purports to be a copy of a painting by Watteau, by

whom de Thiers owned at least five pictures. This is the painting of a
"Sleeping woman lying down, seen from behind, watched by a child

holding a curtain from the other side of the bed, with a landscape
beyond," which was lot 68 in the baron [Baillet] de Saint J[ulien] sale of
21 June ff. 1784, described as by "Boucher, after Watteau." The picture

may well be the one (somewhat cut down) that was in the sale of Mme de
V[ermeulez] at the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris on 6 May 1909, lot 1,
and subsequently in the Labouret collection (Burlington Magazine, Apr.
1966, supp., fig. 3) and the collection of H.L.G. in New York (A & W
p. 322). Now no original of this description is known to have been painted

by Watteau. There was, however, in the Crozat de Thiers collection Une

femme nue couchee by Watteau (Stuffmann, 1968, no. 183), which is
commonly identified with a composition known in the form of a smaller
painting in the Norton Simon collection and a drawing (with the added
figure of a maid administering an enema) in a private collection in Paris
(exh. cat. 1984-85, Washington, no. 88). There is no certainty that this (in
whatever form) was the Crozat de Thiers picture, but if it were to have
been, one can well imagine the Boucher having been painted for de Thiers
not as a copy of a Watteau whose existence is otherwise unknown, but
rather as a nicely counterpointed albeit slightly larger pendant to the
Femme nue couchee of the same woman, in a closely similar pose, lying in
a different direction, and seen from behind (it may also be relevant that

there was an oval miniature after the same reputed Watteau, by Bouchers
friend Masse, in the Godefroy sale on 25 Apr. ff. 1785, lot 171). It is just
the kind of pastiche that one can imagine Boucher having produced in
these years of intense study of Watteau necessitated by his etchings and
engravings after the latter's drawings and paintings.
It is therefore more than a little curious that another version of the same

picture but without the child (thus conceivably a better pendant to the
presumed Crozat de Thiers Watteau), which was once in the Fairfax
Murray collection (Chiesa sale, American Art Association, New York,
27 Nov. 1925, lot 61), bore Boucher's signature and the date 1746 one of —
the years of Boucher's later, better-documented contacts with Crozat de
Thiers (it is of course possible that the date was misread, or both date and
signature spurious, though the latter seems unlikely in view of the
obviously Watteauesque characteristics of the picture, which would have
been more conducive to the forging of his rather than Boucher's
signature); we are thus still left in doubt as to whether Boucher's untraced
pictures for Crozat de Thiers were indeed painted in his youth, as the
Galerie Franqoise claims, or in the 1740s, as Frere Luce was. That his
connection with the nephew of Watteau's most devoted patron did date
back to the time of his intense involvement with the artist's Nachlass
nonetheless seems highly probable.
There isone further link with Crozat de Thiers that deserves scrutiny,
since it could provide an alternative provenance for the Frere Luce. On
18 May 1740, Boucher signed a note acknowledging the receipt of six

hundred livres from "le president de thunis" "for a picture of landscape

and a little ceiling that I am to execute in the library" ("pour un tableau de
payissage et un petit plafond que je dois luyfaire dans la bibliotbec"
[published in facsimile in Charavay, 1887, pp. 548-49, no. 1474]). "Le

21
 president de thunis" was none other than one of Crozat de Thiers's elder
brothers, Joseph- Antoine, baron de Thugny (1696-175 1), president des
enquetes au Parlement . When he died without issue, both his collections
and his hotel (generally known
Hotel d'Evreux), which was adjacent
as the

to the one already occupied by Crozat de Thiers in the Place Vendome,

were inherited by the latter, who took his pick of the collection and spread
himself over both hotels. Interestingly, the library for which Boucher was
to execute his "little ceiling" would appear to have been the one adjacent
to the cabinet later used by Crozat de Thiers to display his French
pictures, having been converted from a gallery in the course of the
extensive alterations carried out by Contant d'lvry in 1747 (see Blondel,
1904-05, III, pp. 101-02, pis. Ill, IV, and p. 104, pi. IX). Whether
Boucher's ceiling picture was commissioned in anticipation of these
changes, or whether it was intended for a previous library (none is shown
in the old plans) we do not know —
any more than we know whether
Boucher even fulfilled the commission (no fixed pictures are included in
either Crozat de Thiers's catalogue of 1755 or his posthumous inventory of

At first reading, the wording of the receipt suggests that Boucher was
being paid for an already executed landscape and for a ceiling picture to
come. There is, however, no breakdown of the payment into a part in final

settlement and a part in advance or on account. It would therefore appear

that the loosely worded document in fact contains a promise to execute
both works for the sum stated, in which case, it is very possible that the
"tableau de payissage" in question was the Frere Luce, which is dated two
years later — not untypical arrears for Boucher. This identification would
have the merit of reducing the total of missing or unidentified pictures
executed by Boucher for the Crozat brothers by one — but
would it leave
us further than ever from knowing what it could have been that was
painted specifically for Crozat de Thiers. One thing is sure: the almost
unique use by Boucher of copper to paint on (but cf. the View of the
Environs of Charenton in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, A & 168), and W
the fact of its being a plate of exceptional size, is the kind of gratuitous
extravagance that would have befitted either of these sons of Antoine
Crozat, "the Rich," and heirs of Pierre Crozat, ironically kown as "the

Poor."

46 Landscape with Watermill and Temple

Oil on canvas; 36 x 46/2 in. (91 X 118 cm)
Signed bottom / Boucher/ 1743
left:

The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, England

A&W254
PROVENANCE
Benjamin Gogue, Paris, from whom acquired One of Boucher's most striking landscapes, because of its brilliant blue sky
by John and Josephine Bowes for 1,600 francs,
and overall bluish tonality, this was no doubt the very kind of picture that
on 19 Jan. 1863; included in the museum that
they created, made public after their deaths, in
Gautier d'Agoty had in mind when he compared the artist unfavorably with
1892. Oudry, for his "brillantes couleurs . . . teintes vives indecises & trop

212
prodiguees," in contrast to the latter s scientific study of the fall of light
(Gautier [d'Agoty], 1753, p. jj). It was not a criticism that would have caused
Boucher concern, since — as the combination of the French mill and the
ruined Italian temple makes clear (see cat. 34)—he rejoiced in artifice, in
taking elements of reality, but producing them in such a way as to suggest a

world of illusion, as in the theater. The abbe Gougenot, indeed, specifically

praised his stage sets at this period for their "heureux melange des vues de
Rome & de Tivoli, avec celles de Sceaux & d'Arcueil" (Gougenot, 1748,
p. 52).

Regrettably, we do not know for whom this picture was painted. It cannot,
as has been asserted by Ananoff and Wildenstein, be identified with the
landscape in lot 26 in the posthumous sale of M. de Sireul, since that was
called a View of the Temple of Concord and of the Road that Leads to the
Vatican, and was described as having been painted in Rome. Not only is the
Temple of Concord a very different structure from the temple seen here (its
remains consist of a straight row of columns), but the date 1743 on the
present picture would have precluded anyone from asserting that Boucher
had painted it in Rome.

213
 47 Sketch for a Stage Set
Oil on canvas
2o54 - . in. (52 X 67 cm)
Musee de Picardie, Amiens
A&W221

Ernest and Adolphe Lavalard col].. Amiens; Boucher's activity as a theater designer is one of the most intriguing aspects of
bequeathed to the museum in 1894. his career, since it was so evident!)' congenial to him; yet it is also one of the
most elusive, not only because it was of its very nature ephemeral, but also
because the concrete evidence for it is so fragmentary. We have on the one
hand the tantalizingly terse information, rescued by the Goncourt from a
manuscript history of the Opera in the Bibliotheque de THotel de Yille
before its destruction in the Commune, that Boucher worked on scenery for
the Opera in 1-5-— 59, and again from August 1744 to 1 July 1748 E. be J. de
Goncourt, 1881, I, p. 223), but the pieces on which he worked are not stated.
From Mannlich (1948, pp. 56-58, 216) and from various reviews in the

Mercure de France we know that he was artistic director there about 1761-66,
during the management of Rebel and Francoeur (1757—67). On the other
hand, we know from the Memotres of Jean Monnet, the director of the
Theatre de la Foire Opera-Comique, that Boucher worked for him on three
occasions between 1743 and 1754, quite apart from other contributions that
may have gone unmentioned (Monnet, 1909, pp. 85, 166—67, I 75 - 76)- The
first was when he designed the scenery and costumes for Favart's very
successful parody of Les Indes Galantes. LAmbigu de la Folie or Le Ballet
des Dindons, for the Foire Saint- Laurent in August 1743. The second was
when he designed the whole interior decoration, from the ceiling down to the
ornament, of the Theatre de la Foire Saint-Laurent that Monnet rebuilt in an

Act of Issefy, signed and dated 1741. Ake

Pinakothek, Munich.

214
 :

astonishing thirty-seven days in 1751. The third was when he designed the
sets for Noverres brilliant ballet, Les Fetes Chinoises, in 1754. Otherwise, we
are dependent on stray mentions in reviews and sales catalogues for our
knowledge of what plays, ballets, and operas he made designs From these
for.

we know, for instance, that he created scenery for Isse in November 1741 (see
below), Persee in 1746 (Mercure de France, Nov. 1746, p. 123), Atys in

November 1747 (Gougenot, 1748, pp. 49-50), the Devin du Village in

1752/53 (B. de Bjoynes] sale, 15 Mar. ff. 1785, lot 192; Ch[ariot] sale, 28 Jan.
11. 1788, lot 54), Armide et Renaud in 1761 and possibly before (Mercure de
France, Dec. 1761, pp. 178-81; Dacier, 1920, pp. 14-15, 104; de Boynes sale,
lot 192), Castor et Pollux in January 1764 (Mercure, Feb. 1764, pp. 189-94),
and Silvie in 1766(Mercure de France, Dec. 1766, pp. 179-80, 182-83).
For which of all these, if any, was the present sketch produced? It has been
almost universally identified as a design for the hamlet in the first act of Isse
for no better reason than that Boucher exhibited such a sketch in the 1742
Salon, and that the present sketch shows a hamlet. Not only are the
measurements of the present sketch thoroughly incompatible with those of
the one exhibited (which measured two pieds by three), however, but so is its

character. For Isse was a pastorale hero'ique, performed at court and at the
Academie Royale de Musique (the Opera), whereas the present scene suggests
an altogether more rustic entertainment. What is more, from the few
indications of the character of the hameau in the first act of Isse to be gleaned
from the text, it is clear that, as the word properlv suggests, it was no more
than a settlement in a clearing, surrounded by woods and water. There is
every chance, indeed, that the picture exhibited in the Salon is actually the
landscape in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (fig. 14S; A Sc W 181), which is

compatible in date (since the revival was for the winter season of 1741/42),
measurements, and character. Nowhere in Isse is there any call for so
urbanized a setting as in the present sketch, in which the most prominent
features are a tavern and a table set for drinking under a tree.

It is hazardous, in view of our very patchy knowledge of Boucher's

activities as a stage designer, to propose an alternative identification of the
scene, but one may perhaps be attempted. The first point to be made is that
the very rustic — as opposed to pastoral — character of the scene suggests a set
not for the Opera, but for the Opera-Comique or Theatre de la Foire (it also
rules out Rousseau's Devin du Village, since the hameau in that, for which
Boucher designed the set, was different in character from the one presented
here). Knowing that Boucher was associated with these theaters via Jean
Monnet, but perhaps even more through his friendship with their most
successful playwright, Charles-Simon Favart (see A& W doc. 343 [doc. 7S4
is from quite another Boucher], and Favart, 1808, II, pp. 387, 396), the
obvious place to look is among Favart s pieces for the Theatre de la Foire.
Not all of these were printed, or even extracted by the brothers Parfaict in
their Dictionnaire des Fheatres de Paris, but among those that were there is

one whose stage directions, even if they do not correspond point by point
with the set shown in the present sketch, do suggest the same scene. The
piece in question is Les Amours Gnvois, a one-act opera-comique-ballet first
performed in 1744 (Favart, 1763, VII). The stage directions for this run as
follows
The Theater represents a Flemish Hamlet. One can see a Town in the
distance, whose Ramparts are destroyed by Cannon fire; on the other

215
 side a Camp, at the head of which is a Battery of Cannon. The Wings
represent Peasants'Houses and Taverns. The center of the Scene is
occupied by several Flemings, some of whom are playing various
instruments under a large tree, while others, around several tables,
drink, smoke, game and dance. (Le Theatre represente un Hameau
Flamand. On voit dans I'eloignement une Ville, dont les Remparts sont
detruits Canon; de Vautre cote un Camp, a la tete
par le duquel est une
Batterie de Canon. Les Ailes representent des Maisons de Paysans & des
Estaminettes. Le milieu de la Scene est occupe par plusieurs Flamands,
dont les uns jouent de divers instrumens sous un grand arbre, pendant
que les autres, autour de plusieurs tables, boivent, fument, jouent &
dansent.)

The main departure from the directions lies in the background, but, if there is

not a camp, there is a castle. What is more, these directions have the great
merit of providing a plausible explanation for one of the least explicable
elements of the present sketch, the buildings on fire in the background on the
right: these are surely intended to represent the "Ramparts destroyed by
Cannon fire." The piece began with an overture suggesting the rumblings of
war, interspersed with cannon fire, and this is the visual equivalent.
One matter remains to be resolved, and that is whether the suggested
identification is compatible with the apparent date of the sketch. So long as it

was assumed that it was for the Hameau dTsse, no objections were raised to
the implied dating of 1741/42. This may partly have been because there is
really no landscape sketch of such character with which it can be compared.
One can only say that nothing in it appears to militate against the dating to
1744 implied here, and that it has a confident spontaneity and freshness that
suggest the mastery of Boucher's maturity.

48 The Dark-Haired Odalisque

Oil on canvas
21 x x 64.5 cm)
25/2 in. (53.5
Signed on the bedside table:/ Boucher ij4[$?]
Musee du Louvre, Paris (R.F. 2140)
A&W285
PROVENANCE
(There is no certain means of distinguishing It is perhaps not entirely proper to name this coquettish creature an
among versions in early sales and inventories,
odalisque, since neither was she so called in the eighteenth century, nor is
so only the known provenance of the present
picture is given here. Other mentions are given
there any definite indication that she is a denizen of a seraglio. Many things,

separately below in order of date, with no however, suggest that a certain oriental exoticism was intended —the bed
attempt to consolidate them; only mentions composed purely of mattresses and cushions, the unusual little low table
that can reasonably be identified with this
painting, rather than the Blonde Odalisque, are
supporting a cassolette (for all of which, cf. the Sultane lisant au harem
listed): comte de Magny, by whom ceded to engraved by Duflos for the Moeurs et Usages des Lures in 1746 Q-R 879]), the
baron Basile de Schlichting for 3,500 francs; in low screen covered with some oriental sprigged material, the feathers in the
the de Schlichting bequest to the Louvre, 1914.
woman's hair—and the title is hallowed by long use, so it may reasonably be

OTHER VERSIONS retained. Certainly, the title given to Levesque's engraving after this
1. ?Posthumous inventory of A-J-J. Le composition, Le Reveil, seems no more appropriate, since there is scant
Riche de la Poupeliniere ["l'homme de la che-
indication that the bed was ever arranged for sleep.

216
minee"], 4 Feb. 1763: "Tableau representant In Paul Frankl s austere interpretation of this picture and its fellows
une femme nue couchee sur ventre"
worked up
le
(Frankl, 1961), this picture is no more than an academic exercise
(D. Wildenstein, 1967, p. 184; there is of
into a composition that exploits a pose originally developed for bathing
course no certainty that this was the present
composition, rather than the Blonde Oda- nymphs and naiads. This filiation is perfectly true (cf., for instance, the Leda
lisque, but Levesque's engraving of 1765 suggests painted only a year before the original version of this composition, in 1742,
that a version of it had recently come onto the
cat. 40), and Boucher s interest in the pose for these purposes can be pursued
market).
Dated 1743, with a different face, en-
2. back even earlier in his career than was done by Frankl, to the attendant of
graved by P-C. Levesque in 1765, and pub- Venus in Venus Requesting Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas (cat. 17). However, it

lished by Bligny as Le Reveil (J-R 1397-1398;

still begs the question as to what or whom Boucher was intending to depict.
advertised in the Mercure de France in Apr.
1773)-
A completely unmotivated nude, with nothing at least to allow an
3. Catalogue des Tableaux des Trois Ecoles interpretation as some mythological figure, was after all something excep-
&c, qui composent le Cabinet de epoch (though there were certain precedents, such
. . .
tional at this as Jacob
M. [Johann Anton] de Pfeters], Grands Au-
gustins (Remy & Basan), 9 Mar. ff. 1779, lot
Vanloo's Couch er a I'italienne, which was itself an adaptation of Jordaens's
103: "Une femme couchee sur son canape; ce Candaules and Gyges). What is more, the features of the model are so
bon tableau est date de 1745; il est sur toile, particularized and also such a departure from Bouchers preferred types
qui prend 18 pouces de haut, sur 23 pouces de
large. Leveque Pa grave" [sold for 235 livres;
that —with her direct gaze —they irresistibly suggest a portrait.

see drawing by Saint-Aubin, Dacier, V, no. 9, The various versions of this composition have indeed been seen as
19 19, pp. 20-21, 31, facsimile]; Catalogue depictions of specific individuals from very early on; suggestions have ranged
d'une belle Collection de Tableaux &c.
composant le Cabinet du M. Dubois,
. . .

from the inevitable Mme de Pompadour (wholly precluded by the date) to

Marchand Orfevre Jouaillier, rue des Poulies,

Victoire O'Murphy, alias Mile de Saint-Gratien, the elder sister of the

Hotel de Bullion (Le Brun), 31 Mar. ff. 1784, supposed subject of the Blonde Odalisque (cat. 61), even though she would
lot 88: "Une jeune Femme sur son lit de repos
only have been ten in 1743! The only proposal with any plausibility is that of

217
 ; —

Jean Cailleux, that she is Bouchers wife (Cailleux, 1966). Unfortunately,

when making this bold suggestion, he confused the issue by introducing a
number of other supposed likenesses whose affinity with this picture is far
from apparent, and he failed to muster the full panoply of corroborative
evidence.
One point must be made straight away: we have no certain portrait of
Mme Boucher until Roslin's of her in 1761 (A&W fig. 131). Neither the pastel
of her that Tessin took back to Sweden, nor La Tour's pastel of her wearing
fingerless mittens shown in the Salon of 1737, nor Lundberg's pastel shown in
the 1743 Salon, nor Roslin's oil of her "en habit de Bal" shown in the 1753
Fig. 149. Presumed Portrait of Mme Boucher, Salon has ever been identified and published, while the inscriptions on the
signed and dated 1743. Frick Collection, New and her husband supposedly by J-B. Lemoyne in the
terra-cotta busts of her
York.
Sackler Collection (Avery & Laing, 1981, nos. 75, 76) arouse grave doubts
about their authenticity There is, of course, that celebrated picture supposed
to be of her reclining on a daybed in the Frick Collection (fig. 149; Frick
entoure d'accessoires agreables: le fond est
Collection, 1968, pp. 3-7); but it is rarely remembered that there is no record
orne d'un grand rideau bleu. Quoiqu'il y ait
des repetitions de ce Tableau, nous ne doutons
of the existence of this picture before this century, and thus no way in which
pas de son originalite. II vient de la Vente de we can be sure that it is of her. It would, however, be carrying pyrrhonism
M. Peters. Hauteur 19 pouces, largeur 24 too far to doubt the traditional identification. Boucher was not a portrait
pouces. Toile" [bought by Milliotti tor 15;
livres, hardly more than tor the avowed copy
painter, so that the few portraits from his hand all owe their origin to some
of a Diane an Bain, and less than a quarter of special connection with the Her age appears right, and the Chinese
sitter.

the 699 livres 19 sous fetched by the pair of bibelots are in keeping with what we know of Boucher's collections; and there
pictures of a Femme a sa toilette].
is above all the fact that, in addition to the signature, Boucher's name appears
M. R. R[ochard] of Brussels sale, Paris,
4.

13-14 Dec. 1858, lot 6. on a little note on the etagere — surely a sly indication of the link between
With body draped, signed on the table,
5. sitter and painter.
/ Boucher 174(3?], 51 x 65 cm, Gustave
Arguments for imagined likenesses are always dangerously subjective, but
Rothan coll. (exh. cat. 1874, Paris, no. 29,; his
sale, Paris. 20-31 May 1S90, lot 125 (with
the similarity between the features of the sitter in the Frick portrait and those
suggested identification as Mme de Pom- of the subject of the present picture seems undeniable. Nor does the linkage
padour); baron Maurice de Rothschild, Paris
between the two pictures end there. Their dimensions are almost identical,
1 exh. cat. 191c, Berlin, no. 146, as Mile
Yictoire O'. Murphy); M. Otto Bemberg, Paris.
and the date of the Frick picture and that on the earliest known version of the
6. Signed and dated 1755, anon, sale. Pans, present composition is the same. What we would thus appear to have here
19 May 1884, lot 6. would then be precursors of Goya's Maja vestida and Maja desnuda, with the
7. Signed on the carpet bottom right, / difference that their pose and setting are not identical (it is true that there is a
Boucher, IJ4J, 53 x 65 cm, on the Paris art
market in the Second World War; recovered bv draped version of the present picture — see no. 5 under Other Versions —but
the Service de la Recuperation Artistique in the draping in it is thought to have been a prudish later camouflage). Goya's
1945; allocated to the Musee de Reims in 1951
pictures are no longer thought to represent his presumed mistress, the
A .v W _

8. There are two mid- 19th-century photo- duchess of Alba; can the identification of the dark-haired odalisque with
graphs of these or other versions in the Boucher's wife, by contrast, be sustained?
Cabinet des Estampes: one taken by
If Boucher painting his wife in
the idea of this fashion seems shocking, one
Courtehoux and Mme
entitled
and the other taken by Ch. Barenne and
de Pompadour,
of his contemporaries was certainly shocked —or professed to be shocked
located in the "Cabinet de M. Parmar." H. by it; it is thanks to his utterance that this otherwise somewhat speculative
Roger-Yiollet possess the damaged negative of structure puts on, as it were, some flesh. Though Boucher did not exhibit in
a photograph taken early this century of a
the 1767 Salon, Diderot in his review of it nonetheless used the exclusion of
good version of this picture, signed / Boucher
1745 on the side table, but are unable to Mme Therbouche [Liszewska]'s Jupiter and Antiope as a pretext to attack his
supply any information as to where it was bete noire (Diderot, 1983, p. 252):
taken.
For didn't we see in the Salon seven or eight years ago, a woman,
DRAWING completely nude, stretched out on some pillows, one leg here, another
Red, black, and white chalks, 316 x 462 mm, there, presenting the most voluptuous head, the finest back, the most
C. F. Greville; Earl of Warwick: H. Michel-
beautiful thighs, an invitation to pleasure, inviting to it with the easiest
Levy 12-13 May
sale, Paris,

A. Mayer; Kimbell Art

1919, lot 4s
Museum, Fort Worth attitude, the —
most comfortable from what they say the most natural
(fig. ;•: even, or at least the most advantageous. No offense to Boucher, . . .

218
COPIES who didn't blush to prostitute his wife, from whom he had painted this
(Again, only those that can reasonably be
voluptuous figure. (Car enfin n'avons-nous pas vu au Sallon il y a
. . .

assumed to be of the Dark-Haired Odalisque

are listed, in date order):
sept a huit ans, une femme toute nue etendue sur des oreillers, jambes
i. Carpentier sale, 14 Mar. ff. 1774, lot 24: deqd, jambes deld, offrant la tete la plus voluptueuse, le plus beau dos, les
"Deux copies de M. Boucher, l'une represen-
plus belles jesses, invitant au plaisir, et y invitant par Vattitude la plus
tant Venus qui dort avec l'Amour; la seconde,
une figure de femme couchee sur un lit, vue
facile, la plus commode, a ce qu'on dit meme la plus naturelle, ou du
par le dos, ces deux copies sont tres-bien moins la plus avantageuse. . . . N'en deplaise a Boucher, qui n'avait pas
faites:hauteur 19 pouces, largeur 24 pouces" rougi de prostituer lui-meme sa femme, d'apres laquelle il avait peint
[sold for 120 livres].
cette figure voluptueuse. . .
.)
2. ?Anon. sale, 17 Feb. ff. 1777, lot 216:
"Un
Bouche;
grand tableau peint sur
il represente une femme
toile, d'apres
sur un lit, de
Even if Diderot's memory was confused when he wrote this passage — there is

no indication that such a picture was ever exhibited in a Salon (it is most
repos"; ?[d'Espagnac-Tricot] sale, 22 May ff.

1793, lot 118 (as by Boucher): "Une femme de likely that Diderot had, some version of the picture in the rather
in fact, seen
grandeur naturelle, et vue couchee. Ce tableau, similar context of a sale room; possibly the Le Riche de la Poupeliniere
de la couleur
gracieux et aimable,
la plus belle, est de dessin
si justement admire dans
version was sold in a sale without a catalogue) he is clearly recording some —
les productions de ce maitre; il a passe dans
piece of inside knowledge, or alternatively mere gossip, that was current at
plusieurs collections de choix" [bought by the time he wrote.
Hamont or Chaumont for 2400 livres]; cur- There is one further piece of evidence that the identity of the sitter was not
rently on the art market in New York (43'/2 x
thought fit for public consumption, and that is the print of it put out in 1765
56^8 in.).
3. [De Jogues] sale, 23 Sept. ff. 1784, lot 41: by P-C. Levesque (J-R 1397-1398). The face of this sits very awkwardly
"Deux Etudes de Femmes nues & couchees, upon the head and would appear to have been corrected. It is not the head
l'une vue par devant & l'autre par derriere,
found in the present version of the picture, nor is it the head on the Fairfax
bonnes copies d'apres le Titien & F. Boucher;
hauteur 17 pouces 6 lignes, largeur 21 pouces Murray version (Pilon, 1909, pi. facing p. 46), which appears to have been the
6 lignes: toiles de forme ovale"; misc. sale, result of a subsequent alteration designed to buttress the assertion that the
Mar. 1968,
Versailles, 3

With a face
lot 194.

resembling that in a print by

subject of the picture was Mme de Pompadour. Nor does it correspond to the
4.

Levesque, but with a bunch of flowers in her

head found in any of the extant paintings. It is possible that the adjustment to
hair, 50 x 61 cm, formerly Youssoupov coll., the plate was simply made in order to present a more "fashionable" head for
Saint Petersburg, in which ascribed to Louise
1765; but though Mme Boucher's own features would of course have changed
Arnault-Boucher (Tresors, VI, 1906, p. 211,
pi.
considerably in the interval, it would also be legitimate to speculate as to
103).

5. With the face of Mme de Pompadour whether the alteration was not made to protect the identity of the sitter. This
superimposed, 54 x 65 cm, Fairfax Murray is unlikely, because it looks as if the print may have been maliciously intended
coll., London (Pilon, 1909, pi. facing p. 46);
to discredit Boucher, since it was published in the very year that he was
Prince Massimo, Rome [reputedly with the
dowry of his wife, nee Marlborough (itself an appointed premier peintre du Roi, a title given full prominence in the title to
impossibility), in 181c, probably through con- the engraving. It is certainly significant that not only was Levesque not
fusion with the Blonde Odalisque also owned
otherwise an engraver of Boucher's works, but he was also a protege of
by Fairfax Murray, which was purportedly
acquired from the Duke of Marlborough's
Diderot's, and was subsequently responsible for the first of the outright
collections]; Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 10- 11 public assaults on Boucher's reputation (Watelet & Levesque, II, 1791, p. 138).
June 1958, lot 82 (as "atelier de Boucher"); At this pointwe must call a halt to speculation, for there is one piece of
Joseph Sayag sale, Palais Galliera, Paris, 16
evidence that seems to doom any attempt to identify the dark-haired
June 1961, lot 16 (as "atelier de Boucher").
odalisque with Mme Boucher. That is the drawing formerly in the Michel-
Lew collection and now in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth (fig. 150;
AA 502; exh. cat. 1983, Atlanta, no. 75). The model in this drawing is in

exactly the pose of the odalisque, save that she is not fingering a pearl

necklace and that she is not fixing us with her gaze; her back is also
completely bare. But the most significant thing about this drawing is that the
features of the model are patently different from those of the odalisque,
whereas they are entirely of the cast found in Boucher's other studies and
paintings of nudes at this period. Yet the pose in this precise form is not
found in any other painting: the presumption must be that it was a study for
the present picture (and even if, as a beautifully finished study aux trois
Fig. 150.Study of a Nude Young Girl Prone
upon Drapery. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort crayons, it was in fact made in its own right, it is impossible to conceive of it

Worth. having been derived from the half-draped figure in the painting, rather than

219
 —

6. 54 x 65 cm > illegible signature and date: the other way about). It is scarcely plausible that, with Mme Boucher to hand
Mme Besnard; [Marnier-Lapostolle] sale,
(whom he does not appear to have hesitated to use as a model for his
Hotel Drouot, Paris, 16 June 1923, ex cata-
logue; Cassel van Doom sale, Paris, 9 Mar.
mythological nudes, to judge by the comments of de Bachaumont and Le
1954,10125. Bret), Boucher should have turned to one of his studio models in order to
7. Misc. June 1972, lot 4.
sale, Paris, 16
make a portrait of his wife in the nude. This, mutatis mutandis, is exactly
8. Dated 1749, 106 x 138 cm, private coll.,
what he would have had to do, however, if he was to paint a portrait of some
Paris [Ppicture formerly in the collection of the
comte de Lavalette; anon, sale, Hotel Drouot, other man's mistress (the legend of Apelles and Campaspe notwithstanding).
Paris, 27 Mar. 1965, lot 10]. What is more, it is only through assuming that the sitter was a courtesan
Oval, 45.5 X 55.5
9.

des Congres, Versailles,

cm
3
[in reverse], Palais

Mar. 1968, lot 194.

and no doubt the mistress of more than one man — that the existence of so

10. With a different face, 73.5 X 126 cm, many apparently autograph versions of this picture can be explained. One
signed: formerly in the Bensa coll., Milan; could at a pinch imagine (as Diderot did) Boucher's making a nude portrait of
exh. Dante di Zucca, Trieste, 1977-78, no. 56.
his wife for himself, but not his putting numerous versions of it into
11. 54 x 65 cm: Ferdinand Houget coll.,

Belgium; Hotel Drouot, Paris, 24 June 1981,

circulation. On the other hand, the existence of other versions with different
lot 68;baronne de Thuret, sold Christie's, heads could well be accounted for by other clients wanting a similar depiction
London, 15 Apr. 1983, lot 26. of their own mistresses (when the heads are not simply spurious later
12. With expanded background, 74 x 97
alterations).
cm, Sotheby's Monaco, 9 Dec. 1984, lot 596.
13. Miniature by Jacques Charlier [with One further thing needs to be considered, and that is the question of the
corner of a canape substituted for screen], various versions of the composition and their dates. The date on the present
engraved by Janinet in 1784.
picture is most plausibly to be read as 1745, with the "5" abbreviated in the
14. Miniature attributed to Charlier, 60 x
75 mm, Wallace Collection, London (Wallace way often found at this period. The version in Rheims, which is palpably
Collection Catalogues, 1980, no. 76). inferior to this one, is dated 1743, but the "3" falls into the damaged margin
Miniature attributed to Charlier, 60 x
15.
of the picture and shows signs of abusive strengthening. Some other digit may
85 mm, anon, sale, Hotel Drouot, Pans, 20
Dec. 1945,
well have been converted into a "3" to establish priority for the Rheims
lot 59.

16. Gouache attributed to Charlier, 200 x picture, taking its cue from the fact that 1743 is given as the date of the
270 mm: anon, sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 12
painting upon which Levesque's engraving was based. Other versions carry
May 1905, lot ? ; G. Cognacq sale, ibid., 10
dates that have been read as 1745 and 1755. Jean Cailleux (1966, p. v, n. 8)
June 1932, lot 48.
17. Drawing in colored chalks, 360 x 430 reports having seen "in a private collection in Paris a splendid example of this
mm, reputedly from the coll. of Jacques Aved; type which could well be the original of the whole series," but records no
formerly coll. of M. and Mme Maurice Mag-
date for The fact that
it. the prime version was most probably dated 1743
nin, Paris [not in the Musee Magnin, Dijon].

18. Black and red chalk drawing heightened would make the present picture, which is strong, but perhaps slightly
with pastel, 280 x 400 mm, signed/ Boucher mechanical in its finish (and awry, for instance, in the perspective of the jewel
iJ4[?j\ Palais Galhera, Paris, 9 June 1964, lot
box), just the best of the autograph replicas.
53; ibid., 1 1 June 1971, lot ? ; Hotel Drouot,
16 June 1972, lot 4; ibid., 2 June 1981, lot 32.

49 Nymphs Reposing from the Chase

Oil on canvas
37 x 51/2 in. (94 x 131 cm), after
enlargement to a rectangle in the nineteenth century
Signed bottom left: / Boucher 1J4}
Musee Cognacq-Jay, Paris (inv. 10)
A & W 279

50 The Exchange of Confidences

Oil on canvas
36/4 x 51/2 in. (92 x 131 cm), returned
to original curvilinear shape
Signed on piece of wood at bottom right:/ Boucher
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (47.29.17)
A&W280

220
PROVENANCE Reunited here for the first time in well over a century are two of Boucher's
Sale of Mme Chaillou of Chiteaudun, Galerie
overdoors, which show what he could rise to even in this essentially
Georges Petit, Paris, 2 Dec. 1911, lots 1, 2:

Nymphs Reposing acquired by Ernest decorative genre. Their two fellows, with which they can regrettably never
Cognacq, and bequeathed with the museum again be shown, are in the Wallace Collection in London (figs. 151, 152; in v.
founded by him and his wife Louise Jav,
nos. P445 and P447; Wallace Collection Catalogues, 1968, pp. 35-36, as
opened in 1929; The Exchange of Confidences
subsequently in the sale of prince Jacques de Spring and Autumn). All four were engraved by Duflos in rectangular form,
Broglie, Pans, 13 Mar. 1922, lot 15; acquired evidently through the intermediary of drawings prepared by or for him, since
by Knoedler, London; Wildenstein & Co.,
the engravings are all inscribed E Boucher inv. and differ from the paintings in
Paris and New York; Marion Davies, Los
Angeles; William Randolph Hearst, New several minor particulars. The engravings were published in 175 1 under the
York; donated with his collection to the Los titles La toillette pastorale (J-R 917-918, Spring), Les confidences pastorales
Angeles County Museum in 1947.
(cat. 50; J-R 919; with a poem suggesting that the shepherdesses are showing
one another their from their rustic lovers), Erigone vaincue (J-R
gifts
ENGRAVINGS
As the Retour de chasse de Diane and Les 920-922, Autumn), and Retour de chasse de Diane (cat. 49; A & fig. 826). W
confidences pastorales, in a set of four engraved Having been based on drawings rather than directly on the paintings, the
and published by Claude Duflos le jeune
engravings give no indication of the location of ownership of the latter.
(advertised in the Mercure de France, May and
Feb. 1751 respectively; A& W fig. 826; J- Ananoff and Wildenstein have suggested that the four paintings came from
R 919). the Folie de Chartres, being those that featured with this provenance in a sale
held in Paris on 28-29 November 1834. This provenance is open to objection
DRAWINGS
Diana, red, black, and white chalks, 387
i.
on two counts. On the one hand, as Therese Burollet (1980, p. 49) has
x 323 mm, Sir Thomas Lawrence; C. J. pointed out, the descriptions in the catalogue of the sale are too vague to
Nieuwenhuys; J.
P. Heseltine; Mary Benjamin make it certain that it is these pictures that were sold and not the set of
Rogers; private coll.,

1973-74, Washington, no. 47).

U.S.A. (exh. cat.
overdoors from Harlaxton Manor (fig. 153; A & W 287-290). Indeed, the
2. La toilette pastorale, black chalk, 210 x fact that the supposed Folie de Chartres pictures were sold as a set at the very
280 mm, attributed to Boucher, posthumous time when Gregory Gregory was scouring Europe for furnishings for his
sale of baron L. [Roslin] d'lvry, Paris, 7-9
astonishing house (see Girouard, 1979, pp. 92-93), whereas the present pair
May 1884, lot 8c (as L'Ete, paired with
L'Automne [Erigone vaincue] as lot 81). of pictures and the pair in the Wallace only came to light quite separately
3. Le Bain de Diane, black chalk, 200 x 270 many years later, rather argues for it having been the Harlaxton pictures that
mm, A. Beurdeley sale, Paris, 13-15 Mar.
were in the 1834 sale, especially since nothing was said in the catalogue of the
1905, lot 15 [in reverse, probably prepared by
or for Duflos; reversed drawings aux trois
pictures having been engraved. On the other hand, the provenance given in
crayons for La toillette pastorale and Erigone the 1834 sale was most probably spurious; the pavilion around which the
vaincue, from the coll. of Lord Duveen, were object-stuffed gardens known as the Folie de Chartres (of which a portion
sold at
lot u
Sotheby's, London, 6 July 1978,
survives as the Pare Monceau) were created was not built until 1769-73 — far

those here or from Harlaxton— and

].

too late for such curvilinear overdoors as

COPIES demolished between 1802 and 1806, at a time when such things were unlikely
1. Of both pictures, in a set of four reput- to have been rescued, or, if they were, for their provenance to be remembered
edly from the Hotel Bertin (the later Ministere
des Affaires Etrangeres), installed as overdoors
a generation later (see exh. cat. 1981, Paris, esp. pp. 14-17, 60). What is more,
in the salon de la Pendule at Versailles since were the provenance given in the 1834 sale to have been genuine, Louis-
1896. Philippe would surely have reclaimed what could only have been the
2. Bad der Diana, 140 x 140 cm, overdoor
confiscated or stolen property of his father, the due de Chartres and later
copied from the engraving, originally in the

Residenz, Munich, transferred to Schloss Philippe-Egalite. The other previous record of the pictures proposed by
Nymphenburg after World War II. Ananoff and Wildenstein, the sale of four "dessus de portes, de forme
L'Ete (with nymph holding dead bird
3.

suppressed), shaped overdoor, 80 x 130 cm,

chantournee, par Eranqois Boucher; differens sujets de Bergeres & jeunes
Debacker sale, Paris, 1 June 1908.
Filles, dans le genre Pastoral, & de son premier terns," on 21 vendemiaire,
4. Retour de chasse de Diane, Musee Baron l'an VII (12 October ff. 1798), is entirely possible, but too slender to go on.
Martin, Grav.
The titles and poems attached to the engravings after these pictures vest
5. Schaferszene, reversed variant of Les
confidences pastorales [after a pirated Augsburg
two of them with mythological significance and the nymph undoing her —
engraving?], 128 x 175 cm, sale at Fischer, buskin in the Nymphs Reposing from the Chase is even given a crescent moon
Lucerne, 23 Aug. 1928, lot 434; ibid., 2-5 in her hair, to strengthen her identification as Diana. What is interesting
May 1934, lot 1240.
about these early pastorals, however, is precisely the ambiguous status of their

protagonists. The two in the Wallace Collection include cupids or naked

putti, suggesting — as does the loose, unwearable drapery in all four

221
222
Fig. 151. La toilette pastorale, signed and dated Fig. 152. Erigone vaincue, signed and dated
1745. Wallace Collection, London. 1745. Wallace Collection, London.

pictures — that these are nymphs in the fabled vale of Tempe; while in the case

of the chief figure in the Cognacq-Jay picture, the leopard skin and the
subordination to her of the other nymphs would have suggested the
identification as Diana, even without the crescent moon. The straw hat,
basket of flowers, and sheep, however, already give the protagonists of The
Exchange of Confidences more the air of shepherdesses in Arcadia, as implied
by the poem composed subsequently for the engraving. They chime with
Boucher's other pastorals from these years, e.g., the three painted in 1743 for
the marquis de Beringhen (A &W 260-262), or the Shepherd Watching a
Sleeping Shepherdess, dated 1743 or 1745, in the Wallace Collection (fig. 154;
A& W 292), in which the protagonists still have either the partial nudity and
the bare or buskined feet of figures from the classical repertoire, or the rich
dress of ballets. The revolutionary step, Boucher's adoption of the more
Fig. 153. Nymph Tickling Another with a
deliberately rustic protagonists introduced into the opera comique by his

Straw, signed and dated 1745. Fine Arts friend Favart, was not to occur until a little later, around 1746-47 (see cat.
Museums of San Francisco; Roscoe and Mar- way in 1745, since the first
Yet perhaps even Favart was only feeling his
53).
garet Oakes Collection.
version of his immensely popular Vallee de Montmorency (1752), from which
Boucher was to take the themes of so many of his paintings and his groups
for Vincennes (see Zick, 1965), was called Les vendanges de Tempe when it
was first performed in 1745. The change in title and location, from an ideal
region of Greece to the rural environs of Paris, is in keeping with the change
undergone by Boucher's pastorals in the same period.
The pose of the nymph identified as most striking of the
Diana is the
series. Therese Burollet (1980, pp. 49-50) has already drawn attention to its

previous use by Boucher in the lost painting of Le fleuve Scamandre, the

engraving of which by de Larmessin was exhibited in the Salon of 1743 (fig.
141;J-R 1254), and also to the fact that it is not so remote, albeit at a different

angle and with different gestures, from the poses of the goddess in the Diana
at the Bath in the Louvre (cat. 39) and of the young woman in Vattention
dangereuse (J-R 866-868). It also appears, in different variations, in several
engravings of bathing nymphs. At the same time, Burollet rightly points to
Fig. 154. Shepherd Watching a Sleeping Shep-
herdess, signed and dated 1743 or 745- Wallace
: precedents for the pose, in Watteau's Diana at the Bath and Louis de
Collection, London. Boullongne's Diana and Her Nymphs Resting from the Chase (see exh. cat.

223
 1984-85, Washington, no. 28). In view of the variations in viewpoint and
angle of these essentiallv related poses, one is driven to wonder whether their

ultimate inspiration mav not have resided in a sculpture in the round, to

which these painters had recourse as their starting point when posing their

models. One such figure is the Bather attributed to Adrian de Vries, of which
versions even appear to have been made in France in the eighteenth century
(see National Gallery, 1973, no. 6378, p. 796). With the grace that Boucher
gave his version of the- pose, he conferred on it the timeless authority of a
female equivalent of the Spinano.

51 The Milliner (Morning)

Oil on canvas
25 x 21 in. (64 x 53 cm)
Signed on the bandbox: / Boucher 1J46
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (NM 772)
S&M1216 A.&W297

PROVENANCE
Commissioned bv Crown Princess Lovisa This charming picture, which was to have been the first in a set of four
Ulrica of Sweden in October 1745. delivered to
showing women in the characteristic occupations of the Times of Day, was in
the Swedish envoy in Paris in October 1746:
Drottningholm until 1865, when transferred to
the event Boucher's last treatment of such a genre interior subject. The
the Nationalmuseum. commissioned by Count Tessin from Boucher on behalf of the
pictures were
Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrica in 1745, and we can follow almost the whole
REPLICA
protracted saga of Bouchers procrastination, and ultimate failure to complete
Salomon-Pierre de Prousteau, [58] rue de
Tournelles; his sale, ibid. (Remvi. 5 June tt.
the commission, in the correspondence of the Swedish minister in Paris, Carl
1769, lot 53: "Une Dame a sa toilette. & une Fredrik Scheffer, with Tessin (Scheffer, 1982, passim). What these letters
Marchande de rubans: Tableau peint d'apres
cannot tell us is Boucher's real reason for letting his client down. Whatever it
M. Boucher, sur toile de 23 pouces de haut.
sur 19 pouces 6 lignes de large: on trouve une
was, must surely have gone beyond the particular circumstances of the
it

estampe grave d'apres ce morceau par Gaillard. commission for him never to have taken his brush to such a subject again.
sous le titre de la Marchande de mode"
The answer might shed much light on the apparent dissipation of Boucher s
[bought by Basan tor 45 livresj; sale of the
comte de Moray, Phillips, London, iz-11
powers in his later years.

June 1S4S, lot ic; ?anon. sale, Paris, 19 Mar. The from Tessin to Scheffer, dated 6 October 1745,
saga begins with a letter
1852, lot 5 ^S &: M 1 1
s 5 : Richard, fourth saying that Lovisa Ulrica wanted to obtain from Boucher four pictures of
marquess of Hertford; Sir Richard Wallace;
Morning, Midday, Evening, and Night, slightly larger than his own picture of
Ladv Wallace, bv whom bequeathed with the
rest of what was to be known as the Wallace a Woman Fastening Her Garter (cat. 38), "showing fashionable figures, with
Collection to the British Nation in 1897. the pretty little faces that he is so good at" ("en figures de mode, avec les jolis
minois quil salt peindre" [Scheffer, 1982, p. 104, n. 9]). He told Scheffer to
ENGRAVING
After the Prousteau version) La marchande pretend that the pictures were for him, in order to obtain them cheaper — he
de modes, engraved and published bv Rene estimated four hundred livres for each, or five hundred livres, including the
Gaillard, advertised in May 1 — 55 (J-R ic;.: .

frame.

COPY
This letter was answered on 17/27 October, not by Scheffer, but by the
Sale of Jaeger coll., Stockholm, date unknown, outgoing secretary to the legation, Carl Reinhold Berch, who had previously
lot IC2I. served Tessin in this capacity, and to whom Tessin appears to have written
independently (Chennevieres, 1856, pp. 56—57; reproduced by A & doc. W
249). He stated that Boucher had promised to deliver the four pictures by the
end of the coming March, on condition that the price remained secret, since

his official tariff for this kind of picture ("quand il y a du fini") was six

::_
22 5
 hundred livres. Berch reported him as happy payment on delivery,
to accept
provided that it was prompt. Berch also suggested ways of portraying the
four Times of Day:

Morning will be a woman who has finished with her hairdresser, but is

still in her peignoir, enjoying examining knickknacks displayed by a

milliner. Midday, an encounter in the Palais Royal between a lady and a

wit reading her some dreadful poem calculated to bore her, so that she
indicates the time by her watch; the sundial showing noon in the
background. After dinner, or the Evening, gives us the most difficulty:
either notes brought to arrange a rendezvous, or mantles, gloves, etc.,

being given by the lady's maid to her mistress wishing to pay calls.

Night can be shown by some giddy things in ball gowns, making fun of
someone who is already asleep. We will try and organize it, so that the
Four Times of Day also yield the Four Seasons. ... I hope in due
course of time to have some sketches to send to Your Excellence Mr.
Boucher seems prepared to lend himself to this.

Not having been paid for the last of the six overdoors that he painted for
the Royal Castle in Stockholm until April 1746, Boucher delayed setting to
work on the Times of Day (Scheffer, 1982, pp. 120, 122, n. 5). In
in earnest

August he had still produced nothing, partly because of his work for the
royal chateau at Choisy, and partly because of his "libertinage" (Scheffer, pp.

124-25, 132). It was not until October that he finally delivered the present

picture, which he at least had the grace to do, in spite of being badgered by
Crozat de Thiers to sell it to him instead for double the price (Scheffer, p.

144). What follows is a chapter of evasions and excuses, some of which are
mutually contradictory, so that it is difficult to know what to believe. In
October, for instance, Boucher was said to be busy completing Le Soir, yet in
February 1747 nothing had been delivered, and it was said to be Le Midi that
was six weeks from completion (Scheffer, p. 154). This same letter alleged a
progressive enfeeblement of his eyesight, which, if it were true, would help to
account both for Boucher's broader later manner and for his failure ever to
tackle a genre subject again. In November there was still said to be two
months' work on the painting, and Scheffer had to confess that Boucher had
upped the price for each picture (having no doubt discovered their true

destination) to six hundred livres without any frame (Scheffer, pp. 176—77). In

December 1749 Boucher, "que je ne sais plus par quelle epitete designer," was
now promising that it would "infallibly" be completed in time to catch the
first sailing for Sweden in the spring (Scheffer, p. 200). Despite having

delivered nothing by April 1750, Boucher then wrote to Scheffer to assure

him of his good intentions (Scheffer, pp. 253-54), and was still begging to
keep the commission for this one pendant, which would be "the prettiest and
most unusual work yet to leave his hands"; but it now emerged that he had
not even made a start on it, since he was asking for instructions from Tessin
before doing so (Scheffer, p. 212). Very interestingly, however, he claimed to
have had mannequins specially made in preparation for it (a practice that he
was still adopting when Mannlich knew him, see Mannlich, 1805, I, p. 66).

Most tantalizing of all, Scheffer enclosed with his next letter a hasty drawing
of Boucher's new idea for the picture, which would indeed have been
unusual. "A painter will be occupied in finishing a portrait, and this portrait

will be of Madame Royale [Lovisa Ulrica]. A well-dressed lady will come to

226
watch the work of the Painter from behind. The appurtenances of the picture
will represent the chamber of Madame Royale." The annotations in pen on
the sketch add the information that the lady would be wearing "a fine white
satin dress in the manner of Mi[e]ris" (Scheffer, pp. 214-15).

The annotations are in Scheffer's hand —but is the rapid sketch? Jean
Cailleux is reported as believing not; though summary, it conveys the whole
scene with such assurance and economy that it is hard to believe it is from the
hand of Scheffer. This kind of doodle, designed to convey a rapid idea of a
composition to another person, is naturally not the kind of thing to have
survived from Boucher's hands. Yet it could conceivably, as it would logically,

be his, and a preliminary (though more developed) drawing such as that for

La queteuse de grand chemin in the Witt Collection in London (A & fig. W

766) does make it worth considering as such.
Most damning of Boucher's previous lies and evasions was the fact that he
no longer even had the measurements of The Milliner in order to paint this
pendant to it. It was no doubt this that finally cooked his goose, for we hear
nothing more of the picture, or even of him, in the remaining two years of
Scheffer's correspondence with Tessin. It was a sorry end to a fruitful

relationship between painter and patron, all the more so in that Boucher was
fertile in ideas to the last and might with application have produced a picture
to rival the Woman Fastening Her Garter or The Milliner. Did failing

eyesight really make this kind of detailed descriptive picture too demanding
for him? Did he resent the attempt to get pictures from him on the cheap by
playing on his old rapport with Tessin? Or was it simply a result of the
pressures of his burgeoning practice for Mme de Pompadour, combined with
the squandering of time in the pursuit of pleasure?
It comes as a considerable surprise after all the foregoing to discover that
there is an autograph replica of The Milliner in the Wallace Collection in
London {Wallace Collection Catalogues, 1968, P390, pp. 30-31). It is all but
identical to the Stockholm picture, and almost its equal in quality (the official
photographs of the Wallace picture, which come from an aged negative taken
of the picture in its frame and cropped, do not do it justice). In certain
respects, such as the placing of the lady's head (which in the Stockholm
picture had visibly given Boucher trouble), and in the conversion of his
signature on the bandbox into a florid form that suggests it is the name of the
milliner's establishment, it even improves on the original. There is no
doubting, however, that the Stockholm version is the prime one: not only are
there the obvious pentimenti in the lady's head and foot, and in the
positioning of the measuring rod, but it also has the fresher, more tentative
quality noted by Voss as characteristic of Boucher's first versions (Voss, 1959).
It is commonly said that the Wallace version was prepared for the engraver.
This can scarcely have been the case, since Gaillard's engraving of it, entitled

La marchande de modes, was not published until May 1755, long after the
original picture had gone to Sweden (J-R 1024). It is, however, the picture
from which was made the engraving, which gives the owner as "Mr.
Prousteau, Capitaine des Gardes de la Ville, " in whose sale it was to feature
fourteen years later. I owe to the kindness of Dr. Bruno Pons, in
communicating to me the results of his researches in the Minutier Central, the
closer identification of this intriguing figure. Salomon-Pierre Prousteau (d.

178 1) followed his father as a marchand de vins of which he was accorded the
maitrise in 1730; he lived in [58] rue des Tournelles and was married twice,

227
 —

and his wine business appears to have been particularly flourishing around
the time of the death of his first wife, in 1753.

It was presumably less flourishing in 1769, hence his extensive sale. This
included four Bouchers, all painted between 1739 and 1747, and all engraved.
They were Le dejeuner (cat. 33), the Rape of Europ a (see cat. 54), the present

picture,and Venus qui baigne VAmour (J-R 942-943; probably the picture
from the Chateau de Coat an Noz sale at the Hotel Drouot, Paris, 12-13
Dec. 1923, Rape of Europ a was also a second version
lot 52). Significantly, the

from which the engraving was made, and was said by the cautious auctioneer,
Pierre Remy, to have been "peinte dans l'Ecole de Boucher, que Ton croit
retouchee par ce Maitre." The Wallace version of The Milliner was simply,
and surely overscrupulously, said to be "peint d'apres M. Boucher," no doubt
because Remy was aware that the prime original had gone to Sweden. Yet all
four pictures were included in the main body of the sale catalogue, and not in
the section devoted to minor paintings and copies, while The Milliner fetched
more than the wholly autograph Venus qui baigne VAmour, though a great
deal less than Le dejeuner. Prousteau is also recorded as the owner of the two
paintings of The Education of Cupid and Venus Feeding Cupid with Nectar
engraved by Basan (and by Mme Dupont; J-R 262-263, 944 - 945)> although
they featured neither in his sale nor in his posthumous inventory.
There is more than a suggestion in all of this that Prousteau, in addition to
being a marchand de vins, was also something of a march and-amateur of
paintings, with an entrepreneurial interest in engravings after them (his sale
included several proofs of both La marchande de modes and enlevement U
d'Europe). He would also appear to have had some personal connection with
Boucher. On the one hand, there is the small but suggestive fact that
Le Lecteur (probably the version now in Marble Hill House,
Gravelot's
Twickenham), of which Gaillard published an engraving in January 1756 as a

pendant to La marchande de modes, is revealed by a note in the copy of the

catalogue of Bouchers posthumous sale in the Bibliotheque d'Art et

d'Archeologie in Paris to owned by

have been the painter (lot 120). This fact
suggests that Boucher would have taken some interest in the engraving of
Prousteau's version of The Milliner (and that he would scarcely have
encouraged it if he had not regarded his painting as essentially autograph)
unless, of course, he only acquired the Gravelot subsequent to its having been
engraved. On the other hand, there is the presence in Prousteau's posthumous
inventory of "une autre tableau representant une decoration interieure d'un
sallon peint en esquisse par Boucher." This was surely not a design for
interior decoration by Boucher, but a sketch for the setting of a picture.
Neither the room in Le dejeuner nor that in The Milliner could properly be
described as a salon. Could it possibly be that this sketch was made in
preparation for Le Soir, on which Boucher had claimed he was working in
October 1746, and that, having painted a replica for Prousteau of The
Milliner before the first version went to Stockholm (a process that would
itself have accounted for some of the delays in delivering the latter), he made
over to him a sketch prepared for its intended pendant after he had
abandoned any idea of painting it?

None of this explains why, when Tessin was pressing so insistently for the
completion of the series and when Crozat de Thiers would apparently have
paid great sums for such a picture, Boucher satisfied neither, but merely
painted a replica for the obscure Prousteau (perhaps not wholly obscure,

228
 since his cabinet is referred to by Hebert, 1766, I, p. 135). Taken together,
however, the evidence does suggest either that Boucher's eyesight was
genuinely failing (we subsequently have his own reported admission that
defects of color in his later paintings were ascribable to this cause; see Galerie

Franqoise, 1771, p. 5) or that success enabled him to renounce this demanding

kind of subject for more facile compositions. When one thinks of the lovingly
detailed, yet more broadly handled, appurtenances in the portrait of Mme de
Pompadour (cat. 64), it is surely evident that Boucher continued to delight in

such things. In which case, his later abstention from genre interior subjects
probably does betoken problems in giving these kinds of picture the finish

that potential collectors ofthem were conditioned by Dutch painting to

expect; and his failure to produce any more of them would indicate the same
awareness of his own limitations that led him to his virtual renunciation (save
for Mme de Pompadour) of those other major branches of his art: religious
painting and portraiture.

5 2 Portrait of Mme Bergeret(?)

Oil on canvas
56 x 41/2 in. (143 x 105 cm)
left, between backrest and
Signed far
topmost rose:/ Boucher 1 1746
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.;
Samuel H. Kress Collection (1946. 7.3)
A&W301

PROVENANCE
[As given in Eisler, 1977, p. 320, with minor Boucher's difficulties in capturing a likeness were noted on more than one
amplifications] : Pierre-Jacques-Onesyme occasion. Mme de Pompadour herself alluded to the fact (Pompadour, 1878,
Bergeret, Paris; his posthumous inventory,
p. 50); Boucher's failure to supply Le Bas with a passable likeness of Louis
1785, p. 66, no. 22: "A l'egard du portrait de
Madame Bergeret par Boucher, il n'en a ete fait XV in his sketch for the frontispiece of the Memoires de I'Academie Royale
aucune prisee comme portrait de famille, de Chirurgie (1743) must have been a contributory factor in the latter's lack of
pourquoy memoire" (G. Wildenstein, 1961,
success in achieving one, and in the preference consequently given by the
p. 42); his son, Pierre-Jacques Bergeret
(1744-1827), Paris or Cassan; his stepson king to Cochin's design (see Jombert, 1770, p. 39; Cochin, 1880, pp. 80-81).
(from the first marriage of his wife Catherine- The problem was obviously more acute with male sitters than female, since
Julie-Xavier Poisson de la Chabeaussiere),
the vanity of the latter might rather be flattered by a depiction that
Ange-Philibert Lyonard de la Girennerie;
Barbe-Francoise-Victoire Poisson de la
approximated them to some ideal of beauty while devoting most attention to
Chabeaussiere, subsequently Mme Cotillon de their dress and accessories. Thus, while Boucher is only known with
Torcy; her daughter, Fran^oise-Julie Cotillon
certainty to have executed one male portrait, that of Mme de Pompadour's
de Torcy, subsequently wife of contre-amiral
Alexandre Le Bas de Sainte-Croix; their
intimate, the marechal de Lowendal (J-R 1256), he seems to have been in

daughter, Angelique or Angelina Le Bas de some demand as a painter of women, even if that demand was met only in the
Sainte-Croix, subsequently the comtesse Fon- cases of his family and of the clients with whom he was most closely
taine de Resbecq; sold by the Fontaine de
associated.
Resbecq family to Wildenstein & Co., Paris
and New York, before 1920; acquired from Despite the fact that the husband of the supposed sitter in the present
Wildenstein by the Kress Collection in 1942. portrait, Pierre-Jacques-Onesyme Bergeret (subsequently styled Bergeret de
Grancourt; 171 5-178 5), was to become such a client in later life, and was to
leave one of the three most important collections of paintings and drawings

229
230
REDUCTION by Boucher when he died, nothing in his collections or in the inventory
21 x 15 cm, formerly Rothschild coll., Paris

(R862); removed to the German Reich in the

drawn up on the death of his first wife in 175 1 (see G. Wildenstein, 1961,
war and not recovered afterwards (according to p. 42) indicates that he had begun to form it at the period of the date on this
the mount of the photograph in the Zentral- portrait (even though he had ordered three of Boucher's chinoiserie tapestries
institut fur Kunstgeschichte, Munich, the for-
from Beauvais in 1744 [Badin, 1909, p. 61; G. Wildenstein, 1961, p. 42,
mal Allied Collecting Point for Works of Art).
wrongly identified], he cannot yet have owned the sketches for them). It is
even doubtful that there could have been a portrait of his first wife in his
possession when she died, since none is listed. Georges Wildenstein is

perfectly correct in saying that family portraits were exempt from posthu-
mous valuations, but they were customarily mentioned pour memoire, as in

Bergeret's own posthumous inventory.

Perhaps one should look for possible links between the supposed sitter, or
her husband, and Boucher for the explanation of this rare early essay in
portraiture. Nothing is known of any friendships or relationships of Pierre-
Jacques-Onesyme Bergeret that would connect him with Boucher or his

circle at this date. His first wife, Marguerite Richard, whom he married in

1741, had slightly more promising connections. Her maternal grandfather was
the former premier Peintre, Louis de Boullongne, and her brother was that
dilettante artist, the abbe de Saint-Non. However, while Saint-Non was later

certainly to execute a number of etchings and aquatints after Boucher, in 1746

he was only nineteen, and not yet interested in the art of engraving. Nor is

there anything particularly to connect Boucher with that dynasty of painters

turned financiers, the de Boullongne.
One is thus tempted to question the identity of the sitter, but not only is

there the detailed family descent supplied by Wildenstein s to the museum,

complete with the family tradition that it represented a Mme Bergeret, even if

it was not known which (G. Wildenstein, 1961, p. 58, n. 11), but such a
portrait is also supposed to be listed in Bergeret's posthumous inventory. It is

here, however, that the web of evidence supporting the identification of the
sitter as the first Mme Bergeret starts to unravel. For, contrary to what was
asserted by Georges Wildenstein, the signs are that the Boucher portrait in
the inventory was not of Bergeret's first wife, but of his third. There was a
portrait of the first Mme Bergeret in the bedroom of Bergeret's widow, his
third wife (item 12), but it was anonymous, and she was shown with her
daughter. The assessors were careful to identify her as the first Mme Bergeret
(which could have been relevant in any division of the property among the
heirs from the various marriages) and her daughter as "fille ainee," just as
they were to describe Bergeret himself as "feu" (the late) in the case of two
portraits of him (item 30: the portrait en pied may have been the celebrated
picture by Vincent now in Besan^on), although they omitted to in the case of
a miniature (item 40). Neither in the case of Boucher's original of the Portrait
de Mme Bergeret (item 22) nor in the case of the copy (item 19) was she
described either as the first wife or as "the late." Indeed, were we to accept
Georges Wildenstein's identification of Bergeret's portraits (p. 64), there
would have been no paintings of his third wife at all, only a miniature (item
40). This would be particularly surprising in view of the fact that this, of all
his marriages, was one of inclination, in that Bergeret had married his

mistress of several years' standing (although they only married in 1777, their
liaison had begun several years before, since their daughter was born around
Fig. 155. Portrait of Mme de Pompadour,
signed and dated 1759. Wallace Collection, 1770; see Darras, 1933, pp. 79-81. I thank Marie-Anne Dupuy for alerting
London. me to this article).

2 3*
 :

T- - '.--.--:-.--- ---.-.:..:-.-. :- :
- i i: : i--- -
tcr.rr.i-:
---.,'- --.-- izr. - ::::--:-?- 21. - - : : ? - : - : li _t

"::::.:•:: ~ ' 2 LI "LI ILtr : . I ' " - 2 : : ' : ~ ' " ": Tt.iTi I:

~ -V' - i :" . . -
;
". _ . i 2 : _: 2tt _ -ZZ'.r~JrZ itttTt: ;t i" i :r_r; .
" .
-
_ :

I 12 -2. -.t •": Lt :•:::-::!:::.::•"::;.•: J-2.222.- it .i -tii-i. ::.-.--. tt.t

--.-.- : _2t.iT it \\~- -----' .„:-Xi .:•:•:.:::: I: .1 - r -. - --

r.'.r.z t _:: L-t_t »"L: ?.t™r- i :i-r: E-triire: :~j__-: :~ •
?:trrt- i . i . -.-
-

-ir: --- -—
Lr.t

Julie produced no dnkW onnnr to wfc. k

- rtrit ^.tfr 7>_5 2eitti:itLrTi^i
ass — rnrtheroioos
it OL^iririr-

. 2 - - : 2 t2 A. .2.. . . / -. 1 i :.:.... i 2 ;i .- i .:: i

- . ;t .1

LI 1 1 __-_-.: I" 2 .: I -.1 . . : ? : : 2 2 .: EtTitrtt 1 1 1 1 Irl t 2 .

~ .2: . II - It trT IV
'
:" tttt ~ I" 2 _: -tl'I Urt - :. " 22- "
; -
'
" : - 2 2 I -it t li I : . : 2 : .
'
2i

2.-.I :
- /.- -.- - -
- 2 1 - 2 i-':;.-.- . :. r tritcrt 21 1 :i"2 22 ti : 1 1 : 1 2 2
2-

1 21 It I X .::-.:.:.' .: -tilt I':' It t »t 1 1'-'

I "•
.tit I"..". 2 ' .. I it I I:

" . 22 II: I: .:" llTt: It "_= t '

2 2 ~ 2
" "
2 _ :
" '
2 2
"
fit -."ill -i

:r'2Irtrt ! .-22:2. 21 ':t:2: :

2'. -tt 'i_ii LT_ I ~ itf. 1 .1 =r- Li

2 "_ i I . 2 " ' ' -

-
2 '
2 _ ' :
"
I 1 : .2 It. If 1 2ii Z l~.
"
I:C-2tI2.
iSSl HL p. 341; Ponafis, 18S9, p. 185, n. 1; TbraezvT 1895, p. 54). Whh the
.
'
: 2 : : 2:1 . ,1 .
'
L Lt
- — _

------- .---.- tt.iti .--.— .

-\ ---.- -\- It 22

. I 2 : I 2 2
-.--. -." :.::.-- 2t tti
T-r-t ii i r_.-_.rr ._.- : _: rfLt.t; iz- -2 2-..

1 22

-
~.?.Z 2 .2 1 2 2
' --------- 2" . ,-- - .
- ---.
. I

i i t : r Lit .2 - . - : - -- . ^ firtrii:

."."in..---.- -
-
;
-.-..-. vtrinr. it it i.rtr.ir.;.
? 2 2t: 2t._I 22 !f~ .
' .' T 2" .
- ".
L:
-------- t - -..-. 2'r "Til
I-2ILtt,:et--:. ,-22,Iirt^2tT.t2 2,tit,LtI,I t22 2

..-— 2-fI2 22 ..-.:•:- -_-.r-,l.~r " I, 2t 2 2'22 t It r I"' 1 .- 1 ~ X:

-, . . _. _-_ —-. . ^- ._-;.. ... - - ,

: I '.-
. 2 .. " "
------ :._: .^.-2 i
' /.~ -' Z t _2t tfittl 2 2

'---__t tt I~_.f
"
": 2:"-2:: -Mi - ^ "t 1 2tt I ": t 2 -

t . . 2-.t: " 22: . - 2 2 2 2 2

"
It 2 2
'
: " "
2t : '
Tt 2 2 . .2t r." " .
_" 2 t. 2

-. Z.- _ . I _: - - 2 2 . ;
— . . t ~ 2
-
: .. •: : 1 1 ti : I : :
"
.

-
; ': -
' " 2-rt; "• 2ttl It.r LLtf _t I.tr t.IT-t:
-.-;--.----. t rll - : 2 2 2t: II r^I: 2 2 it t I . It 2 t ' " '

"
': 12.21:: 2 ": " ' 2
~ L2 ItItI. 2t I .": tt 2 2 2

- -
 —

silentio is invalid, the portrait is even so more likely to have been one of his
second wife rather than his first, with the third digit of the date on the
portrait falsified by restoration. For Bergeret married his second wife in 1766;

not only would that date accord well with the style and pose of the picture,
but the action of the sitter in plucking a rose carries suggestions of a marriage
portrait.

The possibility that it is of none of Bergeret s wives, but the earliest known
portrait of Mme de Pompadour by Boucher, is (in view of the date on it, and
of the Rothschild version having been so identified) just as inviting. Since
supposed portraits of Mme de Pompadour are legion, it is also the
identificationmost subject to caution. One tantalizing possibility is that the
Poisson de la Chabeaussiere (who were, however, from Anjou) had some
kinship with the Poisson de Malvoisin (who were from Champagne), the
residuary legatees of Mme de Pompadour (nee Poisson), and thus acquired a

picture of the royal mistress by inheritance. There was a tradition in the

Fontaine de Resbecq family that Mme de Pompadour had herself claimed

such a connection and been rebuffed (Fontaine de Resbecq, 1906, p. 5)

perhaps the family was not always so averse to mementos of the would-be
link.

53 Pensent-ils au raisin ?
Oil on canvas
Oval, 31/2 X 27 in. (80 x 68.5 cm)
Signed bottom right:/ Boucher IJ4J
The Art Institute of Chicago
(S&M1554) A&W310

PROVENANCE
PExhibited as no. 33 bis: "Deux Pastorales, This picture is one of the first dated pastorals of Bouchers to show the
aussi enforme ovale"; ?Machault d'Arnouville; protagonists in at least half-plausible rustic dress. Boucher had of course
comte de Rohan-Chabot, Paris; from whom
whom begun his career by depicting perfectly credible peasants (see cat. 9), but those
acquired in 1959 by Wildenstein; by
sold to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1973. pictures had taken their inspiration from Dutch painting rather than from the
literary pastoral. When he began to turn to the latter for inspiration, his
VARIANT VERSION
PBaron Carl Harleman; Queen Lovisa Ulrica
shepherds and shepherdesses —who, rather than undifferentiated peasants,

of Sweden, Drottningholm; transferred to the were what the pastoral tradition required —were either in rich costumes (cat.

Nationalmuseum in 1865. 30, 31) or in loose draperies suggestive of Arcadia (cat. 50). The richly attired

shepherdesses could reasonably have been castigated, as they were by Dufort

ENGRAVING OF VARIANT VERSION
Pensent-ils au raisin? engraved and published
de Cheverny (1909, I, p. 117), as "des bergeres a pieds nus avec des paniers
by J-P Le Bas, dedicated to Baron Harleman comme a l'Opera." In his later pastorals, in which not only the shepherdesses
by D'Arcy (J-R 1344-1346). but also the shepherds had bare feet — albeit of a scarcely credible cleanliness

DRAWINGS
and delicacy —and in which the shepherdesses could no longer be accused of
i. Standing goat, on a sheet in the Mme wearing hooped petticoats, the inspiration was still the stage, but from a quite
[Blondel] d'Azaincourt coll., engraved by De- different kind of theater.
marteau (J-R 628).
As Gisela Zick (1965) has shown in a brilliant article to which too little
2. Two foreground sheep, on a sheet in the
Mme [Blondel] d'Azaincourt coll., engraved attention has been paid outside the narrow circles of those interested in
by Demarteau (J-R 629). engravings and the transmission of models in the applied arts, Boucher
derived his inspiration for a whole host of pictures, drawings, and designs for

2 33
 porcelain groups for Vincennes and Sevres from a piece called Les vendanges
de Tempe by his friend Charles-Simon Favart. This began life as a pantomime
put on for the first time at the Foire Saint-Laurent on 28 August 1745. When
it was revived at the Theatre Italien on 25 February 1752, it was as a more
elaborate ballet-pantomime called La Vallee de Montmorency, with a setting

among cherry orchards rather than vineyards (because of a successful ballet-

pantomime by de Hesse called Les Vendanges [troublees] put on the year
before), and with added characters and scenes. The text of neither version
survives, but a plot summary based on the copy texts of the two was
published by the brothers Parfaict in their Dictionnaire des Theatres de Paris
(1756, VI, pp. 69-84). Their attempts to distinguish the two versions are

2 34
 —

TAPESTRY somewhat muddled, and it is possible that they did not in fact have access to
Woven Aubusson: examples in Rigaud coll.,
at
the Urtext, since nothing in either of the versions as they present them
sold Paris, 3 Apr. 1933, lot 71 (A & fig. W
889); and in misc. sale, Nouveau Drouot,
justifies the classical setting implied in the original title by the Vale of Tempe,
Paris, 21 June 1985. from which the name of one of the characters, Celadon, among others
rustically French, suggests a survival.
COPIES
1. 76 x 90 cm, inscribed F. B. 1J49 [?]:
If there ever was an original version with a classical setting, and the title

?anon. sale (exp. Vallee), Paris, 20-21 Feb. was not simply an ironic play on the element of parody of traditional
?anon. sale (comm.-priseur De-
1843, lot 1;
pastorals in the piece, must rapidly have been supplanted by the version we
it
odor), Paris, 12-14 Apr. 1843, lot 57; Eugene
Piot coll. (by 1874); his posthumous sale,
know of. The revolution wrought by Favart in the opera comique was to
21-24 May 1890, lot 547; R. A. Trotti, Paris; endow the lowlife characters of popular theater with the sensibilities of the
Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Postley, Long Island, protagonists of pastoral poetry: "The earliest Pieces of M. Favart already
New York; by whom given to the M. H. de
disclosed his taste for Sentiment, and it was really this that he introduced into
Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, in

1972. a Spectacle where there was virtually no trace of it to be seen before" (Favart,
2. Painting, anon, sale, Paris (exp. Bloche), 1763, I, p. ix). This elevation of the content of the pieces performed by the
20-21 Mar. 1891, lot 3.
Opera-Comique went hand in hand with the transformation wrought in the
3. Gouache, 15 x 19 in., Arthur Tooth &
Son, London; sale of Senator Wm. A. Clarke,
character and behavior of the audience by Jean Monnet, who took over the
Plaza Hotel, New York, 1 1-12 Jan. 1926, lot concession for it in 1743, and is supposed to have begun by clearing the
69.
parterre of the unruly rabble of liveried servants (Favart, 1763, I, p. xi;
4. 50 x 40 in., coll. of Archduke Franz
Josef [sic]; private coll., New York, sold Parke-
Monnet, 1909, pp. 78-84).
Bernet, New York, 28 Sept. -9 Oct. i960. With these twin transformations of content and context, the Opera-
5. Snuffbox, Schreiber Collection, Victoria Comique had suddenly become salonfdhig. Boucher, being closely associated
and Albert Museum, London (1924, III,
with its promoters (see Monnet, 1909, pp. 85, i66-6y, 175-76), was
no. 13).
6.Gold box by Noel Hardivilliers, responsible for the actual introduction of their productions into salons, in the
Wrightsman Collection, Metropolitan Mu- form of his own paintings and porcelain inspired by his designs. His
seum, New York.
indebtedness to Favart was perceived at the time, since the brothers Parfaict
7. En camaieu rouge in enamel jewel box,
Sotheby's sale, London, 23 Nov. 1970, lot 118.
wrote: "Mr. Boucher, the Painter famous for his gracious compositions, took
the idea of some of his pictures from here, and that is not the least of the
honors paid to the Pantomime of the Vendanges de Tempe" ("M. Boucher,
Peintre fameux par ses compositions graaeuses, en emprunta I'idee de
quelques-uns de ses tableaux, & ce n est point le moindre honneur qu'ait requ
la Pantomime des Vendanges du Tempe" [Parfaict, 1756, VI, p. 70]).
The brothers Parfaict had no reason to list every borrowing, but when
summarizing the piece they found occasion to mention two, one of which
was the subject of the present picture, whose title means "Are they thinking
of the grape?" The simple plot of the pantomime concerns an unnamed
"Little Shepherd" and a shepherdess called Lisette, whose burgeoning love

for one another is thwarted by jealous rivals and parents, before ultimately
winning the acceptance of the latter. The sixth scene opens with the Little
Shepherd and Lisette giving one another grapes or cherries. The Dictionnaire
des Theatres (Parfaict, 1756, VI, pp. 78-79) says that, in the Vallee de
Montmorency, they give one another both grapes and cherries, and that "this
subject too has been seized upon by M. Boucher" but this is typical of its
confusion of the two versions. Not only could grapes scarcely have been
plucked in cherry orchards, but the transposition of the Vendanges de Tempe
into the Vallee de Montmorency had yet to be devised when the present
picture was painted. Not that the picture is a slavish depiction of the stage;
for one thing the landscape setting is very different from that described in the
pantomime (which approximates much closer to what is seen in the tapestry
derivation of the picture woven at Aubusson; A & fig. 889); for another W
—
more crucially the Little Shepherd was played en travesti by Mme Favart
(who may also be intended in the Aubusson).

*35
 The present picture does not actually appear to have been the first to
illustrate Les vendanges de Tempe. It seems to have been preceded by an oval
picture, dated 1746, with a provenance from Machault d'Arnouville, that was
sold at auction in Paris on 17 June 1977, under the title of Le joueur de
flageolet (fig. 156). This shows the Little Shepherd playing the flute to Lisette,

as at the beginning of scene 5

(before the later episode, also painted by
Boucher and executed as a group by Vincennes, of him giving her a flute

lesson). Although the dress of the protagonists of this oval picture retains

slightly more of the richness of Opera costumes, it appears nonetheless likely

that the picture was originally a pendant of the present version of Pensent-ils
au raisin?, and two pictures were exhibited together in the Salon of
that the

1747. The provenance of Le joueur de flageolet (and thus by inference that of

the present picture as its presumed pendant) from Machault d'Arnouville is
particularly interesting, since his responsibilities as controleur general
Fig. 156. Le joueur de flageolet, signed and
included the porcelain manufactory of Vincennes-Sevres, where figures to
dated 1746. Sold at the Palais Galliera, Paris, 17
June 1977. Boucher's designs, taken from La Vallee de Montmorency, were to be made.
There is also a rectangular version of Pensent-ils au raisin? (fig. 157;
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; A& W 309) which has generally been
regarded as the prime one, for no better reason than that it was (because of its

destination) engraved. Now that it stands revealed as a compilation from the

pair of ovals, this position can no longer be maintained. For while the figures
and animals in the Stockholm picture are taken from the one in Chicago, the
landscape background is borrowed from Le joueur de flageolet, which was
painted the previous year. There is, however, a curious discrepancy between
the characters of the Stockholm picture and those of the prime version in

Chicago: the latter contains the additional figure of a small child, who is

feeding one of the goats on the left. Le joueur de flageolet also contains a
small child. Was he in the earliest version of Les vendanges de Tempe, and
au raisin'
Fig. 157. Pensent-ils subsequently suppressed? Or did Boucher not originally set out to illustrate
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
the pantomime so literally?

The Stockholm picture is generally said to have been acquired either by

Tessin (Granberg, 1930, p. 164) or by Harleman (exh. cat. 1984, Manchester,
no. P6) for Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrica of Sweden, but no documentation
appears to have been published about its purchase to justify either claim. The
absence of any reference to it in the Swedish Royal Archives (in which the six
overdoors painted by Boucher for the Royal Castle are recorded), or in

Berch's correspondence with Tessin, indeed rather suggests that neither was
the case. Carl Harleman (1700-1753) was the architect in charge of the
transformation of part of the Royal Castle of Drottningholm to house Lovisa
Ulrica (see Stavenow, 1927, pp. 130-35). A cabinet picture such as this (unlike

the overdoors) would have fallen not within his province, but within that of
her artistic adviser, Count Tessin. How then to account for the fact that on
the one hand the plate after the painting was dedicated to Harleman, and that
on the other hand the painting itself was catalogued in Queen Lovisa Ulrica s
collection in 1760 (Sander, 1872, p. 79)? The answer, I believe, is simple: the
picture was painted for Harleman himself, and after his death it was acquired
by the queen. Hence the absence of any mention of it in official files, and
hence the fact that Boucher was ready to paint this picture when he was
failing to complete the set promised to Lovisa Ulrica (see cat. 51).

Boucher was a friend of Harleman s. They had known one another since
the Swede had first gone to study in Paris in 1721-25 (Stavenow, 1927, p. 45).

236
 He returned in 1732 to recruit French artists and craftsmen to work in

Sweden, and again, to prepare himself for the task of modernizing Drott-
ningholm and to acquire furnishings for the Royal Palace, from November
1744 to May 1745. He would have left Paris a little too soon to see Les
vendanges de Tempe, but he, like Tessin, had a lively interest in whatever was
new in France. Perhaps Boucher told him of the present picture when he was
preparing it for the Salon, and he asked for something similar; or it might
even have been a gesture of friendship on Boucher's part, and of gratitude for
his role in procuring the commission for the Royal Palace. Some connection
with that commission is suggested by the dedication of Le Bass engraving
after the picture, which is not only to Monsieur le Baron de Horleman Sur-
Intendant des Bdtimens de Sa Majeste le Roy de Suede, but Par son tres

humble et tres obeissant Serviteur D'Arcy (J-R 1346). Louis Darcy was not
only himself an engraver, but also "Agent de sa Majeste Suedoise pour le

commerce et les manufactures" (Scheffer, 1982, p. 211, n. 7), and the picture
must somehow have passed through his hands for him to have had it

engraved. It is in any case clear that it was because of the Swedish destination
of the rectangular picture, and not because of any considered assessment of
the merits of the two versions, that it — and not the present picture — was the
one to have been engraved.

54 The Rape ofEuropa

Oil on canvas
63 x 76 in. (160.5 x 193 5 cm) -

Musee du Louvre, Paris (inv. 2714)

S&M141, 142 A&W350

PROVENANCE
Exhibited in the Salon of 1747, no. 8 of the In 1747 the new directeur general des Bdtiments du Roi, Mme de
concours entries; Chateau de Muette, Paris
la
Pompadour s husband s uncle, Lenormant de Tournehem, decided to repeat
(Dezallier, 1779, p. 19); intended for the
Museum in 1793 (Archives de I'Art francais
the experiment of twenty years before, and to institute a competition among
Chateau de Saint-Cloud,
n.s. 3 [1909], p. 219); ten (ultimately eleven) selected artists from the Academy for the best picture
from which returned to the Louvre in 1870 or (see esp. Locquin, 1912, Although was stated that each artist was to
p. 6). it
1871.
"work in the kind of painting for which he feels most inclination and
REPLICA inspiration" (A & W doc. 286), the real object was to encourage emulation in
63 x 76/2 in., Prousteau sale, 5 June ff. 1769, what was regarded as the highest branch of painting, and to provide economic
lot 52: "belle & riche composition peinte dans
support for it by guaranteeing the purchase of all the entries by the Crown
l'Ecole de M. Boucher, que Ton croit re-
touchee par ce Maitre. CI. Duflos a grave une
for installation in the royal palaces. The completed pictures were all exhibited
estampe apres ce tableau" [bought by Mr. ::' ::" : "
together at the Salon. By agreement among the artists themselves, to avoid
for 150 livres]; Adolphe Warneck (sold pri-
jealousy and accusations of partiality, no prizes were in fact awarded, and the
vately); anon, sale, Paris (exp. Barre), 10 May
1867, unnumbered; Mfason] sale, Paris, 1 Feb.
intended prize money was instead divided up among all the participants. It

1875, lot 6 [withdrawn]; [Mason] sale, Paris, 1 cannot be said that the competition had any direct effect in its intended object
Mar. 1876, lot 1 [withdrawn]; Acquavella, New of reviving the practice and prestige of history painting; but it did so
York; from which acquired in 1952 by the
indirectly, in the further stimulus that it gave to the development of sustained
Museum of North Carolina, Raleigh.
art criticism inaugurated by La Font de Saint- Yenne, in the shape of the
pamphlets by the abbe Le Blanc, Charles-Antoine Coypel, and the abbe
Gougenot (qq.v.).

2 37
M

ENGSJVDfG
Although the competition may have ended rather like that of the Caucus-
_ £•:.:•'.:::-:: j £.<-

-tr.:i - - - r.i : .-
7- z-
zr.zri
n:
tz --
i::er

z r
:r.=

_:-
race in Alice's Aa: .: in Wonderland — "Everybody has won, and all must
"-- : I. !/•_:.: ;e;.;i:ei :.-.e — i"_ : have prizes" — the public was in no doubt two preeminent works:
as to the
ie I -i. A--i-;i-:r:: H:. .-;. ^.er- Natalie's Triumph of Bacchus and Boucher's Rape of Europa (see Le Blanc,
ased in Dec 1752 0-R 923-924).
:~j.~. p. 14; Gougenot, 1748, p. '- a udgment seemingly confirmed by
.

nm posterity, in that, of the eleven entries, these two alone have remained in the
1. Europa, sketch, Daniel WiLI<-«icr<»;« coll.,
Louvre since 1870/72, when all the pictures were gathered in and redistrib-
York (A & fig. 1024).W uted (Jeaurat's Diogenes Breaking His Boni, which is there now. was
2. Cupid (between Europa and the bull),

ted, black, and white chalks, 230 x 305 mm, originally left on deposit at Fontaineble^ -
j ' -iihlbacher sale, Paris, 15 May 1907, lot It is regrettable that we do not have for Boucher, as we have for Xatoire
63 (A &Wfig. 1018).
(Jouin, 1889), a correspondence showing how he approached the competition
3. Three Cupids in the Air (holding drapery
-.r.az :: r. - r- ;
re;. :.i:.-:. ir. _ -•-.:= and the subject he chose to tackle. Boucher's choice demonstrates, however,
that, like Xatoire and most of the other competitors, he had no intention of
Medet; 1 896-1 908, X, no. 1196; A&Wfig. departing from his traditional subject matter to seek a novel theme. Rather
the reverse: it shows him. as with his reception piece for the Academy, eager

'-:
 to pit himself both against the great masters of the past, such as the Italians

Titian and Albani, and against more recent artists of the French school, such
as Noel-Nicolas Coypel (who painted this subject for the 1727 competition)
or Natoire (who had painted it in 1731). Nor was he the only competitor to
select it: the aging P-J. Cazes did so as well; but Cazes had not delivered his
picture in time for the opening of the Salon, perhaps because he deliberately
shunned the invidious comparisons that might be made, though when he did
he found a defender in Lieude de Sepmanville, if the latter was indeed the
author of the Reflexions nouvelles d'un amateur des beaux arts (1747,
pp. 19-20).
Fig. 158. The Rape of Europa, Beauvais tapes- It was also a subject that Boucher had painted before, in the large picture
try. Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Gift for Derbais (see cat. 25); if that set out to impress, this has all the showy
of J.
Paul Getty.
qualities of a competition piece. Whereas in his previous picture Boucher had
set the scene entirely on dry land, here, though taking the same moment of
the story when Europa, charmed by the bull's docility, sits upon his back, he
manages to combine sea with land, and Europa's companions with tritons

and a nereid; at the same time, cupids gambol in the sky with drapery and
flowers, and Jupiter's eagle surveys his master's transformation. The woods to
the left represent a rather improbable Phoenicia, with none of the palm trees
that are supposed to have given it its name, while the distant rock must
represent the island of Crete, to which Europa was borne. The weakest part
of the picture is unfortunately the central figure of Europa, not so much on
account of her pose, as because of the trivial expression on her face. One has

the impression that this was derived from one of Boucher's pastel heads of

young girls in the manner of Rosalba Carriera (see the pastel peeping over the
Fig. 159. Head of a Girl Sniffing a Flower.
screen in Woman Fastening Her Garter, cat. 38), just as the distracting figure
Reproduced from Soullie & Masson, plate
facing page 8.
of the handmaiden sniffing a flower at the left of the picture demonstrably
derives from an earlier pastel once in the de Sireul collection (fig. 159; see AA
346; A & W fig. 1027). The foreground handmaiden is closely related to one
of those in one of the overdoors of 1745 later at Harlaxton Manor (A &W
288).
4. Two Cupids with Drapery, One Brandish-
ing a Torch, 245 x 305 mm, G. Bourgarel sale,
Although Boucher emerged as one of the moral victors of the competition

Paris, 15-16 June 1922, lot 17 (A & fig. W in terms of popular acclaim, it was over this picture that the first criticisms of

him began
'
1 1 87). to be voiced. Regrettably, none of these survive in printed form;
5. Girl Sniffing a Flower, chalk heightened
but we can gain some idea of them from the defensive postures struck by the
with pastel, 220 X 180 mm, [Vanbaal] sale, 9
Apr. ff. 1 78 1, lot 127; de Sireul sale, 3 Dec. ff.
abbes Le Blanc and Gougenot (qq.v.). Both of them refer to the excessive use
1781, lot 65; probably identifiable with the of pink, andLe Blanc to the hackneyed choice of subject; the latter criticism
pastel drawing in Ch. Haviland's sale, Paris,
must have stemmed from amateurs such as Natoire 's friend Antoine
15-16 Dec. 1922, lot 3 (AA 346; A& W fig.

1027); cf. from the Crozat

the pastel drawing
Duchesne, the prevot des Bdtiments du Roi, whose intentions in promoting
de Thiers coll. now in the Hermitage (Stuff- the competition (Jouin, 1889, pp. 140-42) had effectively been thwarted by
mann, 1968, p. 126 no. 110; Kamenskaya, most of the painters' refusal to experiment with new subject matter. Boucher's
i960, pi. XXXII).
6. Girl Holding Flowers in Her Drapery,
reaction to criticism was to design a frontispiece for Le Blanc's pamphlet,

red-chalk counterproof, [used by another hand showing Painting sitting gagged before a picture on an easel, which a crowd
for study on recto for Sevres statuette], private of figures and animals symbolizing envy and stupidity (some of them
coll., Paris (A & W
figs. 1021, 1022). a.d.l.
curiously reminiscent of Carle Vanloo's entry, The Drunkenness of Silenus)

TAPESTRY
make mock of (A & W fig. jj). One wonders whether he may not also have
Woven at Beauvais as part of the series Les brought pressure to bear to have an ambiguity on page 59 removed from the
Amours des Dieux, with the right-hand side of second edition of Gougenot 's pamphlet, which in the first (printed in A & W,
the painting (the left of the tapestry) changed
toshow a river-god and some rocks and trees.
doc. 349) might have been taken to mean that many people were astonished
The first weaving was in a set of eight pieces that it should have been the pictures of Natoire and Boucher that fought it

made in 1750 for Don Felipe, Infante of Spain out in popular esteem.

239
and son-in-law of Louis XV, who ruled Parma Boucher's composition was given wider circulation, not onlv bv being
from 1748 ro 1765, but it is not among the engraved by Durlos in 1752 (J-R 923-924), but also by serving as the source
pieces of this set in the Quirinale Pa
for a Beauvais tapestrv cartoon in the series of the Amours des Dieux. The
Rome. The example in the set made in 1752 for
Prince Esterhazy was lost in Viorld War IL but engraving was not actually made from the royal picture, but (as with The
that in Frederick the Great's set of 1765 Milliner, see cat. 51 ) from a replica apparently painted for the marchand de
belongs to Prince Heinrich of Prussia and has
vim Salomon-Pierre Prousteau.
been exhibited in the Charlortenburg Palace.
Berlin. In 1754, Antoine de Crozat, baron de Not onlv the picture but twentv proofs of the engraving (though no
Thiers, took delivery of a set that had been framed example) were in Prousteau s posthumous sale. Ananoff and
made for Baron Johann Hartvig Ernest Wildenstein are verv probablv correct in seeing this studio replica as the
Bernstorft of Denmark, but the Rape of
Ettropa in it has not been identified since 1929,
painting now in the North Carolina Museum at Raleigh. What is not evident
when was owned by the New York dealers
it is why Duflos should have dedicated his engraving to that great shell
French &
Co. The Los Angeles County collector, the French ambassador in Holland, M. d'Usson, marquis de
Museum has an example, and another was in
Bonnac. would not appear
It to be an indication of ownership, although it is
the sale of works from Leningrad palaces held
at the Rudolph Lepke auction house, Berlin, worth noting that de Bonnac sold his hotel in the rue de Grenelle in 1768
6, 7 Nov. 1928, no. 221; it has been in the (exh. cat. 198". Paris, p. 3c), the year before the picture appeared in
Pierre C. Cartier coll., Geneva. Other sales
Prousteau s sale, which might have induced him to dispose of both painting
including examples of this tapestry are those of
Charles Stein, Galerie Petit, Paris, ic-14 May and proofs to the latter. When the Rape of Europ a was adapted as a design for

(A &
1886, no. 402 V
fig. iziz Mme : tapestry at Beauvais it was not only reversed but also altered and expanded on
Dubernet Douine, Galerie Jean Charpentier. what was now the left-hand side (fig. 158). Instead of the marine deities of the
Paris, 11, 12, Apr. 1946, no. i>4 A ic \Y
Apr. 1968,
painting, Boucher reverted to the idea of his picture for Derbais, and showed
350/23); Palais Galliera, Paris, 3

no. 136: and the same auction house, 24 Nov. a river-god and -nymph beside a waterfall. It is an interesting illustration of
1976, no. 135 (Standen. 1984-85). E.A.S. Boucher's propensity to play with the same or similar forms over a short
period, that he should have borrowed the figure of the naiad from the Anon
COPY
Central group, omitting standing handmaiden, that he painted in 1748 (cat. 55;. The tapestry was woven thirteen times, from
87 x 14c cm, Philippe Georges sale. Petit, the rirst occasion in 175c for the Infante Don Felipe of Spain, to the last in
Paris, 2 June 1891, lot 68.
1772 for M. Bertin (Badin, 1909, pp. 61-62).

;; Arion Rescued by the Dolphin (Water)

Oil on canvas
54 •

J3 ^ in. (86 x 135.5 cm)

Signed in the water, lower left:/ Boucher 1748
The Art Museum, Princeton University, New Jersey (80.2)
(S&M85) (A&W328)

56 Vertumnus and Pomona (Earth

Oil on canvas
34/2 x 53/, in. (87 x 136 cm
Signed on the vase, lower right:/ Boucher 1J49
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio (80.27)
(S&M350) (A&W329)
PROVENANCE
Chateau de la Muette. Paris; posthumous sale These two pictures were intended as the first in a set of four depicting the
ol P-J-O. Bergeret de Grancourt, 24 Apr. ft.
Four Elements (Engerand, 19". pp. 49—50). They were designed to be
1786, lot 49: "Ces deux Tableaux, dont le
overdoors in the royal Chateau de la Muette, on the edge of the Bois de

24c
premier est connu par l'Estampe qu'en a grave Boulogne (A & W, II, p. 25, n. 1), which had just been extensively remodeled
M. de Saint-Anbin, reunissent au charme de la down
in 1746-48 (Tadgell, 1979, p. 162). Whether because Boucher never got
composition, une grande correction de dessin
to executing the other two, or because the enlargement of the chateau
& la couleur la plus harmonieuse; il est rare de
trouver d'aussi beaux Tableaux de ce Maitre" determined upon by the king in 1753-54 (Tadgell, 1979, p. 162) did away with
[bought by Julliot for 320 livres]; Artemis, the room for which they had all been intended, the two that were painted
London London, nos. 1, 2),
(exh. cat. 1978,
never seem to have found employment there (they are never mentioned, for
from which bought by the two museums.
instance, in', the fullish descriptions of the interiors by Dezallier d'Argenville
ENGRAVINGS or Dulaure). They are next heard of in the posthumous sale of Bergeret de
Vertumne Pomone, by Augustin de Saint-
et

Aubin, dated 1765, and dedicated to its pub-

Grancourt in 1786, after which they disappeared from view —during which
lisher, Laurent Cars (J-R 15 50-1 5 54; F. L. time a replica of Arion was taken for the original (A & W — they 328) until
Regnault, in the catalogue of Saint-Aubin's were exhibited by Artemis in London in 1978 (exh. cat. 1978, London,
posthumous sale, 4 Apr. ft. 1808, says that he
nos. 1, 2).
engraved the plate under the direction of Cars,
who was prompted by it to propose him to the The equation of the pictures in the Bergeret sale with those commissioned
Academy in 1771). by the Crown has not met with universal acceptance. Despite the fact that
Arion, etched by Augustin de Saint-Aubin there is no subsequent record of the pictures at La Muette or in the
in 1765 (J-R 1555), and completed with the
burin by Jacques-Jean Pasquier in 1766, pub-
possession of the Crown or the State, it has been thought impossible that
lished by his master, Laurent Cars (J-R they should have been alienated. There is, in addition, a discrepancy between
1443-1446). the painting of Arion presented here and the engraving of it by Saint-Aubin
and Pasquier (fig. 160). The clue to the resolution of these difficulties resides
DRAWINGS
i. Anon sur les flots cchappe au naufrage, in the history of La Muette. It is not simply that the chateau was constantly
pen and wash on blue paper, 222 X 295 mm, being transformed (Louis XV did so once again after the death of Mme de
de Sireul sale, 3 Dec. ff. 1781, lot 88 [bought
Pompadour in 1764 [Ginet, 1932, p. 14; Hillairet, 1963, I, p. 85]), or that
by M. Boulle for 45 livres 1 sol]; private coll.,

Paris (A & W
fig. 953).
Louis XVI put it up for sale in 1787 and that it was demolished in the

2. Studies of legs, arms, and hands (the legs Revolution, but that when Louis XV had it altered by Coustou the Younger
for Vertumnus and Pomona), black chalk after the death of Mme de Pompadour, it was so as to make it into a residence
heightened with white, 237 x 325 mm, private
Geneva (A & W for the new Dauphin (the later Louis XVI) on the death of his father (1765).
coll., fig. 1 122) [certain
details suggest that these were in fact used in Louis XV had always used La Muette as a "demeure galante," in which he
the adaptation to a cartoon for Beauvais (see could live with successive mistresses in relative privacy, and from which he
Analogies, no. 1)].
could hunt. Bouchers overdoors were no doubt disposed of, either by the
Dauphin's moralizing preceptors, or by the upright Dauphin himself when he
REPLICAS AND COPIES
i. Anon, 45 x 52/2 in., signed, reputedly came to maturity, not simply because they were relics of an abandoned
commissioned by the comte de Toulouse for scheme, but also because the Vertumnus and Pomona at least was too
his chateau of Chateauneuf-sur-Loire [but not
reminiscent of the uses to which La Muette had formerly been put (the
in the 1786 catalogue of the gallery there]; sale
of the marquis de la Rocheb[ousseau; the nom author of exh. cat. 1978, London, nos. 1, 2, even suggests that Pomona was a
de guerre of the dealer Leon Gauchez, accord- generalized portrait of Mme de Pompadour, which is perhaps going a little
ing to Lugt], 5-8 May 1873, lot 112; given to
too far).
the Metropolitan Museum, New York, by
Leon Gauchez in 1875; deaccessioned, sold at
It is most likely that they were disposed of immediately, in 1765; for that is

Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 1 5 Feb. the date on Augustin de Saint-Aubin's engravings after the pictures. What is

1973, lot 71; Ira Spanierman, New York. significant about these prints is that they carry no indication of ownership,
2. Arion, misc. sale, Palais des Congres,
Versailles, 24 Feb. 1974, lot 2.
and that the Arion bears no dedication, while the Vertumnus and Pomona
3. Arion, 96 X 130 cm (reduced from a bears one, not to any courtier or collector, but to Saint-Aubin's former
curvilinear overdoor), traces of signature bot- teacher Laurent Cars. The implication is that at this stage they did not belong
tom left, private coll., London (A & W 328, either to the king or to Bergeret but were on the market. The discrepancy
color pi. facing p. 100).
4. Anon sur les eaux, gouache, y'A X 12'A between the engraving after the Arion and the picture itself can also be
pouces, posthumous sale of J-B-S. Chardin, explained. It consists in the presence at the left of the painting of the head of a
6 Mar. ff. 1780, lot 27.
triton (a head also present in the copies of it) that is not to be found in the
5. Arion on the waters [in reverse and with
the triton's head omitted, as in the engraving],
print. The engraving was evidently one that gave Saint-Aubin some trouble,
drawing in red chalk, 330 x 493 mm, in- since it was completed in 1766 by Jacques Pasquier. Perhaps because of this,
scribed retouche par gahnelle de St. aubin, or because the picture was snatched away before this detail could be put in,
Kunstbibliothek, Berlin (Berckenhagen, 1970,
Hdz.
the triton's head was omitted. That it should be there is evident from the fact
pp. 306-07, 2690).
that the gaze of the nereid beside him has lost its motivation in the print.

241
24 2
 There is a further reason for denying that the pictures are replicas of a lost

pair painted for the Crown, and that is their divided dating. Not only does
Boucher appear mostly to have avoided dating replicas at all, but were these
to have been replicas, it is highly unlikelv that they would have been
completed or dated a year apart. What is more, the payment from the Crown
assumed that both pictures had been painted in 1749; we know that in France

commissions from the Crown took precedence over any others (see Scheffer,
1982, p. 132), and Boucher is hardly likely to have committed the lese majesty
either of fobbing the Crown off with replicas, or of finishing a replica for

Fig. 160. Arion, engraved by August de Saint- another client before delivering the original to the Crown. Nor could the
Aubin (1765) and J -J. Pasquier (1766) after pictures have been painted for Bergeret. In 1748/49 he had not only not
Boucher.
begun to patronize Boucher, he had not even started to take an interest in art
(see cat. 52). He could, of course, have acquired the pictures from some other
client of Bouchers, but we know of no such paintings in any sale or
elsewhere, so that it is surely wiser to adopt Occam's rule of avoiding the
unnecessary multiplication of entities. What one would like to know is where
they were later concealed so long.
The unusual choice of Arion to symbolize Water, and of Vertumnus and
Pomona to stand for Earth, derives from the ballet Les Elements, written by
Roy, with music by Lalande and Destouches. The first performance of this
was mounted in the Tuileries in 1721, and the boy Louis XV himself danced
in it (Parfaict, 1756, II, pp. 380-83). It was played at the Opera in Paris in

1725, and revived in 1727, 1734, 1742, and 1754. If the role played by the king
in his youth suggests an element of self-identification in the subject matter of
the Arion, this is even more strongly implied by the Vertumnus and Pomona.
For, as the writer of the entry in the Artemis catalogue pointed out, the role
of Pomona was taken by Mme de Pompadour herself in two performances of
La Terre, given as part of the Fragmens presented before the king in the

Theatre des Petits Appartements at Versailles on 15 January and ic March

Fig. 161. Vertumnus and Pomona. Fine Arts
Museums 1749. The cataloguer presumed that Boucher had designed the sets for this,
of San Francisco.
but while we have every reason to believe that he was later so employed at

Bellevue, at Versailles there were others whose rights could not be overridden.

6. Vertumnus and Pomona, 61 x 86 cm, The Journal du Theatre Appartemens pendant I'Hiver de 1/49 a
des petits
Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich 1750 (Theatre, IV) indeed specifically says that "Messrs. Arnould and
(inv. 2863).
Tramblin continued to be responsible, in this as in previous years, for the
7. Vertumnus and Pomona, Bischoffsheim
sale, Christie's, London, May 1926, lot 12;
execution of the stage sets and machinery."
7
M. et Mme L. C[otnareanu] sale, Palais Underlining the connection with the stage is the fact that Boucher only
Galliera, Paris, 14 Dec. i960, lot 2.
depicted Arion on this one occasion, and that in doing so, he followed the
8. Vertumnus and Pomona, gouache, 185 x
205 mm, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 4 Mar. 193 1, lot
ballet. The story as told by Herodotus (1.24) tells of how Arion, having
70 [as Franqois Lemoyne, Ceres et Pomone]. earned large amounts of money by a musical tour of Italy and Sicily, took
ship to return home to Corinth. The crew, in order to seize his takings,
ANALOGIES forced him to jump overboard, but before doing so, allowed him a last song.
1. Arion, sketch for an oval picture, appar-
ently inserted by Boucher himself (see
The music charmed a dolphin, which carried him safely across the sea to
Fenaille, IV, 1907, p. 228) into a maquette by Corinth, where he was able to convict the sailors of their attempted crime. In
Maurice Jacques for one of the Gobelins the ballet, however, Arion brought a storm and shipwreck on the crew as —
tapestries with simulated paintings hung on a
simulated damask ground (see cat. 92; A& W —
can be seen to the left and stayed to marry one of the sirens, Leucosia.
figs. 950, 1370). Vertumnus and Pomona were depicted by Boucher in a number of
2. Vertumnus and Pomona (fig. 161), car- drawings, and again in a painting of 1763 in the Louvre. As related by Ovid
toon for a Beauvais tapestry from the series of
Metamorphoses (14.621-770), the story is of the virginal nymph
in the
Fragments d'Opera, first woven in 1758,
adapted to an upright format, 123V4 X 72 '/> Pomona, who devoted herself exclusively to her securely fenced orchards.
in., with minor changes in the figures and The orchard god Vertumnus, who was madly in love with her, managed to

2 43
 major alterations in the setting (essentially a gain admittance to them in various disguises so as to enjoy the sight of her.
product of the studio); sold in strips by Finally, he masked himself as an old woman so as to talk with Pomona and
Beauvais in 1829; first recorded in 1902 (exh.
London, no. one of a set of four
gain her confidence. Using various sophistries, he tried to convince her that it
cat. 39) as
cartoons in the collection of Mme [Munroe]* was wrong to deny her favors to a lover. Failing in this, he returned to his
Ridgway, who lent them to her son-in-law, the own shape, and lo!, where arguments had failed, his godlike beauty
marquis de Ganay, to adorn the dining room
prevailed. Typically for the French stage, in Roy's version Pomona was
of his Paris hotel; thence via the collections of
Reginald Vaile, Sir Joseph Robinson, and already secretly Jn love with Vertumnus, which is surely what is suggested by
Princess Ida Labia, to the California Palace of her by no means rebarbative expression as she listens to his pleading here.
the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, in 1967.
The theatrical themes of these two pictures were partly determined by their
Vertumnus and Pomona, red, black, and
3.

white chalks, 220 x 340 mm [more probablv context, since they were originally intended as overdoors in a room that was
drawn autonomously, than as a first thought to be hung with two tapestries, also designed by Boucher, whose subjects
for this or any other paintingj, Mfayor] sale,
were likewise to be taken from the ballet. These were the two scenes from the
21-22 Nov. 1859, lot 27; [PMiihlbacher] sale,

Paris, 17 Apr. 1899, lot 21; Trezel sale, Paris,

Fetes Vemtiennes and the Fetes de Thalie of which Boucher was reported in

17 May 1935, lot 21. 1748 as having shown sketches and begun the pictures but on which no
4. Le Repos de Venus, red, black, and white further progress had been made by 1752 (Engerand, 1900, p. 56; A&W doc.
chalks, 292 x 440 mm
autonomous later [an
320). Uncertainty over their intended destination in La Muette could have led
variant, using the same pose as Pomona];

M.E.M. Hodgkins sale, Paris, 30 Apr. 1914, to the stagnation of the project, or it may have been Boucher s failure to
lot 9 [bought by Lucien Kraemer]; private complete the cartoons for the tapestries that resulted in a differently decorated
coll., New York (Slatkin, 1972, pi. 35; 1979,
room which overdoors of Arion and Vertumnus and Pomona were no
in his
fig. 80); copied by Bonnet [?] (Slatkin, 1972,
pi. Christie's sale, London, 26 Nov. 1973,
longer appropriate.
34;
lot 353), and engraved bv him in 1774 (J-R
384)-

57 La Lumiere du Monde
Oil on shaped canvas
69 x x 130 cm)
51 in. (175

Signed bottom right:/ Boucher7'1750

Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
S&M673 A&W340
PROVENANCE
Fxhibited in the Salon of 1750, no. 23, as "une Antoine Bret wrote in his measured obituary of Boucher that: "Among the
Nativite,ou Adoration des Bergers, pour la devotional pictures that he did, the Nativity and the simple, graceful subject
Chapelle du Chateau de Belle- Vue"; (until
after 1762, when Dezallier d'Argenville, in the
of Holy Families were most frequently the objects of his choice, because they
2nd edition of his Voyage pittoresquc des did not distancehim from either the graces or the beauty that he loved to
environs de Paris, not only retains, but ex- paint, and which he effortlessly discovered in the shape of the Virgin and of
pands, his mention of it from the 1755
the Child" ("Dans le nombre de Tableaux de devotion quil a faits, la Nativite
edition); garde-meuble in the vestibule of the
Hotel de Pompadour [now the Elysee] in 1765 & le sujet simple & gracieux des Saintes Families font les objets quil a choisis
(Cordey, 1939, p. 91, inv. 1235/83); Catalogue le plus souvent, parce quils ne Veloignaient, ni des graces, m de la beaute quil
des Tableaux Originaux de differens Maitres
aimait a peindre, & quil retrouvait aisement dans la figure de la Vierge &
. . . &c de feue Madame la Marquise de
Pompadour, grande rue du Faubourg dans celle de PEnfant" [Bret, 1771, p. 52]).
S.-Honore (Remy), 28 Apr. ff. 1766, lot 16: Normally, the painter of an altarpiece had no choice in the theme of what
"Une Nativite. Ce beau
par l'exposition qui en a ete faite au Sallon du
Tableau, tres-connu
he was to paint —hence, indeed, the austerer subject matter of Boucher's other

Louvre, & dont on trouve PEstampe gravee

actual altarpieces (e.g., cat. 77), as opposed to his religious cabinet pictures,

par E. Fessard ." [bought for 722 livres by

. .
which do indeed center around the theme of the Holy Family. However, in
"M. Dennery"]; Catalogue des Tableaux des the case of the present picture his tastes and, more importantly, those of his
Trois Ecoles &c, du Cabinet de feu M.
. . .

patron, had free rein. For this painting was the altarpiece in the private chapel
d'ENNERY, ECUYER, rue Neuve-des-bons-
Enfans, no. 10 (Remy & Miliotti), 11 Dec. ff.
of Mme de Pompadour in her Chateau de Bellevue. "Chapel" is perhaps to
1786, lot 26 [sold for 160 livres]; baron de dignify its location too much, since it was really more of an antechamber,
Pontalba, Paris (exh. cat. i860, Paris, no. 345);
with the altar in a kind of cupboard, which, when closed, removed any

244
^45
[Davillier] sale, Paris, 24 Mar. 1864, lot 35; indication of the intermittent religious function of the room (see Biver, 1933,
coll. outside France until c. 1932; private[?]
pp. 60-62, 170).
coll., Paris (cf. Jeannerat, 1932); M. Destrem,
Chateau de Crespieres; following World War
It is a conspicuous omission on the artist's part that, up until this time, he
II, recovered by the Offices des Biens PriveS* had painted no devotional pictures whatsoever, despite the welcome
and allocated to the Louvre, by which depos- opportunity to work on a large scale that altarpieces would have afforded him
ited in the Musee de Lyon in 1948.
(his early pictures of Old Testament subjects should be seen as following in

ENGRAVING the footsteps of old masters and the Italian School, rather than as any
La Lumiere du Monde, engraved by Etienne satisfaction of piety). Nor was Mme de Pompadour, who liked to surround
Fessard in 1761 (presented to the Academy to
herself with the more freethinking spirits of the day, conspicuous for
obtain protection of copyright on 4 Apr.) and
published with the dedication: A Madame de religiosity. It is noteworthy that this altarpiece was commissioned before the
Pompadour Dame du Palais de la Reine death of her only daughter and the desire to make her position at Court
(A&Wfig. 991).
unimpregnable, which impelled her toward manifestations of devotion from

REDUCTIONS around 1754 onwards. Given its destination, the present altarpiece could not
i. En grisaille on panel, c. 25.5 x 19 cm, be on the large scale that Boucher might otherwise have welcomed, while
Catalogue Raisonne des Tableaux, Bronzes, Mme de Pompadour's reasons for commissioning it probably had more to do
Terres Cuites . . . &c, qui composent le Cabinet
with the necessity of a private chapel to the status of Bellevue, than with any
de feu M. CAYEUX, Sculpteur, Ancien Officier
de I' Academic de S. Luc, s.l. (Remy), Dec. 1 1
other consideration (but one should not overlook her commissioning of three
ff. 1769 (engravings and drawings), 8 Jan. ff. pictures from Vien for the church at Crecy in 1752). Even so, in view of the
1770 (paintings and sculpture), lot 49: "La
other religious pictures that she was to obtain from Boucher (e.g., cat. 68),
Nativite de J. C, belle esquisse terminee,
peinte en grisaille sur bois: hauteur 9 pouces 6 one must wonder whether, by allocating this commission to him rather than
lignes, largeur 7 pouces, par le meme Francois to, say, Carle Vanloo, she was not deliberately trying to extend her favorite
Boucher: e'est le petit tableau d'un grand,
painters range. It should be remembered, however, that it appears to have
d'apres lequel Etienne Fessard a grave l'Es-
tampe, ou au bas on La Lumiere du lit:
been only in the year that he painted this that she started to employ Boucher
monde" [bought bv Menageot for 33 livres]; on her own account.
?continuation of a forced sale of 28 Aug. ff. Whatever the actual reasons behind the commissioning of this picture, it
1776, one of the rooms of MM. les Religieux
de Mercy, rue de Chaume,
must be allowed that it represents a striking expansion of Boucher's range on
la in the Marais
(Hayot Delongpre & Joullain), 25 Feb. ff. the one hand, and a notable relaxation of the traditional austerity of the
1777, under Miniatures, lot 140: "Une jolie altarpiece on the other. One of the most conspicuous things about this picture
Exquisse, par F Boucher, qui represente la
is the difficulty of fitting its subject into any of the accepted categories of
naissance de Jesus-Christ; pro]et d'un Tableau
de la Chapelle de Bellevue." Christian iconography. It is not exactly a Nativity, in view of the extraneous
2. With shaped top, c. 61 x 40.5 cm, ? characters present and the absence of the ass (though the presence of the latter
Catalogue des Tableaux &c. apres le deces
. . .

is traditional rather than essential), nor does one shepherd constitute an

de M: Nicolas, Doreur et Marcband d'Es-
tampes, rue des Bons-Enfans no. 30 (Reg-
Adoration. What is more, on closer analysis, the figure on the far right turns

nault), 3 Nov. ff. 1806, lot 2: "La Nativite, out not to be a shepherd at all, but —with his hat and water gourd — rather
bon tableau connu par l'Estampe qu'en a grave more of a pilgrim. This apergu brings us closer to the true subject of the
Eti. Fessard, sous le titre de la Lumiere du
picture, and to the realization that, for once, the title of the engraving after it
Monde. Toile"; Notice de Tableaux &c. du
Cabinet de feu M. GUILLAUMOT, Directeur is truest to its content: La Lumiere du Monde —The Light of the World.
de la Manufacture imperiale des Gobelins, What is being conveyed, both pictorially —by the radiance of light from the
Hotel de Bullion (Regnault),
"La Nativite, Sujet gracieux de composi-
3.
15 Jan. 1808, lot 3.
divine Child —and by the selection of the protagonists, is that Christ's birth

tion et piquant d'effet, connu par l'Estampe de has brought light to the whole of mankind. newborn The witnesses of the
Fessard. 23 pouces sur 5 pouces. Toile, forme 1 babe are essentially types of humanity, ranging from old men and women,
chantourne du haut."
through those in their prime, to children. Although the old man must be
COPIES Joseph, the fact that he is consulting a scriptural-looking book, together with
1. By the abbe Richard de Saint-Non [?], the presence of the old woman with her hands clasped in veneration, and that
church of Pothieres (see G. Wildenstein, 1959,
p. 226, fig. 3), of which he was the abbe
of the dove clasped by the small boy — all carry irresistible overtones of the

commendataire. iconography of the Purification, when Simeon and Anna were the first to
2. ?Drawing prepared for Fessards engrav- acknowledge the divinity of Christ and to declare that he was to be: "A light
ing, black chalk heightened with white on (Luke
to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel" 2:32), a
bister paper, 400 X 290 mm (shaped top),
verse that is echoed by another at the beginning of the Gospel according to
Maurice Delacre Gutekunst & Klipstein,
sale,

Bern, 21 June 1949, part two (misc. proper- St.John (1:9), whence the engraving takes its title: "That was the true Light,
ties), lot 545. which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Not only is the ox the

246
Fig. 162.Study of a Woman with Her Hands
Together over an Urn. Albertina, Vienna.
Study for the Head of an Old
Fig. 163.
Woman. Boymans-van Beuningen Museum,
Rotterdam.

Fig. 164. Study of a Half-Kneeling Peasant

Girl Holding Child. Staatliche Kunsthalle,
Karlsruhe.

Fig. 165. Standing Figure of a Peasant with Fig. 166. Study for the Head of a Bearded Man Fig. 167. Study of Six Cherubim. Stadelsches
Hands Clasped Over a Staff. Sold Christie's, in Profile. British Museum, London. Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.
London, 29 March 1966.

symbolic beast of St. Luke, but in popular superstition, although the ox and
the ass together are supposed (in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew) to have
adored Christ and thus fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 1:3: "The ox knoweth
his owner, and the ass his masters crib," the ass is sometimes taken to
represent by his braying the refusal of the Jews to accept the revelation: "but
Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider" —hence perhaps its

omission from the scene. As for the trussed hen and the two eggs, it is hard
to know whether they too are intended to carry their symbolic overtones of
dawning light and resurrection, or whether they are simply Boucher's
underscoring of the simple rusticity of the birth in a stable, like the milk
churn on which the old woman supports her hands. In any event, the
unorthodoxy of the depiction was surely only permissible in the seclusion of

a private chapel.

Antoine Bret also seized the stylistic essence of the picture more justly in

his obituary of Boucher than any of the critics at the time of its exhibition in

247
 ;. Painting after Fessard's engraving, 9/7 the Salon of 175c, when, following Dezallier d'Argenville (1762, p. 32), he
in., formerly R. Saunders coll., London (see
J. declared that Boucher in his Nativity and Holy Families emulated Carlo
H. Baily, 19 12, p. 240 and fig. p. 234
4. Copy sketch, camaieu bistre clair, 45 /
Maratta, "Carluccio delle Madon[n]e." There is the same approximation to
32 cm, Mme Gustave Meunie coll. (exh. cat.* ideal types of figures that profess to be observed from humble models, and
1932, Paris, no. her sale, Galerie Charpen-
1); there is the same unnatural clarity and unreal lighting, in a picture apparently
tier, Paris, 14 Dec. 1935, lot 61 [carelessly
dedicated to the correct observation of chiaroscuro. The latter phenomena
described].
are, of course, quite intentional, in that the main object of the picture is to
convey the light divinely communicated from the heavens to the Christ
1. "Une femme vue a mi-corps, elle a les
Child, and thus radiated forth into the world.
mains jointes au-dessus d'une Urne ... a la

sanguine & au crayon noir, rehausse de blanc"

The result was, however, clearly not sympathetic to all tastes. It was, no

(251 X 248 mm; study for the old woman j,

doubt, because of the associations of the picture with the person who
Huquier's posthumous sale, 9 Nov. ff. 1772, commissioned it that it had been ejected from Bellevue some time between
lot 386 [sold with other drawing in lot for 12

livres]; Herzog Albert von Sachsen-Teschen

1762 and Mme de Pompadour's death in 1764. This ejection tallies with the

(d. 1822;, Vienna; Albertina, Vienna (inv. subsequent assertion of the by then royal status of Bellevue, in which
14.271, [Schonbrunner & Meder, I, p. 11; AA Boucher's essentially rustic presentation of the Nativity (which Biver [1933,
128, fig. 24] (fig. 162;.
p. 174] saw as in keeping with the rural tone of much of Mme de
2. Head of an Old Woman, red, black, and
white chalks, 205 X 178 mm: engraved by Pompadour's decoration of the chateau; was replaced by an Adoration of the
Demarteau as no. 15c in 1767, when in the Kings by Doyen in 1769/70. What is more surprising is to find that the
cabinet of Mme [Blondel] d'Azaincourt (J-R picture was not one of those that had belonged to his sister that Mangny
posthumous sale of Prof. August Grahl
Dresden, Sotheby's, London, 27 April 1885,
attempted to retain, since he allowed it to be included in her posthumous sale
of
lot34 [bought by Herbage for £4]; Property of
C without the justification of difficulties over accommodating a picture of its

a Gentleman living in Italy; Sotheby's. size, such as may have compelled him to let the Lever and the Coucher du
London, 7-10 Dec. 1920, lot 384; Boymans-
Soleil go;. It fetched, however, a very respectable sum in that sale, while
van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam II
[A &W fig. 983] (fig.
Fessard's engraving of it, which was one of his finest, continued to sustain its

3. Half- Kneeling Peasant Ctrl Holding reputation even during the long periods when the painting itself was lost to
C.bdd (plausibly a first study for the girl in the
view.
picture,), black chalk, stumped, heightened
with white on beige paper, 47c X 296 mm,
VC'ildenstein, Paris; Michael Griinwald, 495 X 26c mm, Mrs. Maud Strauss coll., sold ANALOGIES
Munich, from whom acquired by the Staat- posthumously, Christie's, London, 29 Mar. 1. Head of a Bearded Man in Profile,

liche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, in 1977 (A & VC' 1966, lot 167 (here fig. 165,. Looking Right (?over an offset of a study for
fig. 984; exh. cat. 1983, Karlsruhe, no. 26; 6. Head of a Bearded Man in Profile the shepherd pilgrim), brown and ocher chalks
here fig. Looking Left (study for the shepherd pilgrim,, with heightening in white, 181 X 146 mm, Ian

4. Head of an Old Man, Looking Down red, black, and blue chalks touched with Woodner coll. (exh. cat. 1973, New York, no.
(study for Joseph;, red chalk, heightened with white, stumped, on buff paper, 185 X 144 100).
white, 24c X 194 mm, Herzog Albert von mm: Colnagh Mr Bruce Ingram coll; 2. iHead of a Sursling, drawing by Carle

Sachsen-Teschen (d. 1822;, Vienna; Albertina, British Museum (inv. 1963. I2.I4.4;A&W Vanloo, engraved by Demarteau no. 264 (exh.
Vienna (inv. 12.182; AA 429; A& W fig. 9- fig. 987; here fig. 1 cat. 1977, Nice, no. 53 1). [Could Boucher
5. Standing Figure of Peasant with Hands Cherubim, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut,
7. Six possibly have borrowed this study, in the
Clasped over a Staff black chalk and gray- Frankfurt-am-Main (inv. 16c; A & VC' fig. 1 absence of one of his own? The resemblance is

wash highlighted with white on buff paper, 99c; here fig. 167 striking.]

j 8 Apollo Revealing His Divinity to Isse

Oil on canvas
50^/4 / 62 in. (129 X 157. 5 cm;
Signed bottom right:/ Boucher ijso
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Tours
(inv. 794-i-D

S&M82 A&W355

248
 '

PROVENANCE
There is a mystery behind this picture, to which we regrettably do not have
?Direction des Batiments du Roi; gallery of
the chateau of Chateauneuf-sur-Loire (Cha-
the key. On the one hand, it is evident from the picture itself that the face of
teauneuf-sur- Loire, 1786, no. 8: "Un sujet Issemust be a portrait. On the other there is the problem that, though the
allegorique representant le lever du Soleil. Ce
painting was described in detail in the royal accounts when it was painted, it
charmant Tableau estdu meilleur tems de ce
Maitre, & fait honneur a l'Ecole Francoise. II
came to the museum in Tours not from one of the royal chateaux, but from
est peint sur toile, & pone 3 pieds 8 pouces de Chanteloup, the chateau of the due de Choiseul (but, from 1786, of the due
haut, sur 4 pieds ic pouces de large"); re- de Penthievre). Somehow associated with this is the fact that Boucher's bill
moved to the Chateau de Chanteloup
1794 in
claiming that the picture was painted by order of Lenormant de Tournehem,
and sequestrated, appearing in the inventory of
25 thermidor, l'an II as Apollon visitant Egle the directeur general des Batiments du Roi, from whom all such commissions
sous la figure de feu[e] la dame Pompadour; had to originate, was annotated by the premier Peintre, Charles- Antoine
removed to the former Palais Archiepiscopal.
Coypel, the usual channel for such commands (see Locquin, 1912, p. 4, n. 1),
to form the nucleus of the subsequent
museum. with "L'ordonnance nest pas passee par mes mains" ("the authorization did
not pass through my hands"), although he ultimately sanctioned payment
(A & \Y II, p. 57).

^49
 .

DRAWINGS Three identifications of been proposed: de Nolhac (1925,

Isse have

pp. 123-25), the biographer of Mme de Pompadour, saw Isse as the royal
i. Figure of Apollo, formerly Delestre coll.,

Paris (A & W
fig. 1046).
mistress; "local tradition" in Tours saw her as the bride whom the comte de
2. Naiad Enlaced by Another's Arms, red,
black,and white chalks, 320 x 450 mm, Stainville, the later due de Choiseul, married on 12 December 1750, Mile
David-Weill coll.; Georges Wildenstein; Bar- Crozat (Lossky, 1962, no. while the copy of the central portion of the
5);
bara Hutton; John Goelet; Slatkin, New York;
Art Institute of Chicago (exh. cat.
picture in the Musee des Beaux- Arts in Dijon used to be entitled Apollon
1976,
Chicago, no. 43; here fig. 168). enseignant Mme Deshoulieres.
3. Two Cupids on the Ground, black chalk, The last of the three can be dismissed immediately: Antoinette Deshou-
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
lieres (1638-1694) was a bluestocking whose writings included the tragedy
A& W
(60. 175.

4.
1 ;

Cupid on His
fig.

Belly,
1047; here fig.

Holding a Lyre, sale,

169).
Genseric and some Reflexions morales written on her deathbed scarcely of —
Paris, 23 Nov. 1953, lot 76 (A & W
fig. 1048). the right period or character for Boucher's melting nymph! (there is a genuine
portrayal of her as a shepherdess, by Mignard, at Chantilly). The
COPIES
identification as Mile Crozat has more to be said for it. This hypothesis
1 Of central group only, entitled Apollon
enseignant Mme Deshoulieres, 97 x 129 cm, would presuppose the picture having originally been painted by official
ex-coll. Dard, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. command —even if this bypassed the usual channels —and then having been
Musee de Romarantin.
2.
made over to de Stainville, who would have had his bride s features
3. Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlung (inv.

12 937)-
substituted for those of the original nymph. This has the merit of accounting
4. Oil sketch of the two nymphs, executed for the distinctlyawkward way in which Isse s head sits upon her shoulders
in Tours 1892 by Berthe Morisot, 64 x 79
in
(if Boucher were having to work from something like a miniature for Mile
cm (Bataille &
Wildenstein, 1961, no. 320,
Crozat s features, he would have had to conform to the angle at which it
P- 45. rig- 3 2 3; A& W fig. 1050).
showed her face), and also for the discrepancy between the year in which
Boucher claimed that he had painted the picture, and the year with which he
dated it. The chief drawback to this hypothesis is that de Stainville s marriage
to Mile Crozat antedated by a couple of years his notorious rapprochement
with Mme de Pompadour, through the betrayal to her of the letters of the
king to his cousin Mme de Choiseul-Romanet (see Fleury, 1899, pp. 88-107).
At the time the picture was painted he was still essentially only a military
figure, on the fringes of the court, detested by Mme de Pompadour for his
cruel epigrams at her expense, and consequently most unlikely to have
secured for himself a picture painted by her favorite painter at the command
of her husband s uncle. It is also far from certain that this picture ever even
belonged to Choiseul. Although it came from Chanteloup, it is not (unlike
the fixed overdoors by Houel) very likely to have been left there after his
death in 1785 when the chateau was acquired by the king and made over to
Fig. 168. Naiad Enlaced by Another's Arms. the due de Penthievre the next year.
Art Institute of Chicago.
The identification of Isse with Mme de Pompadour might find support
from a hypothesis as to how this rare subject came to be painted. The rather
obscure antique myth shown here was one that had been turned into a

pastorale heroique called Isse by Houdard de La Motte, with music by

Destouches. It was given its first performance before Louis XIV at the
Trianon was revived by the Opera on several occasions, the last
in 1697. It

being the winter of 1741/42, when Boucher designed the opening set (see cat.
47). Over the winter of 1749/50 it was given three times in the private theater
created by Mme de Pompadour at Versailles, on 26 November, 16 and 22
December (see Theatre, IV). Mme de Pompadour took the title role, while
Apollo was played by the vicomte de Rohan. The theme of the pastorale was
surely congenial to her, in that it concerned Apollo casting aside his glory and
disguising himself as a shepherd called Philemon in order to win the love of
the shepherdess Isse for himself alone (so apposite was it that a ballet called

Fig. 169. Two Cupids on the Ground. The Aegle, with an almost identical theme, had been written by Laujon and put
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. on at the Theatre des Petits Appartements in January 1748):

250
 Je veux, sans le secours de ma grandeur supreme
Essayer de plaire en ce jour:
Qu'il est doux d'avoir ce qu'on aime
Par les seules mains de I 'Amour!

The present painting is certainly not a straightforward depiction of these

performances; not only are its cavorting cupids clearly unstageable, but the
setting for the moment
when Apollo reveals himself in his true
depicted,
guise, shows no sign of the solitude giving way to the palais magnifique with

the Horae on clouds, demanded by the transformation in the last act.

Moreover, the painting would appear to have been commissioned before the
piece was staged. Not necessarily, however, before it was planned.
Mme de Pompadours self-identification with the subject seems evident;
whether she is actually depicted in the present picture is less easy to affirm.
We are hampered by the fact that all Boucher's finished portraits of her date
from later in her life, when her health had been undermined and she had
grown gaunt. Even so, it is hard to equate the puffy, rather featureless face of
Isse with hers as it seems earlier to have been (see cat. 59). Possibly, since
Apollo is certainly no portrait, only a generalized likeness to a lady of fashion

was intended. If the picture were to have been painted for Pompadour, we
would be handed the likeliest explanation of the irregular way in which it was
commissioned. Mme de Pompadour would have used the authority of her
uncle in commissioning it from Boucher; but, since he had not in fact

ordered it, it was at first repudiated by Coypel.

This still supplies no explanation as to how the painting ever arrived at

Chanteloup. The devot due de Penthievre was not one of Mme de

Pompadour's intimate circle, so that it is hard to imagine her having given it

to him. Yet it does not feature posthumous inventory of her

in the very full

effects, or in her brother's sale. Perhaps, since he was after all to commission

the four overdoors of Sylvia and Amyntas from Boucher only five years later
(see cat. 62, 63), one should consider the possibility that it was also he who

got Boucher to make this idealized portrayal of his wife in her lifetime. As a
prince du sang, he might have been in a position to order it through irregular
channels. In the absence of further evidence, the question must still remain
open.
(Since writing the above I have been sent, thanks to the kindness of M. A.
Bezangon of Chateauneuf-sur-Loire and Mile Marie- Anne Dupuy respec-
tively, transcriptsfrom the exceptionally rare printed catalogue of the gallery
of pictures in the due de Penthievre s chateau of Chateauneuf-sur-Loire [see
Chateauneuf-sur-Loire, 1786], and from the inventory of pictures removed
from there to de Penthievre 's other chateau of Chanteloup prior to the
sequestration of which was taken on 25 thermidor, l'an
all his collections, II

[PAugust 1794; Archives Nationales F 17 1270B]. Between them, they

establish beyond a doubt that the picture came to Chanteloup from
Chateauneuf-sur-Loire, and thus it cannot have had anything to do with de
Choiseul or his wife. Unfortunately, neither the ill-informed author of the
Chateauneuf catalogue, nor the rather better-informed author of the
inventory of sequestration was aware of the true subject of the picture [hence
its presence in the two compilations having previously escaped notice], so
what they say about it cannot be relied upon. It is, however, just possible that
the title given to the picture by the inventory, Apollon visitant Egle sous la

251
 figure de feufej la dame Pompadour [Apollo (who is) in the guise
visiting Egle

of the late lady Pompadour] reflects a genuine tradition. The plots of Aegle
and Isse were virtually interchangeable, and Mme de Pompadour played in
both [see above]. Yet if the picture does represent her, rather than the
duchesse de Penthievre, we still need to discover how the picture could have
left her hands for those of the austere due, who was certainly not one of her
circle.)

59 Sketch for a Portrait of Mme de Pompadour

Oil on paper laid down on canvas
23/2x 18 in. (60 x 45.5 cm)
Musee du Louvre, Paris (R.F. 2142)

PROVENANCE
Left to the Louvre in the bequest of baron Jeanne- Antoinette Normant d'Etioles, nee Poisson, and subsequently
le
Basile de Schlichting. 1914.
marquise de Pompadour (1721-1764), became Louis XV's mistress in the
spring of 1745; Boucher began to work for her at Bellevue in 1750 (see cat.
COPY
P. Romanelli coll. (Nolhac, 1925, pp. 113-14, 57); his first portrait of her is dated 1756 (cat. 64). This delay, this absence of
color pi. facing p. 112, in lieu of the Schlichting any portrait of her by her favorite artist while she was still in her prime, while
picture discussed and illustrated in the 1907
she was still the king's mistress in deed as well as title (relations between them
edition, pp. 58-59 and color pi. facing p. 56).
ceased some time in 1750), never seems to have occasioned surprise. Special-
ists have of course known of references to an earlier portrait on the one hand,
and of the present sketch and its fellows on the other, but no attempt appears
to have been made to ponder the possible relationship between the two. If

comparisons have been made at all, they have been with much later portraits

of Mme de Pompadour, and it has been assumed that the present sketch or
one of its fellows is a preparation either for the seated portrait in a similar
kind of setting dating from 1756, or for the standing portrait in a garden,
dating from 1759 (A & W 522).
We know, however, that there was a portrait of Mme de Pompadour by
Boucher that he was finishing in earlv 1750; for on 1 March that year she
wrote to her brother, then only the marquis de Vandieres, to say, "I shall take
great care not to send you my portraits by Liotard, but I am going to send
you the copy of one done by Boucher, which is charming, and which [the
original, not the copy, as her subsequent letter of 15 June makes clear] he will

finish from me" (Pompadour, 1878, p. 37). Her brother had left for his grand

tour of Italy in December 1749, so presumably the portrait had not been
begun then, or he would have been aware of it. Subsequent letters have her
sending off the copy on 26 April: "it is very like the original, not much like
me; but still quite pleasing" (Pompadour, 1878, p. 50); and then on 15 June
sending him in Genoa "the first original by Boucher, which he has retouched
from me, and which is better than the copy that I sent you in Rome"
(Pompadour, 1878, p. 57).

None of this gives any indication of what the picture was like, but there are
certain clues in the correspondence. In the first place, she calls it "grand"
(large). This may simply have been in contrast to the portrait on a snuffbox
that shewas delaying having made, on the grounds that the need for the
former was more pressing. However, she mostly talked of the copy of the

*5 2
 Boucher in the same breath as that of another, of Vanloo's portrait of the

king. This is almost certainly the full-length state portrait that Carle Vanloo
painted in 1750 (exh. cat. 1977, Nice, no. 299), after waiting almost a year for
her copy of which (since the original itself had not been completed), she was
prepared to settle for a head alone (Pompadour, 1878, p. 70). It is evident that
both pictures were intended as a kind of reinforcement of de Vandieres's status
on his travels: the one a mark of his sovereigns favor, and the other a re-
minder of his kinship with the power behind the throne. That is at any rate
the implication of Mme de Pompadour's statement that she was giving
priority to Boucher's picture over the portrait box "in view of the fact that I

believe the large portrait more urgent for the use that you want to make of it"

(Pompadour, 1878, p. 37). would have been hung in state

Either her portrait
in his lodgings —
for the proper effect of which a full-length would have been
—
needed or it would have been given away as a diplomatic gift for a similar
Fig. 170. Sketch for a Portrait of Mme de function (hence her ultimately sending the original). Similarly, her readiness
Pompadour. Private collection, England. when the picture arrived back in France, as her brother was on the way

2 53
 home, to "have it placed wherever you tell me to" (Pompadour, 1878, p. 81),

also suggests a picture of some consequence.

It would also appear that Mme de Pompadour had turned to Boucher, who
was scarcely known for his portraits, because of her notorious difficulties

with Maurice-Quentin de la Tour over the full-length pastel of her that he

finally completed in 1755 (see Magnier, 1904); for on 28 May 1750 she wrote
to her brother, "I am very glad that you are pleased with my portraits; thev
were found very pretty here, but little like. Still, since it is the best there is, I

have sent it to you. There is done with de Latour,

absolutelv nothing to be
his madness increases by the hour" (Pompadour, 1878, p. 55). Given the fact

that the picture that de la Tour finally executed of her is not only full length,
but shows her surrounded by evidence of her artistic tastes (Monnier, 1972,
no. 74), one is tempted to speculate that what she obtained from Boucher was
— —
what at this stage she despaired of getting from de la Tour; and even
whether de la Tour was to take his cue from Bouchers sketch.
This would very much suggest a picture with the character of the present
portrait —the books, the music, the portfolios, the globe: all are in both.
Man\- of these elements were of course to recur in the seated portrait of 1756
(cat. 64), but we can hardly conjecture that the 1750 portrait was simply a
prime version of that, since the other was a completely new work, exhibited
in the Salon. If one looks at the apparent age of Mme de Pompadour in this
sketch (and there is no question that it is she, as not only the likeness to the
later seated portrait but also the tower from her arms on the bookbinding
make plain), nothing opposes a dating to 1750. If anvthing, she appears rather
younger than twenu -eight; but that is possiblv because the artist has suc-
ceeded in capturing the vivacity and mobihtv of her face, which — rather than
a static beautv '
—were her distinguishing assets (see E. & J.
de Goncourt,
1878, p. 13).
It is certainly hard to imagine two such sketches as the present one and the
variant in oil on canvas in a private collection in England (fig. 170; A & W
520) — which shows her in the same setting but before a dressing table, with
her hat in her hand, about to go out for a walk —having been made with no
finished picture resulting. Yet the curious thing is that there appears to be no
record of such a picture, either in her brother's posthumous sale or elsewhere,
the possible references in her letters to her brother aside, and that no such
portrait of her survives. The lack of contemporary references is not signifi-
cant. We know virtuallv none of the portraits of Mme de Pompadour from
either contemporary reports or engravings; they led a very private existence
in the apartments of herself and her circle. That no such full-scale portrait

survives could be ascribable to its greater vulnerability in the Revolution.

There is, however, one picture that sounds as if it could have been the final

version for which this and the other oil sketch were preparations. This is a

painting that belonged, as did the 1758 replica of the 1756 portrait, to Henri
Didier, who exhibited it in the revelatorv exhibition of i860 (Pans, no. 76,
195 x 130 cm; it is possible that this was "le portrait en pied de Mme. de
Pompadour, a vingt ans" that had previously been sold by de Cypierre to
—
someone in London see Thore, 1844, p. 3). In the catalogue of this
exhibition, Philippe Burty described the sitter thus: "Dressed in a yellow silk

dress open to the corsage, with a bouquet on her breast; standing before an
easel, and with her hand placed upon a drawings folder, she turns to look at a

bust placed to her right, on a table." The pose sounds similar to that in the

254
 1

present picture, with yet a further variation in the artistic pastime depicted,
and with the bust (which would presumably have been that of the king) to
give point to her sideways gaze. However, it should be noted that, while
Albert de la Fizeliere (i860, p. 298) thought that the head in the picture had
been the model for the posthumous mezzotint by Watson (J-R 1626), which
would suggest that it was actually a later portrait than any other known, the
Goncourt (1878, p. 426) doubted that it was by Boucher at all. The portrait
was not in Didier's posthumous sale in 1868, and does not appear to have
been recorded since — unless, of course, it has subsequently been quite
differently identified. Most tantalizing of all is the fact that de la Fizeliere

(i860, p. 298), contradicting his other suggestion that the head was the model
for Watson's mezzotint, quotes some unnamed memoirs to the effect that this
portrait of Mme de Pompadour at an easel was exhibited hors catalogue in the

Salon of 1763, despite the fact that it had actually been painted twelve to
fifteen years before. I know no corroboration of this, but it is hard to
of
imagine that de la Fizeliere would have invented this (decidedly unflattering)
reference.The more one studies nineteenth-centurv accounts of Boucher,
however, the more one sees that such spurious reference to supposed
documents is entirely possible.
In the present sketch, Mme de Pompadour is touching a harpsichord. The
effect is dilettantish; but in fact we know that she had been taught to play by
no less than Jelyotte, and that when she did so before her marriage in the
salon of Mme d'Angervilliers, the effect was such that the king's first mistress,
Mme de Mailly, flung herself into her arms in tears — little imagining that her
eventual successor could ever be this gifted little bourgeoise (Campardon,
1867, p. 5).

60 The
1
Toilet of Venus
Oil on canvas
43 x 33'A in. (108.5 x 85 cm)
Signed on the step, below right: / Boucher 175
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Bequest of William K. Vanderbilt, 1920 (20.155.9)
S&M283 A&W376
PROVENANCE
Appartement des bains. Chateau de Bellevue Georges Brunei, with a certain cruel aptness, has described this picture as
[whence probablv removed to an unknown
"Second Empire Boucher." Contemporary critics in France might have
location in 1757]; Hotel de Pompadour (Palais
de PElysee), 1764; marquis de Menars; his
described it as in the gout financier (see the 1706 edition of Brice's guide to

posthumous sale, 18 Mar. ff. 1782, lot 19: "Cet Paris, passim) or genre de fermier-general (exh. cat. 1958, Bordeaux, p. 9),
Artiste, qui avec juste raison a ete nomme le since it has all the array of rich stuffs and gilding, and is suggestive of the very
Peintre des Graces, a developpe dans ce sujet
idleness and superfluity that was condemned by opponents of the Rococo
tous ses talens & la fecondite de son genie
. .
." [bought by Chereau for 587 livres]: and of the newly and brazenly visible class that gave it encouragement (see
Catalogue des Tableaux . . . &c. apres le deces esp. Sebastien Mercier, 1782-78, who, though writing after the Rococo was
de M. DE BOULLOGNE, Conseiller d'Etat,
over, censured the attitudes and conditions that had sustained many of its
&c, son hotel, rue S. Honore (Folliot,
Delalande & Julliot/z/5), 7 May ff., deferred to manifestations in terms that would not have been possible at the time).
19 Nov. ff. 1787, lot 6: "Rien n'est plus In the case of this picture, the criticisms would not have been so wide of
interessant que ce Tableau, ou Ton trouve the mark, since it was commissioned bv the daughter of a financier, who was

255
 married to the nephew of a fermier-general, and was mistress of the king,
Mme de Pompadour (see Goncourt, 1878, pp. 1-5). What is more, this

picture and its pendant, the Bath of Venus, now in the National Gallery in

Washington (fig. 171; A& W 377), were both painted for the salle de bain of
the retreat that she had created for herself and Louis XV, the Chateau de
Bellevue (Dezallier, 1755, p. 29). She must have withdrawn the pictures from
there when she made the chateau over to the king in 1757 (see Piganiol de la

Force, 1765, IX, p. 46), so that they passed to her brother on her death in
1764 (they are listed in the posthumous inventory of her effects taken at the
Hotel de Pompadour [the present Palais de l'Elysee] as unframed and in a

vestibule, indicating that the}' had been brought in from elsewhere [Cordey,

i 5
6
 :

reunies a l'elegance des compositions de F. 1939, p. 90, inv. 1230]; nevertheless, Bellevue having been stripped of its

Boucher les graces inimitables qu'il a repan-

pictures when she relinquished it, it is improbable that they came directly
dues dans ses charmans Ouvrages" [bought by
Le Brun for either 460 livres or 640 livres];
from there). After her brothers posthumous sale (in which the paintings were
Catalogue d'une tres-belle Collection de Ta- separated) the Toilet of Venus was on the market for a while before passing to
bleaux d'ltalie, de Flandre, de Hollande et de a member of another family of financiers, the de Boullongne. During that
France. . . . &c, provenans du Cabinet de
period, a dealer, the print publisher Chereau, had it engraved by Janinet, and
A/*** [CalonneJ, rue de Clery (Le Brun), 21
Apr. ff 1788, lot 156: "Ce morceau, brillant de with delicious (and even intended?) irony, dedicated to the comtesse de
couleur, offre une des plus gracieuses composi- Coaslin (J-R 1225; A& W figs. 1105, 1106). For this dedicatee was none other
tions de ce Maltre" [bought by Marin for 390
livres]; Catalogue d'une tres-belle Collection
than Mme de Coislin, who, pushed forward by the prince de Conti for
de Tableaux d'ltalie . . . &c, provenant du political reasons in 1755-56, was the most serious rival for the position of
cabinet de feu M. Mann, rue de Clery (Le mistress to the king that Mme de Pompadour had ever had to face (Fleury,
Brun & Saubert), 22 Mar. ff. 1790, lot 336: "ce
1899, pp. 145-55), an d to whom she would have resigned her place but for
morceau, brillant du meilleur
de couleur est

temps de ce Maitre" [measurements inverted,

the stiffening supplied by the abbe de Bernis (1980, pt. 3, chap. 2).

sold for 316 livres to Le Brun;'e««e]; The irony of the dedication to Mme de Coislin was enhanced by the fact
? possibly Notice de Bons Tableaux [Mr.
that there was (without any suggestion of portraiture) an element of self-
Streiffer], Hotel des Fermes, Paris, 7 Oct.
1816, lot 6: "Venus a sa toilette. Tableau tres-
identification in Mme de Pompadour's commissioning of these pictures. It is

agreable" [sold for 32.50]; and then some or not simply that they were created for a room with erotic associations in her
all of the sales listed under S & M 279; sale of private retreat as mistress of the king; she had also played the title role in a
the comte de La Beraudiere, Paris, 18-20 May
piece called La Toilette de Venus, or Le Matin, in a ballet heroique called La
1885, lot 4 [sold for 133,000 francs to Lacroix];
William K. Vanderbilt coll., New York; by Journee Galante by Laujon that had been put on at the Theatre des Petits
whom given to the museum in 1920. Appartements in Versailles on 25 February 1750. It was no doubt with his

leading actress in mind that Laujon put into Mars's mouth:

ENGRAVING
La toilette de Venus, colored aquatint by J. F. A-t-on des Rivales a craindre
Janinent, published bv Chereau, and dedicated
to "Madame la Comtesse de Coaslin, nee
Avec les attraits de Venus ?
Mailly" (J-R 1225; A& W figs. 1105, 1106). In
the final state of this, the cupid coiffing Venus's
L'Amour, dont vous lancez les traits,

hair has been removed and her hair put into Pouroit seul a nos yeux vous rendre encore plus belle.
place.
Thoroughly Rococo though the composition may seem to us overall, there
are interesting exceptions to this in the forms of the ewer and, particularly,

the cassolette, or perfume burner. Not of any previously known form, this

squat object bizarrely combines a classically inspired tripod base wkhpieds de

biche, and mosdique chasing with antique acanthus-leaf moldings and a

pinecone finial. It is a heavy precursor of that graceful piece of neoclassical

furniture par excellence, the athemenne devised by Ebert (see Eriksen &
Watson, 1963). Even if there are reminiscences in it of the vanished perfume
burners from Louis XIV's Versailles (as seen in, for instance, Noel Coypel's
Dejanira), the intention was clearly to create something not so much Greek,
in the sense of an archaeological reconstruction, as "a la grecque," in the
sense employed by Mme Schneider, the wardrobe mistress of the Theatre des
Petits Appartements. The costume worn by Mme de Pompadour herself in
the breeches and title role of Le Prince de Noisy in 1749-50, for instance,
exemplifies the difference between the two (I leave this in the original French,
both to convey its full flavor and to avoid false equivalents)

Habit a la grecque en long de brillant d'argent peint en dessein courant,

armures de gaze d'or bouillonnee garnie de plumes nuees, manches et
piece de dessous de moire d'Angleterre argent avec agrements d'or,
mante de gaze d'or chamaree et bordee de rezeau d'argent, doublee de

Fig. 171. The Bath of Venus, signed and dated

taffetas vert d'eau, echarpe en ceinture de meme taffetas, garnie en

1751. National Gallery of Art, Washington; rezeau d'argent et franges a graine d'epinard, chaussure et brodequins
Chester Dale Collection. (Campardon, 1867, p. 457).

257
 —

Who knows, indeed, but what the four "grandes cassolettes de carton
modele et dore" listed as props in the same year (Campardon, 1867, p. 496)
were not even of the form depicted here? The picture is in no sense an
illustration of the stage, but it seems, like the latter, to revel in its own
artifice. It is only to be regretted that it is deprived of its full "richesse de
fermier-general" by having been divorced after the de la Berandiere sale from
its original rocaille frame, which is now in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in

Pans (see Cadres, 1910; pi. 47, outer frame).

61 The Blonde Odalisque

Oil on canvas
23/4 x 28V4 in. (59 X 73 cm)
Signed bottom left:/. Boucher 1752
Alte Pinakothck, Munich (1166)
(S&M1175, 1193) A&W411
Not in exhibition*

''Although the loan of this picture has ulti- There is an irresistible temptation when two such representative figures of
mately been denied to us, the entry relating to
eighteenth-century eroticism as Boucher and Casanova live in the same city at
it is retained here, both because of the paint-
ing's intrinsic importance, and because without
the same time to bring them together. It is a product of that "romantic ap-
itthe discussion of the Dark-Haired Odalisque proach to the past, which regards history, not as an incomplete record of an
would have been incomplete. unlimited number of lives and happenings, but rather as a well-ordered
pageant, in which all the favorite highlights and episodes turn up at their cue"
PROVENANCE
?Herzog Christian IV von Zweibriicken; (Gombrich, 1972, p. 38). Significantly, it is not a temptation that Casanova
Herzog Carl II August von Zweibriicken, who muddled and embroidered, but did not invent fell prey to when writ- —
?Schloss Carlsberg; evacuated to Mannheim in
ing his memoirs. Yet it was only after the publication of the later, annotated
1793; Herzog Maximilian Joseph von
Zweibriicken (succeeded 1795; later Elector editions of these that Boucher's two Odalisques came to be associated with a
[1799], and finally King [1806] of Bavaria); memorable episode in them, and were thus baptized with the name of Mile
evacuated via Bamberg to Munich in 1799, and O'Murphy, or "La Morphise."
temporarily to Ansbach in 1800-01;
Churpfalzbaierische Gemalde-Sammlungen
Not that passages in other memoirs and journals relating to the O'Murphy
(subsequently Konigliche Gemalde-Galerie), sisters, some of which appeared to associate them with Boucher, were not
Munich, until the opening of the Alte known before, but they do not evoke a specific picture, while those paintings
Pinakothek in 1836; Schloss Schleissheim;
brought back to Munich in 1909.
with which they have come to be linked subsequently had led a necessarily
underground existence for most of the nineteenth century. It was only when
OTHER VERSIONS the present picture was brought in from the gallery at Schleissheim to the
1 Jeune femme couchee sur le ventre, ?H6tel
became more widely known, and was
.

Alte Pinakothek in 1909 that it

de la Direction des Batiments, rue Saint-
Thomas-du-Louvre, cabinet particulier of the connected by August Mayer in the eleventh edition of the catalogue of the
marquis de Vandieres (subsequently suc- latter gallery (Alte Pinakothek, 1911, p. 15) with Casanova's memoirs, and
cessively de Marigny, and de Menars); thus with Mile Louise O'Murphy (Frankl, 1961, p. 139; albeit the draped
Catalogue des differens Objets de Curiosites
dans les Sciences et Arts qui composoient le
version of the Dark-Haired Odalisque had already been called Mile Victoire

Cabinet de feu M. le Marquis DE MENARS O'Murphy when exhibited in 1910 [exh. cat. 1910, Berlin, no. 146]).
. . . &c, son hotel, Place des Victoires (Basan Since nothing is known for certain about the origin of any of the versions
& Joullain), [18 Mar. -6 Apr.] 1782, lot 23:
"Une femme nue & couchee sur un sopha avec
of either Odalisque, it is necessary to glean what we can from the sources. To
de gros oreillers d'etoffe de soye. Ce sujet est begin with Casanova, even though his account is among the least reliable
connu par l'estampe qu'en a grave Demarteau; because it is most
also the specific about the picture involved, and thus the
sur toile, de 27 pouces sur 22 de haut" [bought
one that has done most to affix the name of Mile O'Murphy to the

258
 1

Odalisques (Casanova, i960, III, pp. 197-201): As he tells the story, in 175
he was introduced to two Flemish sisters living in Paris, the elder of whom
(who was the mistress of his friend Patu) he calls "La Morfi," and the
younger —who was only thirteen
— "la petite Morn," or "Helene." Unwilling
to pay six hundred francs for her virginity, he nonetheless disbursed half that
sum to spend twenty-five nights with her, and also six louis to a German
painter to depict her naked: "She was lying on her stomach, propping herself
up with her arms and breast on a pillow, and holding her head as if she was
lying on her back. The clever artist had depicted her legs and thighs in such a
way that the eye could not desire to see more. I had someone inscribe below:
O-Morphi. Not a Homeric word, but one that is nonetheless Greek. It

Fig. 172. Right Foot [fragment]. Musee Car- signifies Beauty."

navalet, Paris. The confusing statement about her head aside, this sounds just like a

description of a (maybe franker) version of Bouchers Dark-Haired Oda-

lisque (cat. 48). Yet that, as we know, had been painted by 1743 at the latest. It
emerges from what follows that the picture painted for Casanova was actually
a miniature, so it is perfectly possible that the German was in fact a minia-
turist (could he have been F. J. Kisling?), who simply borrowed the pose
from Boucher. He made a copy of his original picture for Patu, which the
latter took with a number of other portraits to Versailles, to show to Louis
XV through the mediation of a certain M. de Saint-Quentin (really the

premier valet de chambre, Quentin de Champcenetz, or the premier valet de

garde-robe, Quentin de Champlost?). The king's curiosity was aroused by the

M9
 5

by Joullain for 579 livres 19 sous; Demarteau one of "la Grecque," so the painter was instructed to bring her to Versailles.
only made engravings of Boucher's drawings, She went with her sister to a rendezvous in a cabinet de verdure with the
not his paintings, so A& W are probably king, whose identity they did not know. There, while the king was taking the
right in suggesting that the auctioneers were
mistakenly thinking of his engraving no. 4S portrait of "la petite" out of his pocket and assuring himself that the painter
(J-R 615), after a drawing of 1761 of a girl and a had not lied about her appearance (or she about her virginity), her elder sister
cupid, belonging to Bergeret, in which the
Catalogue
burst out laughing. When the king asked why, she replied, "I'm laughing
model's pose is virtually the same];
de Tableaux et Dessins de Maitres distingues because you're-as like as two peas to an ecu of six francs" (a remark that,

. . . &c. Une partie de ces Tableaux provien- expressed more flatly, is put in most other accounts into the mouth of "la
nent de la M. du CfharteauxJ, 96
succession de
Morphise" herself). She was paid a thousand louis to surrender her sister, the
rue de Clery (Remy & Le Brun), 2 May ff.
1791, lot 149: "Un autre tableau de Boucher
painter got fifty louis and made another copy of his successful picture of her,
[the preceding lot was Le fleuve Scamandre, and "la petite" herself was borne off to the Parc-aux-Cerfs. She had a son (or,
also from de Menars's collection], representant according to some accounts, a daughter) by the king after one year, was
un interieur de Boudoir, ou Ton voit une jeune
femme nue, groupee sur un sopha; des dra-
disgraced for a disrespectful remark about Mme de Pompadour after three,
peries ornent le fond. Hauteur 22 pouces; but was still given a dowry of four hundred thousand francs marry an
to
largeur 26 pouces. Toile." impoverished officer from Brittany. Casanova claims to have met a son of the
2. Catalogue des Tableaux &c, qui . . .

marriage at Fontainebleau in 1783.

composoient le Cabinet de feu M. de BILLY,
Ecuyer, ancien Commissaire des guerres, & The elements of this story all recur in most contemporary accounts and
ancien premier Valet de Garde-Robe du Roi, documents, albeit with small differences of detail. It is clear from these that
Hotel de Bullion (Paillet & Boileau), 15 Nov.
Casanova mingled memories of his own experiences with those of rumors
ff. 1784, lot 49: "Un Tableau tres-agreable de
ce Maitre & de son meilleur terns; il represente
that were current in Paris when he was there and forged them into a con-
une jeune femme nue, etendue sur un lit de secutive, but slightly fanciful, narrative. When contemporary journals and
repos, & des draperies de differentes couleurs;
police reports are compared, it can be seen that there is more than one amour
sa tete vue de profil porte le caractere de
of the king behind them.
l'attention; le devant du Tableau est orne de
quelques accessoires analogues a la composi- The two most reliable witnesses are the former foreign minister, the
tion;
& une
dont une cassolette, un coussin
rose. . . . Hauteur 22 pouces, largeur
a parfums marquis d'Argenson, and the inspecteur de police Meusnier —the one because
he was in close touch with circles at court, so as to learn the course that the
27 pouces. Toile" [bought bv Hamon for 700
livres; there may have been an earlier attempt king'samours took, and the other because his network of informants gave
to sell part of this collection, as "la succession him the best knowledge of the demimonde from which their objects were
de M. P***, Ecuyer, ancien Controleur or-
plucked (Soulavie, 1802, is utterly untrustworthy). D'Argenson s journals
dinaire des Guerres," on 25 May ff. 1784,
which included as lot 26 Une femme couchee (which should be consulted in the edition edited by Rathery for the Societe
by Boucher]. de l'Histoire de France rather than in the capricious edition produced by his
Variant, heavily restored version, with
3. namesake) have the additional advantage of allowing us to see him first
open book on a footstool beside her, variations
in the drapery, and the rose given two blooms
becoming party to a rumor, and subsequently returning to it on a number of
and moved to the right, 59.5 x 73.5 cm, occasions, as he pieced the truth behind it together.
signed bottom right:/ Boucher 17$ 1, Duke of D'Argenson was actually the earliest to record the rumor that the king had
Marlborough [not in the Blenheim Palace sales
started to have barely nubile mistresses procured for him by his valet de
in 1886]; Charles Fairfax Murray sale, Paris,

15 June 1914, lot 5; Jean Charpentier coll., chambre, Lebel, in his journal entry for 6 March 1753 (VII, 1865, p. 420). On
by the Wallraf-
Paris; acquired in 1941 the 30th he felt able to say, "It is certain that the King's present concubine is a
Richartz-Museum, Cologne [possibly the same
little girl of fourteen who used to serve the painter Boucher as a model; he
as 1].
saw her at Lebel's, his valet de chambre; he asked her if she recognized him;
ENGRAVING she said that she had seen his portrait on ecus" (Argenson, VII, 1865, p. 436).
Le lit de repos, published by Basan, c. 1770
The next day he referred to her again, more generally, as "the little girl of
(Klesse, 1972, fig. 67) [after Cologne type, in

reverse]. fourteen who posed as a model for painters" (Argenson, VII, 1865, p. 439).
The day after that he was able to amplify and refine the facts behind the
DRAWINGS
rumor yet further, and put a name to the girl:
1. ?Barbier sale, 19 July ff. 1779, lot 28:
"Academie de Femme couchee & vue par le This winter [the king] enjoyed the favors of a little girl, who used to
dos, aux trois crayons." pose as a model for painters, for a fortnight. He now has a proper
2. ?[Le Brun] sale, 10 Dec. ff. 1778, lot 185:
mistress of yet lower standing, if that were possible: she comes from the
"Un dessin au crayon noir & blanc, sur papier
bleu, representant une femme couchee, nue & ranks of wh*r*s by birth and calling. The woman known as Morfi dealt
vue par le dos. Hauteur 12 pouces, largeur 1 in secondhand clothes, and had a small shop in the Palais Royal ten
pouces" [sold for 12 livres].
years ago; the mother of four daughters, she sold their m*=:-d--:-nh::-::-ds,

260
 1

3- Black chalk, with red and white high- one after another, as they reached puberty. . . . The youngest, who is

lights, 22c x 36c mm, J. P. Heseltine coll., now the favorite sultana, worked for a dressmaker called Mme Fleuret,
London; H. de W coll. (AA JOI, fig. 93)
who procures lovers for her seamstresses. . . . [The king] sent his first
[apparently the original study from the life].

4. Red, black, and white chalks on cream valet de chambre, Lebel, to Paris to shop for a new m*::-d::-nh--:-::-d . . .

paper, 317 x 467 mm, inscribed in ink bottom he saw la petite Morfi, who is fourteen and a half, and he found her just
right/ Boucher del. ijs 1, art market, Paris
right . . . (Argenson, VII, 1865, pp. 440-41).
(exh. cat. 1964, Paris, Cailleux, no. 55) [appar-
ently a drawing worked up from the Cologne And so the story of Louise O'Murphy (1737-1815), the daughter of a pair of
type]. Irish rogues, and the future mother of a regicide (see Fleury, 1899, pp.
5. Beits coll., Amsterdam, in 1932 (men-
111-44), rolls on, through this and subsequent entries in d'Argensons journal
tioned in exh. cat. Paris, 1964, no. 55).
(MI, pp. 447, 456-57, 459, 463, 466-67; VIII and IX, passim).
PASTEL The crucial feature of d'Argensons account is the distinction that he came
Right Foot, rescued from destroyed pastel to make between "la petite Morfi" and the painter's model, whose enjoyment
version of Cologne type, 313 x 305 mm,
of the king's favors preceded hers, and was of much shorter duration. This
Musee Carnavalet, Paris (AA 538, fig. 100;
here fig. 172). can be corroborated from the papers of the inspecteur de police Meusnier,
from the archives of the Bastille, now preserved in the Bibliotheque de
COPIES
1' Arsenal. Though never published in extenso, they have been drawn on by
1. [None of the numerous Femmes conchies
in 18th-century and early 19th-century sales the comte de Fleury (1899), Dv Charles Samaran (1914), and by Adhemar
are described, but Planchenault (1933, p. 23 (1957). [I have not had the opportunity of consulting Gustave Capon's
copy
n.) claims that the description of a
Casanova a Paris (19 13).]
painted by Mile Lusurier for the marquis de
Livois appears to have been of the so-called
Meusnier, having given very much the same account as d'Argenson of how
Louise O' Murphy]: "la petite Louison," as he calls Louise O'Murphy, was procured by Lebel at
2. Reieuse, oval, 5c x 95 cm, bearing
Mile Fleuret's for the king (since the marquis d'Argensons father had been
signature, acquired by the Musee de Besancon
lieutenant de police de Paris, it is very possible that his son shared some of
in 1854, now in the Prefecture.

3. 60 X 74 cm, private coll., Vienna. Meusnier 's contacts), goes on deliberately to challenge the other version of the
4. Miniature by Charlier, 9 pouces x 1 story that had at first misled d'Argenson too: "Although this event is reported
pouces, Cabinet inter essant, contenant 9c Ta-
differently, in that it is said that it was through the copy painted by Boucher
bleaux en miniature . . . a zendre a I'aimable
chez .1/. CHARLIER, rue Therese, viewing for M. de Vandiere[s, Mme de Pompadour's brother, the later marquis de
20 Oct. ff. 1778, no. 6c. Marigny] that the king became desirous of seeing the original, it is not
5. ? Miniature by Charlier, without measure-
possible to adopt this opinion, or at least one vjould have to suppose a
ments, set in black tortoiseshell snuffbox, de
Billy sale, 15 Nov. ff. 1784, lot 225.
singular lack of judgment on M. de Vandieres part" (Fleury, 1899, p. 116). His
6. Miniature by Charlier, 2 pouces x 3
earlier detailing of the lives and occupations of the four O'Murphy sisters
pouces, baron [Baillet de Saint-Julien] sale, 14 makes it clear that his skepticism was justified, in that the only one to have
Feb. ff. 1785, lot 140.
19th-century French miniature, formerly
served as a model for painters was Brigitte, the second-born and ugliest, who
7.

attributed to Charlier, 51 x 73 mm, Wallace for that reason chiefly modeled her hands (Fleury, 1899, pp. 112-13); none-
Collection (Wallace Collection Catalogues, theless, her charms were sufficient to tempt the king for a moment after the
1980, no. 284).
disgrace of Louise —but then, as d'Argenson observed, "it is a quirk of our
monarch's to pass from one sister to another" (Argenson, IX, p. 144; Fleury
1899, p. 121). It is true that Vien, in a passage in his manuscript Memoires (of
which I am exceedingly grateful to Prof. Thomas Gaehtgens for sending me a

photocopy), claims that "La Morphise" was the model for the head of the
Virgin in the Visitation that he was commissioned to paint for the parish
church of Crecy on behalf of Mme de Pompadour in July 1752; but he only
supplies her name in a footnote, and may have been prompted by a faulty
memory, or an old man's tendency to fabulism.
Meusnier's mention of a revealing painting of a young girl painted by
Boucher for de Vandieres Marigny is nonetheless of great importance, since
we know that the latter did possess just such a picture, painted at this very
period.The source of our knowledge is a letter that de \ andieres wrote to
Xatoire in Rome on 19 February 1753, asking him for a painting
(Correspondance des Directeurs, X, 190c, p. 438-39):

261
 —

I have a private cabinet that I have sought to enrich with four pieces bv
the four most skillful painters of our School. I have a Yanloo, a Boucher,
and a Pierre already in place; you can well imagine that it is a Xatoire
that I lack. I am enclosing a piece of paper with this that is the exact size
of the picture — that is to say that the canvas 17 ponces long bv izVi
is

high. I should add that, since this cabinet is very little and very warm, I

have sought -to have only nudities: Carle shows Antiope Asleep; s picture
that of Boucher, a Young Woman Lying on her Stomach, and that of
Pierre, an Io. Choose whatever subject you like, as long as it has no
resemblance to any of those that I have cited, and as there is no or at —
least, barely any drapery. —
Carle Vanloo had received the commission for, and begun working on, his

by mid-October 1752 (Furcy-Raynaud, 1904, pp. 25-27), so we can

picture
presume that Boucher's dates from much the same epoch unless it was only —
now that it sparked off the idea of a set in de Vandieres s mind, and had in fact

been painted a little time before. It cannot have been long before, since it was
only in September 1751 that the latter had returned from his educational tour

of Italy with Cochin, Soufrlot, and the abbe Le Blanc, and not until March
1752 that the king gave him the former Hotel de Lesdiguieres as directeur
general des Batiments. 175 1 is the date on the Cologne version of the picture,
which may thus have been de Vandieres's.
What was probably another version of the picture was described in the
posthumous sale of M. de Billy, with a cassolette, a scent cushion, and a
single rose as accessories. All these occur in the present picture, which is

dated 1752, though its provenance from the gallery in Zweibriicken must
make it doubtful whether even this example once belonged to de Billy, rather
than having been an autograph replica for Herzog Christian IV — alias

Bouchers patron and Mme de Pompadour's friend, the due de Deux-Ponts (it

should be remembered that the posthumous sale of the latter s pictures in

Paris in 1778 was only ot those from the galene du petit chateau in Zwei-
briicken, which tell to, and whose contents were disposed of by, the dowager
duchess, see cat. 73, 74).

two surviving autograph versions of the

Nevertheless, the dates on these
Blonde Odalisque lend further support to the distinction made by d'Argen-
son and Meusnier between Boucher's model and Louise O'Murphy, for thev
both antedate the time at which she became the king's mistress. It is true that
in April 17^4 Meusnier estimated the affair to have been in existence for three
years (Samaran, 1914, p. 65), but the due de Crov only put it at eighteen
months January 1754 (Crov, I, 1906, p. 206), while it was probably even
in

less than that, since both d'Argenson and Barbier (III, 18 51, p. 453) only
breathe the first word of it in March 1753, an d as Barbier remarked (III,

18 5 1, p. 459) —no secret could be kept for long at court, whatever the
precautions taken.
Taken together, the evidence does suggest that Louis XV enioyed the favors
of a nubile voung girl who had posed for Boucher and other painters, but
that this affair preceded the much more enduring one with Louise
O'Murphy. What is more, the Odalisque has been plausibly identified in

other pictures by Boucher, which suggests a professional model rather than

"la Morphise"; the latter is described by Meusnier (p. 115) as being rather
long in the face and "brune" (dark-haired) like her sisters, rather than round-
faced and light-haired (by eighteenth-century standards) as the model appears

262
 to be here. One might be inclined to think that somebody had commissioned
Boucher to paint this as a portrait of his mistress, as I have suggested for the
D Ark-Haired Odalisque (cat. 48). If the Blonde Odalisque is indeed the
painters' model whose favors Louis XV enjoyed, it is unlikely that she had
previously been anyone's mistress, since we know from d'Argenson (VH,
1S65, p. 439) that what impelled the king to barely nubile virgins was his

dread of venereal disease; a predecessor in her favors would not have been
tolerated. What is possible is that the picture was indeed painted to whet the
king's appetite.

The fact that M. de Bill}" owned not only a version of the present picture,
but also a snuffbox apparently containing a miniature of by Charlier (which it

was not in the posthumous sale of de Yandieres Menars, making it unlikely

that de Bilk's was the same picture), suggests that his version was painted for

—
him personally all the more so in that, according to the introduction to the
catalogue of his posthumous sale, his usual preference was for the Italian
School (see Almanack, 1777, p. 181); his Bouchers (which included the Pari

and Synnx now in the National Gallery in London, and the sketch of
Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus now on the an market in New York)
were probably the result of some private connection with the artist. The other
interesting thing about his sale catalogue is that it reveals him to have been
"ancien premier Yalet de Garde-Robe du Roi," a more exalted and gentle-
manly post than that of the simple valet de chambre, Lebel, but enough to
make one wonder whether he, like Casanova's M. de Saint-Quentin, was not
also involved in the chain of procurement for Louis XY Thus, if we no
longer have a likeness of Louise O 'Murphy, we may yet have a picture that
was painted to pander to the king.

62 Sylvia Freed by Amyntas

Oil on canvas
Oval, 41 x 55 in. (104 x 139 cm)
Signed on the ground to the left: /. Boucher I 175$.
Banque de France (Hotel de Toulouse', Paris
S&M1576 A&W461

63 Amyntas Reviving in the Arms of Sylvia

Oil on canvas
Oval. 4S x 55 in. (122.5 x 139 cm)
Signed on the ground, bottom right: /. Boucher /7j6
Musee des Beaux- Arts, Tours (794-1-3)
S&M1381 A&W463
PROVENANCE
Hotel de Toulouse; Amyntas Rezizing It is at first sight surprising to find Boucher departing from his usual subject
removed Chateau de Chateauneuf-sur-
to the
matter to depict these episodes from Torquato Tasso's Aminta (15 Si); all the
Loire by itS6. when included in the anonv-
mous printed catalogue of the gallerv as more so in that, unlike the same author's Gerusalemme Liherata (see cat. 26 .

follows: "Renaud dans les bras d'Armide. this poem had generated no pictorial tradition. The particular circumstances

26;
264
Minerve, sous la figure d'un vieillard, semble
vouloir Ten tirer. Le Costume des habillemens
est Asiatique . . . (Chateauneuf, 1786, no. 16;

its pendant, Sylvia Fleeing the Wounded Wolf,

was described under no. 20 as "Thysbe,
poursuivie par une louve. ..." I am indebted
to M. A. Bezangon for transcripts of these
entries from the exceptionally rare catalogue);
removed to Chanteloup and confiscated in

1794; assigned to the new museum in 1802.

ENGRAVINGS
i. L 'Amour ranime Aminte dans les bras de
Sihie, engraved in reverse and published by Fig. 173. Sylvia Relieving Phyllis from a Fig. 175. Gobelins tapestry designed by
L-S. Lempereur, along with Sihie guerit Philis Beestmg, signed and dated 1755. Hotel de Maurice Jacques, containing medallions after

and Sihie fuit le loup, and exhibited in the Toulouse (Banque de France), Paris. Boucher's paintings of Sylvia and Amyntas
Salon of 1779, nos. 258, 257, 259 (J-R (Welbeck Abbey). Reproduced from Fenaille,
1366-1367, 1369-1371, 1372). IV, 1907, plate facing page 292.
2. Le danger d'aimer, reengraved in reverse

and in rectangular format from Lempereur by

[?Mme] Beauvarlet (A & W fig. 1299).
3. Sylvie delivre par Aminte, engraved in

reverse and published by R. Gaillard (J-R

1036), advertised in the Mercure de France,
October 1762.

DRAWINGS
/. Sihie delivre par Aminte, pen, india ink
and wash, and bister, S[aint]-M[aurice] sale, 1

[postponed until 6] Feb. ft. 1786, lot 702.

Fig. 174. Sylvia Fleeing the Wounded Wolf,
2. Naked Woman xvith Arms Outstretched,
signed and dated 1756. Musee des Beaux-Arts,
black chalk heightened with white, anon, sale,
Tours.
Paris (exp. Gandouin), 23 Nov. 1899, lot 5;

17th auction of the Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett,

19-21 May 1953 (A & W figs. 445, 1293) [a
more explicit version of this drawing was of its commissioning by the due de Penthievre will be explored below. The
engraved or published by Le Rouge as Femmes point to be made immediately Boucher was the obvious choice
is that as
de Boucher No. 1, signed:/ Boucher i/6j].
3. Study for the Figure of Nuncio/ Ergaste,
artist, because this favola boschereccia was, as the anonymous translator
?black chalk (Fenaille, IV, p. 243, fig. p. 245). (actually Antoine Pecquet) of the bilingual edition published in Paris in 1734
4. Study for the Head
of Sylvia Cradling said, the work to which Tasso owed his title of the "Father of the Italian
Amyntas, formerly Cabinet de M. de la Have,
engraved by Demarteau no. 160 (J-R 729;
Pastoral." He had thus revived in modern times the very literary tradition of

according to whom there are two related which Boucher was the novel pictorial exponent in the eighteenth century.
drawings in the Hermitage). Nor Aminta in
are these paintings the only manifestations of an interest in
France in the eighteenth century. Prault published a delightful duodecimo in
TAPESTRIES
Italian in Paris in 1745, with vignettes by Cochin fils, one of which is itself
1. All four were used as upright oval
medallions inset into surrounds designed by clearly inspired by Boucher's pastorals. And on 26 February 1749 a pastorale
Jacques, in the last of the sets of wall hangings hero'ique called Silvie, by Laujon, which took its characters if little of its —
and furniture covers supplied by Neilson from
the Gobelins, to the Duke of Portland in 1783
plot —
from Tasso, was put on in the Theatre des Petits Appartements at
[originally for Bulstrode Park?], now at
Versailles, with Mme de Pompadour in the title role (Theatre, III).
Welbeck Abbey (fig. 175; see Fenaille, IV, pp. The plot of this dramatic poem is very simple. The shepherd Amyntas
290-93). Fenaille recorded what he thought to
pines hopelessly with love for the chaste nymph of Diana, Sylvia, all the more
be the original painting of Sylvie Freed by
Amyntas at the Gobelins in 1907 (IV, p. 241,
intensely after getting her to kiss his lips on the pretext of curing a beesting,
130 x 145 cm) but subsequently realized that as she had done for Phyllis. Even after he had rescued her from being tied up
it was a copy (1923, p. 10). What is reputed to
naked preparatory to rape by a satyr (act 3, scene 1), she had remained
be a cartoon for the Amyntas Reviving
belongs to the Louvre (inv. 2737) and has been
adamant, despite his touching reserve. When he thought that she had been
deposited in the Mobilier National since i960. torn to pieces by the wolves she had been hunting, he threw himself off a cliff
Unlike the tapestry medallion, however, it is in despair. Realizing only then that she loved him, and not knowing that his
oblong (115 x 146 cm).
fall had been broken by a bush, she ran to cherish him in what she thought
were his last moments (act 5), and thus her resistance was overcome.

265
 .

2. The Sylvia Freed by Amyntas was also The two shown here are from a set of four, the other two episodes
pictures
woven as an upright rectangular tapestry with an
being Sylvia Relieving Phyllis from a Beesting (fig. 173; Banque de France; A
expanded landscape setting by Juliard ( A & \X
fig. 1295;. What appears to be the cartoon W
& 460J and Sylvia Fleeing the Wounded Wolf (fig. 174; Musee des Beaux-
for this (Louvre, inv. 2717, 296 X 183 cm;*was Arts, Tours; A & W 462 j. All four were originally painted for the Hotel de
used to decorate the Chateau d'Eu under the
Toulouse. This was the hotel originally built by Francois Mansart for the
July Monarchy; recovered from there, it has
been on deposit since 1889 at Fontainebleau.
marquis de la Vrilliere, which was acquired
by Louis XIV's in 1713

There is also an upright rectangular cartoon of illegitimate son, the comte de Toulouse, and sumptuously transformed by de
Amyntas Reviving on deposit from the Louvre Cotte. On the death of the comte de Toulouse in 1737, it passed to his
(inv. 2735; at the Mobilier National '29c X
186 cm;. It must be this that was seen by the
serious-minded son, the due de Penthievre, who in turn had new apartments
Jury des Arts at the Gobelins in September created for himself and his wife, Maria-Theresa d'Este, Princess of Modena,
1794, just called Aminte, when they declared after their marriage in 1744 (see Dezallier, 1752, pp. 122-23; Blondel, III,
that the tapestry was superior in beauty of
1754, pp. 26-3 1). It was doubtless for these apartments that the present
execution to the painting, which was to be
"rejected on artistic grounds" (Quiff rev, 1897, pictures were painted as overdoors, though we know very little about them,
P- 35' since the rooms were never well recorded, and they have been swept away
along with everything else but the celebrated galene doree, since the hotel was
PIES
taken over by the Banque de France in 181 1.
S -,
h ia Freed by A myntas
1 Catalogue d'une collection choisie, Hotel There is clearly a discrepancy between the dates of the overdoors and those
d'Espagne fjoullain /z/s), 18 June ff. 177c, lot of the rooms for which they must have been painted. The reason for this
35: "Silvie delivre par Aminte, d'apres E
sheds further light on the unusual subject of the pictures. In 1754 the duchess
Boucher, sans bordure; 2 pieds 6 pouces sur 3
pieds 6 pouces."
died in childbirth. The grief-stricken duke at first withdrew into total

2. ?Reversed copy after Gaillard's engra seclusion, with only his mother for company, and then traveled to his wife's
posthumous sale of the marquis de la Chatai- country, Italy, to distract his grief, visiting Rome, Naples, and finally
gneraye, prince de Ponts, Hotel Drouot, Paris,
Modena, returning home in time for the anniversary of his wife's death, in
5 May 1868, lot 7, as Nymph delizree (gravee),
the pendant to lot 7 bis, after Gaillard's April 1755 (sec Lorin, 1907, pp. 197-98). It must have been in Italy that he
engraving of Jupiter et Calisto. had time to muse upon the works of Tasso, and to reflect that the latter had
3. Misc. sale, A. Kende, Vienna, 1 Dec.
been the court poet of his wife's Este ancestors, before their transferral from
1919, lot 3, 92 X 74 cm [reversed].

4. Ex-Davidson coll., Sotheby's, London, 23

Perrara to Modena. Perhaps he also identified his love for her with that of
Feb. 1938, lot 79. Amyntas for Sylvia. In any event, after his return he commissioned these
5. Ex-Oppcnheim coll., Christie's, London,
pictures from Boucher, and installed himself alone in their former joint
26 May 1938, lot 79.
6. Palais Galliera, 7 June 1974, lot A, pastel
apartment (Dezallier, 1752, p. 123; 1757, p. 199).
(as Roger delivranl Angelio- Around 177c the hotel was further transformed when the later tragic
7. Fossati coll., 135 X 1-2 cm (A & W heroine, the pnncesse de Lamballe, came to live with her father-in-law, after
461 10).
the death of her husband, and the marriage of his only surviving daughter to
Glasgow Art Gallery, acquired in 1952,
8. as

pendant to Amyntas Revived, tondo, diam. the due de Chartres in 1769. In the course of these alterations, two of the
in. overdoors were reduced to a sleeker oval shape and reset in Louis XVI
9. Farl of Rosebery coll., Mentmore, sale,
paneling in the apartment of the princess (Thiery, 1787, I, p. 306;, while the
Sotheby's, 25 May 1977, lot 245c: Weston
Gallery, Weston Longville; Christie's, 1 Dec. other two were dismounted, and were later sent in what are probably their
1978, lot 53: 54'/; X 60 in. original frames to the Chateau de Chateauneuf-sur-Loire, where they are
Hoi_hst porcelain group, 1771 (example
10.
recorded (under aberrant titles; in the catalogue published in 1786. A little
in Musee de Sevres, inv. 11. 184
before 1783, the duke must have allowed copies of all four to be taken for the
Amyntas Reviving in the Arms of Sylvia Gobelins, in whose affairs he took a solicitous interest (Fenaille, IV, 1907, p.
1. Sale, Paris, 4 Dec. 1920 (fragment). Transported to the duke's other chateau of Chanteloup and seized in the
292).
2. Earl of Rosebery coll., Dalmeny (at-

tempted sale, Christie's, London, 5 May 1939,

Revolution, the pair from Chateauneuf became part of the nucleus of the new
lot 24, bought in): 5
3
'A x 6o'A in. museum formed by Charles-Antoine Rougeot at Tours (see Fohr, 1982,
3. Acquavella Galleries, New York (c. 195c :

p. 15;.
35 x 39 in.
The challenge of the novel subject matter appears to have acted as an
4 G. Campbell coll., presented to Glasgow
Art Gallery in 1952, as pendant to Amyntas inspiration to Boucher. For although the Sylvia Relieving Phyllis of a Beesting
Releasing Sylvia, tondo, diam. 52/* in. may be treated in a way that is all too suggestive of a cross between yet
5. X. G. coll. (exh. 1954, Geneva, Musee
another Diana and Calisto and one of his Pastorales with a jealous rival
Rath, no. 35, as Sylvie consolant Aminte de la
piqure d'une abeille [sic], paired with no. 34,
lurking, the Sylvia Freed by Amypitas stimulated him to invent a striking pose
Sylvie et Philis, 54 x 43 cm. for her, whose latent eroticism is made obvious by an anonymous print after

266
ANALOGY it, Amyntas Reviving in the Arms of Sylvia, has called forth a most
while the
The figure of Sylvia Freed was adapted by
Charlier into a Leda Frightened by the Swan
—
unusual gamut of colors for Boucher muted greens, mauves, and forget-me-
not blues. His male characters (like the wolf in Sylvia Fleeing) may, as always,
(exh. cat. 1975, Paris, no. 7).
be somewhat lacking in virile character, but in this set of pictures this seems
entirely appropriate to the pastoral poem thev illustrate. As "Mme de
Crequy" said of the due de Penthievres protege, the chevalier de Florian:
"The innocence of his pastorals leaves nothing to be desired; there are no
wolves in sheep's clothing in them" ("L'innocence de ses pastorales ne laisse
nen a desirer; il ny a jamais de loups dans ses bergeries" [Crequy, 1834-3 5,
III, p. 15c n. 1]).

64 Portrait of Mme de Pompadour

Oil on canvas
79 X 62 in. (201 x 157 cm)
Signed on lower shelf of writing table:
f.Boucher 1756
Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechsel-
Bank (no. 18), on deposit in the Alte
Pinakothek, Munich
(S &M 1077) A & W 475

PROVENANCE
Mme de Pompadour; ?marquis de Marigny, As has already been remarked (cat. 59), it is a curious fact that we have no
Chateau de Menars; ?marquis Casimir de
finished portrait of Mme de Pompadour by Boucher until this, painted eleven
Cypierre (Thore, 1844, p. 3); not in his
years after she had become Louis XV's mistress, and only eight before her
posthumous sale in 1845, probably sold pri-
vately to an English dealer or collector be- death at the age of forty-two. It is also the only one of his portraits of her to
forehand (see Fizeliere, 186c, p. 298, and have been given any public exposure in her lifetime, when it was exhibited in
provenance from the vicomte [sic] de Cypierre
given in the Lonsdale sale); sale of 5th Earl of
the Salon of 1757, on a special dais of its own (see Gaucherel's engraving of

Lonsdale, Christie's, London, 13-18 June this Salon after Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, whose original drawing is at

1887, lot 914 (with the date read as 1755); Alice Waddesdon Manor, Blunt, 1973, pi. 5; for detailed discussions of the portrait,
de Rothschild, London; Baron Nathaniel de
see Alte Pinakothek, 1972, pp. 20-22, and exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 51).
Rothschild, Vienna; Baron Alphonse de
Rothschild, Vienna; Wildenstein & Co., New The reason for this new pictorial consecration of the favorite does not
York; acquired in 1971 for the collection of the appear to have been noticed before: it is surely that, early in the year in which
Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechsel-Bank
it was painted, on 7 February 1756, Mme de Pompadour was officially named
and deposited in the Alte Pinakothek.
a supernumerary dame du palais of Queen Marie Leczinska. With this, and
REPLICA with the admittance to the communion table that made it possible, her status
215 x cm, signed on a red morocco
165 at court, already enhanced by her promotion to the rank of duchess in 1752
binding:/ Boucher 1758, reputedly from the
(of which she enjoyed the privileges but not the title), was made unimpugn-
collection of the marquis de Cvpierre
[probably a confusion with the above], by able. It set the seal of the transition that had begun in 1750 from the king's
whom acquired for 200 francs and a quarter- carnal to his purely titular mistress (see Gordon, 1968). Whether or not she
butt of wine; Jfules] Duclos (dealer), by whom
had feigned a new piety in order to ingratiate herself with the queen (or in
acquired for 25,00c francs; Henri Didier (exh.
cat. 186c, Paris, no. 290); his sale, 15-17 June keeping with her aspiring role as a second Maintenon), once Mme de
1868, lot 38 (with no mention of signature and Pompadour had officially regularized her position in the eyes of the Church
date, nor of provenance); baron Adolphe de
(although rigorists maintained that, to purge her fault, she should have
Rothschild, Paris; baron Maurice de Roth-
schild, Pans; sequestered for the collection
withdrawn from court altogether, like Mme de Mailly), there was little that
of Adolf Hitler in the war; baron Edmond de Marie Leczinska could do to oppose the will of her husband. Her reply to
Rothschild, Chateau de Pregny, Switzerland. the king's request that she make this appointment (reputedly composed for

z6 7
268
 her by president Henault) was: "Sire, I have a King in heaven who gives me
the strength to suffer my woes, and a King on earth whom I shall always
obey" (Argenson, IX, pp. 214-15).
The present picture appears to combine the private and public faces of the

marquise. On the one hand, she is shown in the most elaborate dress of all

her portraits (perhaps it is the very one in which she began her first week's
dutv with the queen, "paree comme un jour de fete," to the outrage of the
already scandalized [Argenson, IX, p. 198]), which was particularly harshly
criticized by Grimm when the picture was shown in the 1757 Salon:
"surcharge d'ornemens, de pompons, et de toutes sortes de fanfreluches"
(Correspondance litteraire, III, pp. 432-33). On the other hand, she is

surrounded by the evidence of her artistic tastes, which met with special
approbation from the anonymous critic in the Mercure de France (Oct. 1757,
Fig. 176. Table a ecnre, by Bernard II van p. 159), but with no sympathy from Grimm, who found it simply "the same
Risenburgh. The Metropolitan Museum of
portrait" as that exhibited by de la Tour in the previous Salon (Louvre; see
Art, New York; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles
Wrightsman, 1984. Monnier, 1972, no. 74); confusions between the two have indeed arisen since.
As Boucher's sketches (see cat. 59) show, however, the idea of portraying
Mme de Pompadour in this fashion was first tried out by him, though it no
doubt originated with the sitter.

There is first of all the bookcase reflected in the mirror, complete with a
REDUCTION clock, and adorned with the tower from the marquise's arms. It is not certain
Figure only, cut at knees, plain background, if this piece of furniture ever existed; its ornamentation is unusual, and it
14/4 x 17/2 in., Notice d'une Collection de jolis
could just have been a fantasy of the artist's, particularly since it seems to be a
Tableaux des Trois Ecoles . . . &c, provenant du
Cabinet de M. 5 :::::: ", et apres son depart, 3 free variationon the bookcase found in the earlier sketch portraits (see cat.
Mar. 1817, lot 29: "Portrait de la Marquise du
59). There are no titles to be read on the spines of the books; but for these we
Pompadour, dans le riche costume du temps,
can turn to de la Tour's pastel— the latest volume of the Encyclopedie,
et tenant un livre a la main. Ce tableau d'une

execution precieuse est fait a l'imitation des Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois, Voltaire's Hennade, and Guarini's Pastor fido —
peintres hollandais" [presumably referring to testifying at once to her patronage of "advanced" thinkers and writers, and
its scale and finish; this, and the absence of (the last of these) to her taste for one of the prime sources of the literary
any reference to a setting, strongly suggests
pastoral, the ultimate source of inspiration for Boucher's painted bergeries.
that it was the Edinburgh version]; Catalogue
de Tableaux . . . &c, le tout faisant partie de la The little table a ecrire beside her is, by contract, of a known model, so
succession mobiliere de feu M. LANEUVILLE, precisely depicted down to the bronze mounts, that it can be attributed to
peintre, expert pour les objets d'art . . ., his
b.v.r.b., Bernard II van Risenburgh (fig. 176; see Watson, 1966, p. 254). But
house, 15 rue Saint-Marc, 5-7 June 1826, lot
139: "Portrait de madame du Pompadour, asise rather than attempting to identify it with a particular table described in an
sur un sopha, un livre a la main. T. h. 14 p.,

L. 16" [sold for 27 livres]; Gen. John Ramsay;

his sale, Christie's, London, 19 June 1855, lot
278 [bought for £24 3s. od. by Nieuwenhuys,

from whom presumably bought back by the

general's sole heir, Lord Murray of Hender-
land]; bequeathed to the National Gallery of
by his widow, Lady
Scotland, Edinburgh,
Murray of Henderland in 1861.

DRAWINGS
1. Study of a Forearm and Hand, red, black,

and white chalks, 221 x 300 [for Mme de mm

Pompadour's left arm, but with the bracelet
carrying a medallion. This appears to have a
man's head faintly indicated within it; if this
was a cameo of the king, as in the portrait in
the Fogg Art Museum (A & W 497), it was no
doubt suppressed in the painting for reasons of
bienseance], Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fig. 177. Le petit Savoyard, etched bv Fig. 178. Study for the Left Hand and Forearm
New York (fig. 178; exh. cat. 1973-74, Wash- Mme de Pompadour after Boucher of Mme de Pompadour. The Metropolitan
ington, no. 72). and with his guidance. Museum of Art, New York.

269
 2. Study of a Forearm and Hand Holding a inventory, such as the one from the Chateau de Saint-Hubert, or seeking it
Book, black and white chalks, 220 X 290 mm among those supplied by Duvaux to the favorite, sometimes by the dozen
[for Mme de Pompadour's right arm]: Carole
Slatkin, New York (exh. cat. 1973-74, Wash-
(though these tended to be of plain mahogany; see Duvaux, 1873, II, nos.
ington, no. 73); Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Walker, 1520, 1894; this is more like a singly supplied rosewood table, such as that in
Montreal. no. 19 1 3), one might wonder whether it is not more likely to have been
accessible as a model in Boucher's own household (since he too was a regular
COPIES
1. 28'A x 23 in., signed and dated 1756
client of Duvaux's). The table is open to show its function, and supports a
[simplified, and omitting dog]: 12th Earl of letter, sealing wax, candle, and seal, to allude to the sitters acknowledged gifts
Pembroke's posthumous sale, Paris, 30 June as a correspondent (see not only the authentic letters, edited by Malassis
1 862, lot 26 [as Madame du Barry, after
Boucher; but not onlv does the catalogue
[Pompadour, 1878], but also the spurious imitations published in London
contain a slip explaining that it was drawn up [Pompadour, 1772]). Books are scattered below the tabletop, to suggest that
in haste (the earl had only died on 25 April), they were read rather than merely an adornment, and the marquise holds
Souille's copy in the Bibliotheque d'Art et
another open, as if meditating upon its contents (her brother, who evidently
d'Archeologie in Paris corrects the name of the
sitter, and says that the picture was a reduction did not share her taste for belles lettres, made 41,940 livres from the sale of
of the Duclos (i.e., 1758) portrait; bought by the 3,525 works in her library; see Campardon, 1867, pp. 308-09). Near her
Cournare for 800 francs]; [Col. Milligan],
feet, a rolled-up map, music, and portfolios of drawings and engravings are in
Christie's, London, 13 July 1889, lot 101

[bought in at 225 guineas]; Christie's, London,

similar disorder. Allusion to her own activities as an engraver under Boucher's
21 June 1890, lot 70 [sold to Zersh for £215 55 tuition (J-R 1478-15 14; A & W figs. 100, 101) is underscored by her print
"part of the collection of a gentleman," Tour had included an
.];
after one of Guay's cameos and intaglios (de la
Puttick &
Simpson, London, 31 May 1932, lot
engraving of hers from Mariette's Traite des pierres gravees), and another after
125; Christie's, London, 23 Nov. 1962, lot 26;
London antique trade, 1985. Boucher's etching of Le petit Savoyard (fig. 177; J-R 10), signed Boucher and
2. Painting on porcelain formerly in coll. of Pompadour Sc., poking out of the papers at her feet. The King Charles spaniel
Lord Pirbright (exh. cat. 1898, London,
beside this bohemian disorder may be Mimi, of which she was sufficiently
no. 61).
fond to have her painted by Christophe Huet, in a picture engraved by
Fessard in 1758 (A & W
fig. 1318), a little while after another of the breed,

called Ines (A & W

fig. 1446), which appears in the outdoor portrait of her

mistress in the Wallace Collection.

Evidence indicates that must have been painted in the studio, on
all of this
the basis of studies of no more than Mme de Pompadour's head and hands
(fig. 178; but there is always the possibility that even the latter were done
from Brigitte O'Murphy! see Fleury, 1899, p. 113). When the Journal
Encylopedique for 1 October 1757 (vol. VII, pt. 1, p. 102), while praising the
accessories, found that "the figure is stiff, and suggests the mannequin," it

implies that a lay figure was used, on which no doubt the fall of the
sumptuous dress was studied. Lespinasse (1929, p. 9), without making it clear

whether or not he is at this point relying on the unpublished memoir by

Roslin's daughter, claims that Boucher was assisted in this bv the recentlv
arrived Swedish painter. If Boucher made a preliminary sketch from the sitter

herself, it was probablv nothing as elaborate as the oil sketch in the Louvre
(cat. 59), but something more like the one in the de Sireul sale, which was in

black and white chalk on canvas, a rather curious-sounding technique. Since

the present portrait was the only one of Mme de Pompadour by Boucher to
have been publicly exhibited, and the auctioneer felt no need to describe the
chalk sketch in the de Sireul sale, it could well be that it was a preparation for

the present picture. Duvaux's bill for the transport of a portrait to and from
Versailles from Boucher's on 4 September and 1 October 1756 (Duvaux, 1873,
II, nos. 2581, 2601), if it indeed refers to this picture, implies that it was being
taken to the palace for the artist to "finish" the likeness from the sitter, as in

the case of the lost portrait of 1750 (see Pompadour, 1878, pp. 37, 57), and
then returned to him for the rest of the picture to be completed, or for its

final retouching and varnish.

'70
 Of where the portrait hung in the sitter s lifetime, we know nothing. No
such portrait was listed in the inventories taken after her death. It would seem
surprising, in view of the existence of two full-scale versions of this picture,

that she should not have owned at least one of them herself, and it is possible
that it and other portraits were removed directly to her brother's after her

death, since they would anyway not have been assessed for probate. We know
that one of the two versions of this portrait must have hung at the Chateau de

Menars, which Marigny inherited from her and made his chief seat. It
probably hung in his wife's bedchamber, where it would have been the one
seen by Joseph Jekyll in 1775 (Jekyll, 1894, p. 60): "The bed was still in an
interesting disorder; and ... I was lost in the comparison of beauty which
arose between the portraits of the Marchionesses of Pompadour and de
Marigny, and the contemplation of a group of the most amiable pugs
imaginable which belonged to the latter. ." One of the versions was
. .

certainly still at the chateau in the Revolution, since the commissioners who
drew up an inventorv of the works of art that were intended for removal to
the new museum in Blois on 11 October 1792 (Dupre, i860, p. 168) recorded:
"Deux tableaux, de grandeur naturelle, peints l'un par Vanlos, l'autre par
Boucher, representant, le premier la Pompadour en grand costume, et le

second, cette femme assise, et appuyee sur une table, avec une attitude et un
costume voluptueux, son chien favori a ces pieds."
The museum at Blois was intended to demonstrate in the works of art
shown "that if some of them reek of indolence and voluptuousness, and
depict people who have become the scandal of their century because of their
lives and the happy change wrought by the Revolution in the national spirit,

they nonetheless exhibit an excellent taste, a beauty of form, admired by

connoisseurs, which can serve as a model for budding artists ." {"que si . .

quelques-uns respirent la mollesse et la volupte, et representent des personnages

devenus Vopprobre de leur siecle par leur vies et par le changement heureux
que la Revolution a produit dans Vesprit national, d y regne neanmoins un
gout excellent, une beaute de forme, admiree des connaisseurs, et quipeut
."
servir de modele aux artistes dont le gout commence a se developper . .

[Dupre, i860, p. 170]). This appears to have been overtaken by events (and by
an equally drastic revolution in taste). There is, therefore, the intriguing
possibility that the present version was rescued by an ancestor of its first-

recorded owner after the Revolution, the dilettante artist-collector the

marquis Casimir de Cypierre.
From 1760 until the Revolution the intendants of the nearby Orleans were
Jean-Claude-Frangois Perrin de Cypierre, who bought the Chateau
d'Auvilliers from Mme de Pompadour, who had intended to use it as a place
to break her journey between Paris and Menars, and his son, Perrin de
Cypierre de Chevilly (Dufort de Cheverny, 1909, I, pp. 28, 251-53, 332, 436,
473; a Nattier portrait presumed to be of the first intendants wife is in the

Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum [Metropolitan Museum,

1984, no. 43]). The second intendant was the father of Casimir Perrin,
marquis de Cypierre (Annuaire de Noblesse de France 30 [1874], pp.
la

149-50), the first recorded owner of this portrait. Casimir de Cypierre was an
amateur artist and the first substantial collector of Bouchers after the
Revolution; it is nice to think that the present picture might have been his
inspiration from his childhood.

271
 65 Venus at Vulcan s Forge
Oil sketch on canvas, en grisaille
[3 \ x i6VA in. (35 x 42.5 cm)
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris
(inv. 36.231) .

S&M314 A&.W 479 bis

66 Venus at Vulcan s Forge

Oil sketch on canvas, in color
24 x 25 in. (61 x 63.5 cm)
Signed lower edge, right of center:
f. Boucher, 1756
Sterling and Francine Clark Art
Institute, Williamstown
A & W 479
New York and Detroit

67 Venus at Vulcan's Forge

Oil on canvas
126 x 126 in. (320 x 320 cm)
Signed on rock below, right of center:
/ Boucher jysy
Musee du Louvre, Paris (inv. 2707 bis)

S&M157, 352 A.&W478

Paris

PROVENANCE OF GRISAILLE
jgue des different Tableaux ongmaux des. Throughout his life, Boucher never tired of depicting Venus at Vulcan s Forge,
Trois Ecoles . . . &c. proventuis du Cabinet de above all on a large scale. When Johann Christian [von] Mannhch
his pupil
feu -Baptists] LEMOYNE, Hotel
was asked by his patron and Boucher's friend, Duke Christian IV of
d'Aligre (Le Brun . 1: /Vug. ft. 1778, lot 22:
"Une esquisse peinte a l'huile en grisaille, Zweibriicken, to paint him a picture in 1765, with the choice of subject left
representant Venus qui demande des armes a up to the artist himself, he asked Boucher what he should depict. His master,
lin pour son his Enee. Composition de 12
like Xatoire a believer in choosing subjects for the scope that they afforded
es. Hauteur 13 pouces, largeur if pouces.

Toile" [presumablv bought in, like most of the artists rather than for the novelty that gratified literary-minded critics,

other Bouchers in the sale, since next in the recommended Venus Coming to Vulcan to Ask for Arms for Her Son Aeneas:
sale of his son]; Catalogue de T: re. du
"That will give you the fine figure of a woman surrounded by cupids, a
1

Car :e Lemoyne,

Architecte, Hotel Bullion (Duchesne

muscular man, cyclops in the background, etc. . .
." (Mannlich, 1948,
May ff. 1828, lot 68: "Venus venant prier p. 264 —disregarding Delage's reproduction of Boucher's 1732 picture in the
Vulcain de forger des armes pour Enee; es-
Louvre as the one executed by Mannlich!). Among Boucher's criticisms of
se peinte en camai'eu. Largeur 16 pouces,
Mannlich's studies for the picture was precisely one regarding the figures of
hauteur 14 pouces" [sold for 70 i :.ncs, to-
r with a sketch of the Triumph of Venus]; his women: "Your female models are too thin without being slender; others
sale of the architect Claret. Paris, 16-18 Dec. are too big, too masculine. One should hardly be able to imagine that a
lot 89; posthumous sale of En.
woman's body contains any bones; without being fat, they must be rounded,
Tondu, ic Apr. 1865, lot 18: Eftienne] A[rago]
sale, Paris, S Feb. 1S72, lot 6; Jules Ferry; [yet] delicate and slim-waisted, without being skinny. Of the several hundreds
Cailleux; Mile Yznaga; by whom donated to that I have had undress for me, there is only one that I have found with this
the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in 1949.
high degree of beauty" (Mannlich, 1948, p. 265). This was the wife of his
gilder, who would not let her pose for anyone else. As told by Mannlich, the

:-:
2 73
PROVENANCE OF COLOR SKETCH story then goes on to relate how he himself succeeded in procuring her, not
Catalogue des differens Objets de Curiosites
merely as a model, but as a mistress.
dans les Sciences et Arts qui composoient le
Cabinet de feu M. le Marquis DE MENARS The details of the story are interesting, not merely in bearing out the
. . . &c, son hotel, Place des Victoires (Basan evidence of Boucher's drawings, that he continued to make studies from life

& Joullain), (18 Mar.-6 Apr.) 1782, lot 24: to the last and that he can only have been having the gullible Reynolds on
"Venus commande a Vulcain des armes pour
Enee. Cette Deesse se voit sur un nuage
when he claimed to have ceased to do so long before (Reynolds, 1959,
accompagnee de Nymphes & d'Amours, dont p. 225), but also in showing the kind of alterations that he made to his pupil's
plusieurs s'amusent avec un casque: dans le intended composition. One of these, which he inserted against Mannhch's
fond est l'antre des Cyclopes. Cette charmante
better judgment and with which the duke found fault, was to seat Venus on
Composition, pleine d'esprit et de feu, a ete

executee en tapisserie pour Madame de Pom- clouds, as in the present composition. His fidelity to this essentially Baroque
padour [sic]. Tableau de 16 pouces en quarre" device, and their distaste for it, are telling indicators of the way in which
[sold with Pierre's similar sketch for the Rape Boucher was overtaken by the revolution in taste that began to take shape
of Europa to Remy for 199 livres 19 sous];
Catalogue de Tableaux
toward the end of his life.
. . . &c. apres le decks
de M. BEAUJ[E]ON . . ., Hotel d'Evreux When he created the present composition in 1756, however, it was precisely

274
 ——

in response to the persistent clamor for his sen-ices. Although the terms of
their petition suggest certain personal doubts as to Boucher's merits, the
entrepreneurs of the Gobelins, Audran, Neilson, and Cozette, had already
besought the directeur des Bdtiments in 1754 to woo Boucher away from
Beauvais to their manufactory, in order to give them tapestry designs that
would sell (Fenaille, IV, 1907, pp. 225-26). Their chance came the next year,
when Oudry died, making it possible to appoint Boucher as inspecteur at the
Gobelins in his place, with the promise not only to supply it with his
productions, but to cease supplying them to the rival establishment at

Beauvais (Fenaille, IV, pp. 226—27; A & W docs. 625, 627, 630, 632).
The first call for his services came when, November 1755, Marigny
in

pointed out to the king that his new apartment at Compiegne required seven
new tapestries, four for the cabinet du conseil and three for the cabinet du jeu
(Fenaille, IV, p. 228; A & W docs. 639-641). The suggestion was not acted
upon, but Marigny must have continued to hope that some use would be
found for a new set of tapestries, since the present color sketch (whose square
Fig. 179. La cible d'Amour (1758). Louvre.
format denotes it clearly as a tapestry design) is dated 1756, the year before
the king finally gave his approval in May for a set of only four tapestries of
The Loves of the Gods, with no specific destination, each to be designed by
one of the leading artists of the day: Carle Vanloo, Boucher, Pierre, and Vien
(Fenaille, IV, pp. 189—92; A& W doc. 670). The artists must immediately
have been supplied with the exceptional-sized canvases for their full-scale
pictures-cum-cartoons (A & W doc. 6yi), since these were all exhibited in
the Salon, which opened as usual at the end of August, although Boucher s
despite his early start with his sketch —was late (Journal Encyclopedique, VII,
pt. i, 1757, p. 100; curiously, this claimed that the actual pictures, like Carle
Vanloo s Iphigeneia, were intended for the king of Prussia —no doubt through
a confusion with the fact that the Iphigeneia was itself one of a set of four

pictures by different artists). After the Salon was over, the pictures were
[quondam de Pompadour, and now l'Elysee] transported to the Gobelins by the Academy's regular models, with outside
(Remy & Julliot), 25 Apr. ff. 1787, lot 203 help (A & W doc. 691). In 1758 all the artists were asked to supply cartoons
[among pictures removed from La Chartreuse, for two additional narrower with cupids playing with
strips of tapestry,
in the faubourg du Roule], same description
attributes relative to the subjects of their earlier pictures. Boucher's picture
[sold with the Pierre for 216 livres]; Dr.
Schaffer, Berlin (1927); private coll., U.S.A.: which interpreted the requirement rather freely — entitled La able d'Amour, is

Xewhouse Galleries, from which bought by

the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in
in the Louvre (fig. 179; A & 480). W
Interestingly, Boucher's tapestry (like Vanloo's, see exh. cat. 1977, Nice,
1983.
nos. 159—63) was never the success that the Gobelins hoped for: it was only
PROVENANCE OF FINISHED PICTURE woven four times (including a replacement for Marigny). The reason for this
Manufacture Royale des Tapisseries de la Cou-
cannot entirely have been the fact complained of by the entrepreneurs at the
ronne [Gobelins]; transferred to the Louvre
between 1816 and 1824. Gobelins (Fenaille, IV, p. 163), that potential clients were put off by the set's

lacking a unifying hand, since the compositions of Pierre and Vien were more
ENGRAVING frequently woven (admittedly mostly in the late weavings; Fenaille, IV,
(After finished picture): Yulcain presentant a
Venus des armes pour Enee, engraved in reverse
pp. 202-23). Was it that there was already a reaction against the obsolescent
and published by Jacques Danzel, advertised
'
in style of the two older masters (which seems unlikely in view of the
1783 (J-R »4 comparative success of Boucher's other compositions)? Or was it that the

DRAWINGS
weaving of these pieces was at first somehow jealously guarded by their
i. "iVetude nue d'un Vulcain, red, black, original promoter, Marigny, for himself and his sister, as with the Lever and
and white chalks, on gray paper, glazed, J-B. Coucher du Soleil (figs. 207, 208), the Genies des Arts, and the Enfants
Lemoyne sale, 8 Dec. ff. 1778.
Boucher (nothing ever seems to have come, for instance, of the evident desire
2. Two Cupids at extreme left, Cabinet de
M. de la Have, engraved by Demarteau, no. of the agent of the Infante Don Felipe of Parma to obtain tapestries of the
252 (A & w fig. 1335).
'
Lever and Coucher du Soleil for his master after seeing them on the loom

V5
 :

[Fenaille, IV, p. 179], while Xeilson was expressly forbidden to allow the seat
Gobelins manufactory as part of
VBbven at the
tapestries of the Enfants to be woven for anyone but Mme du Pompadour).
the series Les Amours des Dieux. The first

example was in the set of four large hangings

Marigny 's personal interest in the set is attested by his ownership of
and a number of smaller pieces given by the colored sketches of all four compositions. Their existence, and his possession
king to the marquis de Marigny; it was made of them, are less natural than they are generally taken to be. Such sketches for
in the haute-lisse (upright loom) workshop of
Michel Audran in 1758 59. It belongs to the
tapestries as we know of bv Boucher (and these only exist in a minority of
Mobilier National and is in the Palazzo Far- cases) are generally rapid productions en grisaille or en camaieu, such as the
nese (French Embassy), Rome. In 1762 it ^ a
one from the Musee des Arts Decoratifs shown here. If we have an)" early
described as "passee" and replaced by another
record of them, it is more likely to be in the collections of fellow artists (as in
example, also by Audran, whose location is

not known. Pierre Francois Cozette, head of the case of the grisaille here) than in those of an administrator-collector, such
the other haute-lisse shop, wove a set of three as Marigny. Even where sketches of Bouchers are mentioned in connection
pieces for the comtesse du Barry in 1774/75,
with the Gobelins, as with those for the two unexecuted pictures for
including a Venus at Vulcan's Forge, which is in
the Mobilier National. Another example was
tapestries taken from the Fetes \ enitiennes and the Fetes de Thalie, the note
in a set woven as a private commission before states, "II en a fait voir les Esquisses et travaille aux tableaux" (Engerand,
1789, when it was confiscated (Fenaille, IV. pp.
1900, p. 56; Fenaille, IV, p. 174), clearly implying that possession of the
202—04, 208—13, 22 °> 221 )- Another, from a
set of four once owned by the princesse de
sketches stayed with the artist. Only in the case of the chinoiserie tapestries
Sagan, is in the Walters Art Gallery; Baltimore; for Beauvais (cat. 41--.:. 9c. 91, do we otherwise know of a fully elaborated
it is signed by Audran. E.A.S set of color sketches —and that is because the tableaux en grand were to be
: - . uted by someone else. What is more, even in this case the sketches did
COPIES
1. Red-chalk drawings after all four com- not remain the property of the manufactory or the controleur general, but are
positions by an unknown hand, 1 5 pouces first recorded in the collection of an amateur and friend of Boucher'-.
square, were in the posthumous sale of the
Bergeret de Grancourt.
architect J. G. Soufflot, Marigny 's intendant in
the Gobelins, [2c Nov. ff.] 1780, [sold for 49
The ineluctable conclusion to all this is that the artists concerned agreed to
livres]. make quite finished small colored pictures (which are not even described as
2. Oil sketch, 55 x 55 cm, Radischev Art sketches in the catalogue of Marigny 's posthumous sale as the marquis de
Museum, Saratov.
x 36 cm,
Menars as an especial favor to the directeur general des Bdtiments, not for
Jil sketch, 46 Yale University
.-.—. Gi..erv. Men Haven, gift I Mi and Mrs their own or the manufactory 's needs. In the case of Boucher, this is borne
Andre Blumenthal in 1959 (see exh. cat. 1956, out by the fact that, while both sketches indeed differ from the completed
New Haven, no. 17).
picture, the Williamstown sketch is littlemore than a twopence-colored
Oil painting, 59 x 47 cm, Sotheby's
4. sale,
London, 7 Oct- 1981, lot : :
rendition of the penny-plain grisaille from the Musee des Arts Decoratifs.
5. Oil painting, 108 x 132.5 cm. Hotel When the minimal differences of detail between one and the other are
Rampan, 22 Dec. 1981, lot 73.
Versailles,
compared with the substantial changes registered in the finished composition,
6. Venus's Attendants, free copy of this detail
by Fanrin-Latour, oil on board, 44 x 53 cm,
it is clear that the colored oil sketch —which was anyway not a habitual

Musee Magnin, Diion (see Magnin, 1922, no. feature of Boucher's working practice —does not genuine
represent a stage in
: Musee Magnin, 1938, no. 336. the creative process. It is, for all that, or even because of that, a delightful
7. Two of Venus's Attendants, copied by
object.
Berthe Morisot for an overmirror in her home
in 1884, 114 x 138 cm (Bataille & Wilden- Although often called Venus Requesting Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas, even
stein, 1961, no. 143, pp. 17, 32, and fig. 175; in some of the criticisms of the finished painting in the Salon and in early
A&Wfig. 1337). A.D.L.
was
sales of the sketches, this composition should properly be called (as it in

the livret of the Salon) [Venus at] Vulcan's Forge, or The Forge of Lemnos. For
it shows the moment in the eighth book of the Aeneid, not when the goddess
ordered the arms, when she came alone in order to seduce her husband into
acceding to her request, as in the 1732 painting also in the Louvre (cat. 17),

but when she returned to collect them. Virgil does not describe this particular
episode, which appears to have given Boucher the freedom to depict the
scene in his own way. with Venus attended by cupids scattering roses, and by
the Hours, or Graces. The significance of the rose-crowned nymph resting in
Venus's lap is not clear — in the sketches she is less individualized —but her
on Cupid's dan is a clear allusion to the power of
gesture of trying her finger
Love, through which Venus got her much-cuckolded husband to do her
bidding.

--'-
 68 The Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Oil on canvas
55 x x 149 cm)
58/2 in. (139
Signed lower right:/ Boucher I 1757
The Hermitage Museum, Leningrad
(S&M716) A&W477
Paris

PROVENANCE
Exhibited in the Salon of 1757; Mme de Itwas apparently this picture that provoked someone to say of Boucher
Pompadour (posthumous inv. 1764/65 no.
that he "was not a painter, but painting itself" ("ce n'etoit point un peintre,
1234, valued at 1,000 livres, as in the vestibule
of the Hotel de Pompadour, which was serving mais lapeinture elle-meme" {Journal Encyclopedique, 1757, p. 101]). Our
as a garde-meuble for items brought in from anonymous informant about this remark himself singled out "the verve
her other residences); Catalogue des Tableaux
and passion of this genius, unconfined by rules [he] has poured a . . .

Onginaux de differens Maitres . . . &c, de

feue Madame la Marquise de Pompadour,
portion of his soul into every part of it" ("la fougue & I'importement de ce

grande rue du Fauxbourg S. Honore (Pierre genie independant des regies . . . [il] a fait passer dans les parties de ce
Remy), 28 Apr. ff. 1766, lot 15: "Le Repos en tableau une portion de son ame").
Egypte ... La beaute et la sagesse, symbole
Strange words to hear concerning a religious picture by an artist whose
de la Divinite, sont caracterisees dans la

personne de la sainte Vierge qui est assise name is byword for insincerity, painted for a
generally regarded as a
tenant un livre [Sedes Sapientiae] . . . un des woman (Mme de Pompadour) condemned by her enemies as a monument
plus estimables [Tableaux] de ce Maitre, & qui
of hypocrisy. Yet the Journal Encyclopedique, to avoid censorship, was
a ete trouve tel dans l'exposition des Tableaux
au Louvre" [sold for 405 livres]; acquired by published in the independent prince-bishopric of Liege, so one has no
the Czarina Catherine II of Russia by 1774; reason to suspect it of sycophancy toward the powers that be in the artistic
Imperial Palace of Gatchina, between 1838 and
or political world. What is more, the picture having been shown without
1856; then transferred to the Hermitage Mu-
seum, Saint Petersburg (now Leningrad).
being included in the Salon catalogue (possibly to keep the place of the
Venus at Vulcan's Forge was ready for exhibition), it may
[cat. 6j] until it

DRAWING not have been generally known whom it had been painted for; in
Study of Six Cherubim (A & fig. 1325, W consequence it otherwise appears to have been noticed only by the
details unspecified): [M. & Mme Arthur]

Veil-Picard coll., Paris; ?M. & Mme Louis likewise anonymous author of the "Lettre a l'auteur" in the Observations
Chaubah, Paris [worked up from the paint- Periodiques (disclaimed by the editor, Toussaint, in an open letter to Carle
ing, with one cherub added].
Vanloo in the November Mercure de France, this review of the 1757 Salon
was ascribed by the Correspondance litteraire to a young pupil of Vien's,
who is identified as Antoine Renou in a handwritten note on the transcript
in the Deloynes collection). Toadies already had quite enough to busy
their pens in the shape of the Portrait of Mme de Pompadour (cat. 64).

Like La Lumiere du Monde (cat. 57) the Rest on the Flight is far from
orthodox in that it includes the infant St. John the Baptist, who did not
accompany the Holy Family into Egypt (while both he and the Christ
Child are portrayed too young for this to represent their meeting on the
Return). He is seen paying precocious homage to the Christ Child, rather
as in the small oval of this subject alone that was also painted for Mme de
Pompadour in the same year (exh. cat. 1932, Paris, no. 3; replica dated a
year later in the Uffizi, A& W 503). His presence serves as the convenient
pretext for the introduction of a sheep, just as St. Joseph is almost
subordinated to the colorfully caparisoned ass with the black hen trussed
to its packsaddle. These are just a few of the wealth of elements with
which Boucher has embellished the picture. Some of them such as the —
remains of the classical temple in which the protagonists sit have some —
symbolic or narrative connotation (in this particular instance perhaps
both, as the replacement of the Old Order by the New, and as the ruins of

177
 the temple of Hermopolis), others — such as the rich carpet or the
overturned jar — are just part of the profusion that Boucher delighted in.

In the case of the earlier of the two Marches from Bergeret's collection
now at Boston (A & W
660) indeed, it would appear that the picture
began life in 1761 as a similar Rest on the Flight, showing the Holy Family
accompanied by Joseph s three sons by his first marriage, as in one of the
apocryphal traditions; it may have been Boucher's proliferation of
irrelevant detail as much by this date dubious orthodoxy of the
as the

legend that led to his labeling it merely as a Pastorale when he showed it in

the Salon, and to his subsequently enlarging it into an unspecific Marche.
We know that the present Rest on the Flight belonged to Mme de

278
Pompadour from its presence in her posthumous inventory (Cordey, 1939,
p. 9c, no. 1234) and sale. The inventory enumerates it among the items
brought from elsewhere and stored in the vestibule of the Hotel de
Pompadour (now l'Elysee) in Paris. We do came from,
not know where it

but its square format and even its subject make it unlikely that it was ever
an altarpiece. It was rather a gallery picture, very possibly commissioned
bv Mme de Pompadour from Boucher to give him the opportunitv of
emulating such Italian painters as Albani, Pietro da Cortona, and Maratta,
with whom he was so often compared. Why it should not have been
retained by her brother but have been put by him into her posthumous
sale is — as with all the contents of that sale — a mystery. Size (as with the
Lever and the Coucber du Soleil) may have been a consideration, as may
the religious subject matter, since the exiguous sale contained no less than
three religious pictures by Boucher, including another masterpiece, La
Lumiere du Monde (cat. 57). But in that case it is hard to explain why he
should apparently have owned an autograph replica of The Infant Christ
Blessing the Infant St. John the Baptist —
if he had not simply bought back

the original version in his sister's sale.

Nor do we apparently know when or through whom Catherine the

Great acquired the picture. One can well imagine her having acquired it
directly at the sale through an agent, possibly even having been eager to
own a celebrated picture that had belonged to Mme de Pompadour. She
was certainly keen — despite what she must have read about him in
Diderot's reviews of the Salons in the Correspondance litteraire — to have
something from Boucher's hand; it is thus possible that she acquired the
Rest on the Flight only once she had failed to obtain the picture that she
had tried to commission from him through Prince Galitzin (Diderot,
XVIII. 1876, p. 301).
Catherine the Great can hardlv have wanted to own a painting such as

this bv Boucher because of any involvement with the subject. Primed by

Diderot's criticisms, she may indeed have taken specific pleasure in the
apparent discrepancy between the reputation of the painter and his theme.
Had not Diderot written in the midst of his onslaught on Boucher in his
review of the 1765 Salon: "Wasn't there a time when he was seized with a
frenzy for doing Virgins? So! What were those Virgins? Charming little —
minxes. And his angels? Lewd little satyrs" ("X'a-t-il pas ete un temps oil
il etoit pris de lafureur de faire des viergest Eh hien! qu'etoit-ce que ses

viergesf de gentilles petites caillettes. Et ses anges? de petits satyr es

lihertins" [Diderot, II. 1979, p. 76]). More specifically, when criticizing
the Xativity from a set of eight miniatures of the Life of the Virgin
exhibited by Baudouin in the Salon of 1767, he noted its complete
dependence upon Boucher's picture of Le Sommeil de Jesus, including the
"same coquettish Virgin, the same lewd angels" ("meme Yierge coquette,
memes anges libertins" [Diderot, III, 1983, p. 201-02]). The "frenzy for
doing Virgins" noted by Diderot was evidently around this epoch, since
the picture, which survives (A &: W
49 S), is dated 175 S. Curiously, this
picture, too, is today in Russia (Pushkin Museum, Moscow), though we
do not know how it got there, having no trace of it between its
enumeration in Mme de Pompadour's posthumous inventory (Cordey,
1939, p. 91, no. 1242), and its reemergence in the Vorontsov-Dashkov
collection at the beginning of this century.

^79
 When we look at The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, is it a little minx
and lewd little satyrs counterfeiting piety that we see, or a picture into
which the painter has poured his soul? There can be no certain answer,
since we cannot avoid — like Diderot — interpreting the painting in the

light of our preconceptions about Boucher. One thing we cannot deny,

however, and that is that he has succeeded in rethinking the tired old
theme of the Rest on the Flight completely afresh, in both human and
artistic terms.

69 The Mill of Quiquengrogne at Charenton

Oil on canvas
44/2 x 57/2 in. (113 x 146 cm)
Signed lower right, on the fence:
/ Boucher I iy$8
The Toledo Museum of Art (54.18)
S&M1763 A&W505

PROVENANCE
Posthumous sale of the veuve Lenoir, Paris, 18 The mill at Charenton was one of the earliest picturesque motifs in the
May 1874, lot 3; Baron Anselm de Rothschild, environs of Paris to be seized on by French artists in the eighteenth century,
Vienna; Baron Albert de Rothschild, Vienna;
Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Chateau de
when they began to look to local sites for inspiration for their landscapes.

Pregny, Switzerland; Rosenberg & Stiebel, Unlike Arcueil, however, was not simply the subject of an agreeable
this
New York; acquired bv the museum in 1954. exercise for drawings and sketchbooks; the central motif was sufficiently

COPY
striking to inspire paintings —above all in the case of Boucher, who focused at

38/2 X 51/2 in., paired with Le pont rustique, least three different compositions on it, and also used it as a setting for one of
comtes de la Roche-Avmon, sold in 1926, his series of Beauvais tapestries called La Noble Pastorale. What exactly was
Paris art market; acquired by Otto Bemberg in
this mill, that it became such a favorite motif?
1928; Luis Bemberg; comte J. C. de Monta-
lembert (his son-in-law); Sotheby's, London, 6 Charenton lies upriver and just to the east of Paris, at the confluence of the
Apr. 1977, lot 54; S. T. Fee, Oklahoma City; Seine and the Marne. The stretch of the river from Paris to here had been one
his sale, Christie's, New York, 9 May 1985, of the preferred locations for excursions and for the suburban villas of rich
lot 11.
Parisians since the Middle Ages. The Chateau de Conflans, which took its

ANALOGY name from the confluence, had belonged since 1673 to the archbishops of
Oval pastel, 246 x 225 mm, inscribed boucber, Paris, the first of whom had had the grounds laid out by Le Notre. These
Hermitage, Leningrad (exh. cat. 1970,
were supplied with water by a "machine hydraulique" on the Seine, which is
Leningrad, no. 32).
described by Piganiol (1765, IX, p. 170 ff.), and which Thiery (1787, I,

p. 629) even calls a "moulin." It is tempting to associate this description with

the decidedly bizarre structure depicted by Boucher, but it does not quite
seem to meet the case. The Seine also drove a number of watermills at this
location, one of which, Quiquengrogne — whose alliterative name presumably
derives from the groaning of its wheel (it was also the motto of the de
—
Rupelmonde) was evidently regarded as particularly picturesque. It is
referred to by Hurtaut and Magny (1779, II, p. 538) in their entry on the
Pont de Charenton: "Sous ce pont, il y a un tres-beau moulin." Depictions of
it vary somewhat, and it is not quite clear whether this is to be ascribed to
artistic license, or to the existence of more than one mill of this unusual form.

280
 The earliest depictions of the mill appear to be in two drawings made by
Nicolas Vleughels before he left to become director of the French Academy
in Rome, where he was to encourage his students to sketch from the motif in
the Campagna. One, dated Ascension Day 1721, is in the Pierpont Morgan
Library in New York (fig. 180; exh. cat. 1984, New York, PML, no. 34). The
whereabouts of the other, dated St. Michael's Day 1723, is at present
unknown Hercenberg, 197), no. 324, fig. 174). Vleughels's use of the
(see

motif was followed by Lancret, who made a painting later engraved by

Elisabeth Cousinet with the title Le Moulin de Quiquengrogne, and two
others probably of the same mill (G. Wildenstein, 1924, fig. 27, nos. 41-43),
and by Oudry, who made a drawing of it now in the Cabinet des Dessins of
the Louvre (Opperman, 1977, Dim;Duclaux, 1975, no. 286).
Boucher's earliest depiction of the mill would also appear to have been his

first painted landscape to take a French motif as its subject. This is the panel
Fig. 180. Nicolas Vleughels, The Mill at
Quiquengrognet'? '), dated Ascension Day 1721.
dated 1739 (A &W which was engraved by J-P. Le Bas in 1747, with the
167),
The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. title Premiere veue de Charenton (fig. 181; J-R 1342) and a dedication to

281
 Portail, who, like Boucher, was a participant in the sketching parties at

Arcueil. This first treatment of the subject is very sober, placing it parallel to

the picture plane, as previous artists had done. Nonetheless —possibly

because he is showing it from the other side —Boucher adds a penthouse on
stilts, not found in other representations of the mill, and a three-arched stone
bridge to the left. The half-timbering and thatch of the superstructure are
already shown in a state of picturesque decay, with doves alighting on the
roof. A very similar depiction, but on canvas and larger, and with different
staffage, can be seen from the drawing by Saint- Aubin in his copy of the
catalogue, now in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman in New
York, to have been in the supplement to the Sorbet sale, 1 April ff. 1776, lot
Fig. 18 1. Premiere veue de Charenton, 214, pairedwith another version of the View of a Mill in the Musee
engraved by J-P. Le Bas after Boucher (1747). d'Orleans, with the claim that the owner had acquired them directly from
Boucher himself.
A similar straight-on view, but showing the now four-arched bridge to the
right rather than the left, and the mill itself of more solid construction, with
two wheels (as in the Lancret) rather than one, is found in an undated ovoid
picture that was in the Hearst sale in 1939 (A &W 318). This had a label on
the back, with the ambitious claim that it was "painted by the artist for his

friend, M. Portail, who gave it to Madame de Pompadour." The Pompadour

owned no landscapes by Boucher, and the mention of Portail was no doubt
inspired by Le Bass engraving.
A more romantic portrayal of the mill is to be found in the background to
the cartoon, dated 1748, for the Beauvais tapestry La Fontaine d'Amour (fig.
182; A& W 321). In this it is seen at a slight angle, under a sky with wind-
swept clouds; it has reverted to a single broad opening,- but the penthouse
Fig. 182. La Fontaine d 'Amour. The Paul
J. here overhangs to the right, while the now single-arched stone bridge reverts
Gettv Museum, Malibu.
to the left.

All these depictions so far, despite the liberties that they must visibly have

taken with the motif, at least pretend to be faithful transcriptions of reality.

What sets the Toledo picture apart, and gives it its special quality, is that it is

so obviously a fantasy, an impossible idyll of picturesque decay combined

with the imagined contentment of rustic existence. Steps are added to the left

of the mill, and a woman and child appear in the doorway at the top of them.
A large glazed window (most improbable in such a humble dwelling in
France at this date), out of which a woman leans, now pierces the half-
timbering. Some of the stone arches of the bridge to the left have been
replaced by a rickety wooden structure, which is echoed by the rudimentary
fences to the right of the picture. In the foreground, a duck wings its way
between a girl doing the washing with her idle companion, and a fisherman
mooring a boat.

It is curious that this, one of the most spectacular of Boucher's landscapes,

appears to have no history going back beyond the late nineteenth century. It

is tempting to suggest that it may have been the Vue d'un moulin de
Charenton that was recorded in 1792 on the first floor of the former royal
chateau at Choisv, as one of the five Bouchers that were to be removed to the
Petits-Augustins (Engerand, 1900, p. 44). Of the other contenders, the 1739
picture would presumably have had its pendant, while the Hearst picture is

neither signed nor dated, nor even (from illustrations of it) self-evidently
autograph. The chief objection to the identification is that all Boucher's
pictures for Choisy —including the Toilette de Venus and UAmour dans les

282
 bras de sa mere inventoried in 1792 —appear to have been painted between
1741and 1750, when the chief campaign of decorating and furnishing the
newly acquired chateau was undertaken (see Chamchine, 1910, pp. 159-63,
183). It is, however, always possible that it had been transported there from
some other royal chateau. It is perhaps suggestive that the only known copy
of it is paired with another royal picture, Le pont rustique, which belonged to
the Dauphin (A & W 476; it is, however, too large to be identified with the
undescribed pendant of this; see A& W doc. 987, and Engerand, 1900,
p. 637). The unusual dimensions and splendor of this landscape do nothing to
detract from the idea that it may have been painted for the king.

70 Jupiter in the Guise of Diana Seducing

Callisto
Oil on canvas
22 x 27 x 74 cm)
in. (56
Signed:/ Boucher I 1759
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
Kansas City (32-29)
S & M 180 [with extraneous
items] A&W518

PROVENANCE
Catalogue d'une belle Collection de Tableaux Of all mythological subjects, Jupiter and Callisto was —next to the Birth and
. . .

MOXTBLIX,
&c, provenant de la succession

Conseiller au Parlement, rue de

de M. DE —
Triumph of Venus and Venus and Vulcan the one most frequently depicted

Verneuil, 25-26 Feb. 1777, lot 4: "Jupiter, sous

by Boucher. It is not hard to see why. In addition to its erotic content, the
la figure de Diane, surprend Calisto. Ce episode required the depiction of the naked or half-naked bodies of women
Tableau, peint par F. Boucher, est des plus and putti alone, thus sparing Boucher his difficulties in creating convincing
agreables Tableaux de ce Maitre. a ete grave
par Gaillard; largeur vingt-cinq pouces, lon-
II
male protagonists. For some reason —probably because most ofthem were
gueur [sic] vingt-un pouces"; Catalogue de painted in the latter part of his career, when he favored this —
form most of
Tableaux precieux des Trois Ecoles . . . Le tout his finished depictions of the subject are oval. The two exceptions are his first
provenant du Cabinet de M. le Chevalier de
known treatment of the subject, the painting of 1744 in the Pushkin Museum
C*** [?Mesnard de Clesle; possibly to be
identified with M. le chevalier de Clere of the in Moscow (A & W 267), and the present picture.
Almanack, 1777, p. 183], Hotel de Bullion The story comes from Boucher's favorite source, Ovid's Metamorphoses
(Paillet), 4 Dec. ff. 1786, lot 65: "Jupiter
(book and it was characteristic of him that he should choose the episode of
2),
metamorphose sous la figure de Diane, sedui-
sant la nimphe Callisto; ce grouppe interessant
the seduction, rather than of its consequences, as the preponderant pictorial
est presente avec tout le charme d'une com- tradition had done. Callisto was the favorite nymph of the virgin goddess and
position flatteuse, & dans l'attitude la plus huntress, Diana. Discovering her in Arcadia, Jupiter took the form of Diana
riante & la plus voluptueuse. . . . Nous
in order to win her confidence, before seducing her. This violation of her
croyons qu'il seroit difficile de presenter un
morceau plus seduisant, d'une composition vows of chastity was only discovered some months later, when she stripped
plus riche & plus soignee dans tous ses details, to bathe with the other nymphs, and resulted in her expulsion from their
la facilite de la du dessin
touche & les graces
band. The jealous Juno then had her revenge by turning her smooth, delicate
indiquent un des momens brillans du genie de
cet artiste ." [bought bv Le Brun for form into that of a lumbering, shaggy bear. Jupiter, however, converted her
. .
999
livres 19 sous]; sale of M. Gfoutte], prepose and his son by her into constellations — the Great and the Little Bear.
principal du Tresor aux Armees, Paris, 29
Although this and other versions of the theme are often hastily called
\iar.-3 Apr. 1841, lot 196; Edward Timson
coll., sold Christie's, London, 18 July 1930, lot
Diana and Callisto, Boucher was always careful to include Jupiter's eagle,
61;Howard Young Galleries, London, from gripping his thunderbolts and keeping a vigilant eye on the event, to indicate
which acquired for the museum in 1932. that it is indeed the god and not the goddess. The crescent moon on his

283
 forehead identifies his disguise as Diana, and he/she indicates the quiver and
dead game to betoken the conversation about hunting, through which he
lulled Callisto into a sense of false security. The cupids brandish darts and
torches to signify the effects of love.
The earliest recorded appearance of this picture was in the posthumous sale

of the lawyer M. de Montblin

February 1777. The coincidence of this sale
in

with the engraving of the picture by Gaillard (which is already mentioned in

the catalogue, though it was not advertised until August) makes one suspect,
however, that it was an insertion by the auctioneer, particularly as the
Fig. 183. Three Cupids in the Air. The Nelson-
Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas Citv. engraving carries no mention of ownership, but only a dedication to a

M. d'Arbonne by the print dealer.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum has recently complemented its ownership of
the painting by acquiring an associated drawing of three putti in clouds (fig.

183; A& W fig. 1433). Rather than seeing this as Ananoff and Wildenstein
appear to do, and as Roger Ward does (1983), as a preparatory drawing for
the picture, it should be regarded as a typical example of Bouchers taking
elements from his paintings —or from the studies for these —and working
284
 —

ENGRAVING them up into drawings marketable in their own right (a point already made in
Jupiter et Calisto, engraved by R. Gaillard, and
an unpublished reply to Wards note by William R Miller, Jr.). The two putti
published by Buldet with a dedication to M.
d'Arbonne, Grand Maitre des Eaux et Forets in the painting are anyway, as Ward notes, already familiar in closely similar
(J-R 1052-1054), in August 1760, as a pendant poses from other paintings, although the one that he cites itself looks merely
to Ryland's engraving of Jupiter et Leda (see
like a pastiche, composed of one of the cupids from here and another from
published by him two years before.
cat. 40),
the Chariot of Apollo at Fontainebleau (A & W 417). The interesting thing,

DRAWING however, is that in none of the precedents that one can find is any of these
Two putti from upper right, with a third
cupids exactly repeated. It is this that enables one to put a plausible
added, red, black, and white chalks, 197 X
interpretation upon
Joshua Reynolds's observation (1959, p. 225), that
Sir
287 mm, Francois Renaud [framer], rue
Feydeau, Paris; J.
B. de Graaf, Amsterdam; Boucher appeared to work "without drawings or models of any kind." It was
?Leon Decloux sale, Paris, 14-15 Feb. 1898, not that he had ceased to make drawings and studies, but that, having by
lot I75 ; Thos. Agnew & Sons, London; private
means of them fixed a successful pose in his memory, he was capable of
coll.; Agnew's agajn, from whom acquired by
the Nelson-Atkins Museum in 1983.
drawing it out and adapting it for whatever purpose he required it, without
fresh recourse to the original study.
COPIES
1. ?Reversed copy after engraving by 2. Upright variant, reversed, 39 X 32 cm, 5. Painting, sale at Chateau de Maisons-
Gaillard, posthumous sale of the marquis de la P. S. sale, Gudule, Brussels, May 1899. Laffitte, 16 Nov. 1969, lot 18.

Chataigneraye, prince de Ponts, Hotel Reversed variant on panel, 99 x 144 cm,

3. 6. Pencil drawing for a miniature, strength-
Drouot, Paris, 5 May 1868, lot 7 bis, as Diane anon, sale, Henrici, Berlin, 29 June 1920, lot 5. enedin ink, Baudouin portfolio, Graphische

et Calisto (gravee), pendant to lot 7, Nymphe 4. Reversed variant lacking landscape, 56 x Sammlung, Munich (inv. 10727).
delivree (gravee) [Sylvie delivree, also en- 86 cm, M. J.
sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 17

graved by Gaillard]. Apr. 1920, lot 14.

71 The School of Love

Oil on canvas
25/2 x 32 in. (64.5 x 81 cm)
Signed on stone, bottom left: / Boucher I iy6o
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe (inv. 479)
A&W542
Paris

72 The School of Friendship

Oil on canvas
25/4 X 313/, in. (64 x 80.5 cm)
Inscribed on stone, bottom right: f.
Boucher I 1/90 [sic]

Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe (inv. 480)

Paris

PROVENANCE
Acquired by Caroline Luise of Baden from the Boucher's relationship with Caroline Luise, the Margravine of Baden, for
J. H. Eberts; Schloss Karlsruhe; whom
artist via
this pair of pastorals was painted, is an attractive little episode that
transferred to the Kunsthalle between 1833 and
1863.
sheds interesting light upon how he was regarded by at least one creator of a
deliberately planned cabinet de peinture.
DRAWING Caroline Luise (1723-1783) was one of a number of remarkable women
Finished drawing of The School of Friendship
prepared for the engraver, removing peeping
thrown up by the ruling houses of the Holy Roman Empire in the eighteenth
torn, and substituting overturned vase for century. Born a Landgravine of Hesse-Darmstadt, she was married in 175 1

statue of putto, engraved by J-M. Delatre and

published by Daulle, as L'Ecole de I'Amitie.
quite late in life for those days — to the Margrave Carl Friedrich of Baden-
Durlach (with which Baden-Baden was to be reunited in 1771). Already

285
286
VARIANTS known as "the Hessian Minerva" when she married, and subsequently called
The School of Love: oval, 77 x 65 cm, signed
the "Vielwissenn von Baden" ("the much-knowing and
und Vielfragerin
/ Boucher 1/61, exhibited in the Salon of 1761,
under no. 9; Randon de Boisset's posthumous much-questioning lady of Baden") by Lavater, she was possessed of great
sale, 27 Feb. ff. 1777, lot 191 [bought by intelligence, curiosity, and artistic aptitude. The first was recognized by her
Desmarest for 80 livres]; intended posthu-
11
admittance into the academy of Arcadia in Rome in 1776, and the last by her
mous sale of the marquis de Livois, Angers,
1791, no. 215; sequestered, but later reclaimed reception into the Royal Danish Academy of Art in 1763. In the latter part of
by his heirs, by whom sold to M. Gamba for her life her interest in natural history came to predominate, but earlier it was
30 francs; sale of M. Gamba, 370 rue Saint- art. As a girl she had been taught how to use pastel by Liotard, and until
Honore, Paris, 17 Dec. ff. 1811, lot 54 [bought
around 1770 she used pastel, oils, and red chalk to make careful copies of
by Le Brun for 54 francs]; probably acquired
by Sir Richard Wallace, and thus to the Wallace pictures by other artists and drawings of her intimate circle. Her most lasting
Collection, London, P431 [only the figures achievement, however, was between 1759 and 1769 (and above all between
retained, with variations in dress] (fig. 185).
1759 and 1763, when prices were depressed by the Seven Years' War) to put
The School of Friendship: c. 15 ponces x 13

ponces, Salon of 1765, no. 11, with pendant; together a choice collection of pictures, which still forms the core of the
engraved by Jacques Bonnefoy as La Confi- Karlsruher Kunsthalle (for her life and activities see esp. Lauts, 1980, and exh.
dence (fig. 186;J-R 313-314; A & figs. W cat. 1983, Karlsruhe, Schloss). Although she claimed that, "I regard my
1602, 1603), with pendant as Le Rcpos (J-R
312; A& W figs. 1595, 1596); [upright
Cabinet as an educated person would his library, namely as a means of
composition, with considerable variations in instruction" (Lauts, 1980, p. 157), she also said that, "I must confess that I am
setting and in the figure of the confidante].
mad
as for good pictures as books" (Lauts, 1980, p. 168).

COPIES
Most of her pictures, whether from living artists or old masters from the
Red chalk, 410 x 510 mm, Kupferstich- art market, came from Paris, where her chief agent was the banker and
kabinett, Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe (inv. 691, 692) artistic middleman from Strasbourg, H. Eberts (for this and what follows,
J.
[by Caroline Luise, Margravine of Baden?].
see Obser, 1902, and Lauts, 1980, pp. 155-71). It was through him that she
obtained her first two pictures by Boucher, a pair of pastel heads. She had
only asked for one, in the summer of 1759 (and it is interesting that this was
what she associated the artist with), but Boucher offered a pendant. When
they arrived, she was delighted, describing them as "two admirable heads.
... I find them every bit as beautiful as you had told me, my cabinet takes
fresh luster from them." Encouraged by this, as Eberts wrote in December:

Mr. Boucher has offered me to compose, paint, and give superior finish
to two pastoral on canvases roughly two feet square.
subjects,
Ordinarily he is paid one hundred louis for two such pieces, but
because of his respectful consideration for Your Highness, and his desire
to enrich your fine cabinet with two pretty pieces, he would be content
with fifty new louis. The result will be a little compound of grace,

R
mt* tenderness, ingenuity, and taste
. . .

— all more precious because this

the
charming artist is hardly going to do any more of these subjects.
Fig. 184. Caroline Luise of Baden(?), copy of The Margravine welcomed the proposal, only adding her wish that the artist
Boucher's The School of Friendship. Staatliche
might add one or two animals to his pictures, since, "I am told that he does
Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.
them supremely well."
From this moment on, Eberts gave regular progress reports on the
pictures, adding fire to the Margravine's expectations. Boucher had already
made a start on one at the beginning of January 1760: "He has promised me
two masterpieces, in which there will be a little of everything — figures,

animals, flowers, and streams. . .

." So enthusiastic did he make the
Margravine that she declared, "I foresee that I shall drop to my knees when I

receive them." The first of the pair, The School of Love, was nearing
completion by the end of March, inspiring Eberts to proclaim:

The most beautiful nymph or shepherdess of the century of Astraea was

never as beautiful as the one in this picture. The shepherd, whom she

287
 regards with a passionate glance, is also very choice; the lambs, sheep,
streams, statues, flowers, etc., are like Nature herself, and prettily
finished without being glacial.

When he sent the picture at the end of April, Eberts took the opportunity
to extract two more heads in pastel from Boucher's studio. The Margravine
expressed herself delighted with all three: the Pastorale had entirely lived up
to her expectations, and the fresh color of one of the pastels, of a woman
reading a letter, pleased her particularly. The second Pastorale followed at the
beginning of June, and Caroline Luise continued to express her delight:

I was highly contented with the first, but I am yet more so with this
one, it is adorable, and of a really fine coloring. Thank Mr. Boucher for
me, and tell him that he has really enriched my cabinet with his
beautiful works. I am no two fine prints that he
less appreciative of the
Fig. 185. A Shepherd and Shepherdess Gather-
ing Roses, signed and dated 1761. Wallace
had the goodness to send me; I have placed them among my best
Collection, London. pictures, where —
without color, and by their beautiful composition
alone —they will always maintain the place that I have given them with
distinction. The very calumny —
or rather the envy that is vented —
against Mr. Boucher seems to me to redound to his credit; his
reputation is too solidly established for anything in the world to
diminish it.

Even allowing for courtly exaggeration, it would appear that the

Margravine was genuinely pleased with what she had obtained from
Boucher —one has only to compare it with Marigny's tepid thanks to Natoire
for the Leda that he painted to join Bouchers Blonde Odalisque (cat. 61) in

the petit cabinet chaud to see this. Yet the fact that she felt compelled to allude
to his critics, and the criticism of his coloring implicit in her hanging black-
and-white prints of other pictures of his in her cabinet, suggest latent
reservations. Even so, the deduction that has been made (see Lauts, 1980,
p. from the tone of her letters to Eberts and to J. F. von Reiffenstein
170)
(who, it should be remembered, was one of the pioneers of the reaction
La Confidence, engraved by Jacques
Fig. 186.
against the Rococo in Germany) and from the subsequent fate of the pictures,
Bonnefoy after Boucher.
that she was disappointed in them, is overdrawn. It is true that the two
Pastorales did not remain in her cabinet, but went to decorate the Schloss, so
that her husband, in whose province this fell, had to reimburse her their
purchase price (so tight was her budget!). But this was as much as anything a
reflection of the carefully planned and balanced nature of her cabinet, which
consisted essentially of small paintings by Dutch artists or by other artists

employing similar types and finish (Lauts, 1980, p. 159) —even Italian pictures

could scarcely find a toehold there (Lauts, 1980, pp. 203-05). Pictures she
was about she gave away or sold (Lauts, 1980, pp. 167,
really unenthusiastic

186, 189-91, 204). She was even sufficiently keen to obtain two more pastel
heads from Boucher, one of Mme de Pompadour (in which it is no doubt
true that the sitter interested her more than the artist), and the other of the
dancer Mile Bienvenue, or "Lindane."
Perhaps the most significant token of Caroline Luise s genuine interest in

the Pastorales is that she used the head of the shepherdess in the School of
Love for a red-chalk drawing of a Woman Reading (fig. 63 ; no doubt itself

inspired by Boucher's pastel), which was one of the specimens of her work
that she sent to Denmark to support her candidature for the Academy in 1763

(Lauts, 1980, pp. 198-99, fig. 33). What is more — unless they are actually

288
 preparations for never-executed engravings — it seems more plausible that the
two copies of the Pastorales (see fig. 184) in red chalk in the Kupfer-
stichkabinett of the Kunsthalle should be by Caroline Luise, who was a
zealous copyist, than that they should be by the court artist, Boucher's
former pupil Joseph Melling (exh. cat. 1983, Karlsruhe, Schloss, no. 91).
The sentimental subject matter and the painterly profusion of Boucher's
two Pastorales do indeed strike a different note among the sober realism and
high finish of the Margravine's predominantly Dutch pictures, but it is clear
that he did exert himself particularly in painting them. Not only did he cram

his whole pastoral repertoire into the small format of these two pictures, but

he also strove to paint them more minutely. It may well have been true that,
as he told Eberts, he intended these to be among his last pastorals, and that

he had become a prisoner of his own success with the genre. Nevertheless,
the School of Friendship, in particular, shows that he could still devise images
within it that are replete with both naturalness and charm.

73 Landscape with a Distant Ruin

Oil on canvas
19/2 x 26 in. (49 X 66 cm)
Signed on stone bottom left: / Boucher I ij6i
Indianapolis Museum of Art; Gift of
Mr. and Mrs. Herman C. Krannert (60.248)
A&W546

74 Landscape with a Weir

Oil on canvas
18 x 26 in. (46 X 66 cm)
Signed bottom right:/ Boucher I ij6i
Private collection, Bielefeld
A&W547
PROVENANCE
Catalogue des Tableaux Originaux des Grands These were the only two landscapes by Boucher in the posthumous sale of
Maitres des Trois Ecoles, qui ornoient un des
his great friend and patron Christian IV, Herzog von Zweibriicken ("le due
Palais de feu son Altesse Monseigneur Chris-
tient, DUC DES DEUX PONTS, Hotel d'Al-
de Deux-Ponts"). Most of the Bouchers in this sale were mythological,
igre (Remy), 6 Apr. ff. 1778, lot 79: "Deux though it also included a version of The Surprise (cat. 2), and the only other
paysages dates de 1761; dans l'un on voit un landscapes by a French artist were a Landscape paired with a Seascape,
enfant pres d'une femme qui peche a la ligne:

plus loin dans un chemin a gauche, un homme

painted by Vernet in Rome in 1749 (lot 80). Not that it should be assumed
a cheval, & des moutons; dans l'autre un that the duke had owned no others, since the statement of the catalogue that
moulin a eau, un pont de bois, plusieurs the pictures had "adorned one of the palaces of his late Highness" is
figures, une vache & des moutons; ils sont sur
confirmed by Mannlich (1948, p. 274), who says that it was the pictures in the
toile, & portent chacun 17 pouces de haut, sur
gallery of the petit chateau (i.e., the so-called Kleines Palais or "Schlosschen"
24 pouces de large" [sold for 500 livres]; sale
of Mme de Poles, Paris, 22-24 June r 9 2 7> ' ots of the duke's morganatic wife, the Grafin von Forbach) that were sold, since
14, 13 [bought together by Mr. Lennie Davis
this pavilion passed to the dowager duchess after his death. The pictures were
for 450,000 francs, thereafter sold separately]:
Landscape with a Distant Ruin: Rosenberg
regarded by her as chattels and sent to Paris for sale despite the fact that many
& Stiebel, New York; Mr. and Mrs. Herman of them must have been let into the paneling (hence their being sold without

289
73

C. Krannert, New Augusta, by whom given frames). At least one Boucher appears to have been in either the Zweibriicker
to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in i960.
Residenz or Schloss Jagersburg, whence it ultimately came to reside in the
Landscape with a Weir: The Hallsborough
Gallery, London, from which acquired by the
Alte Pinakothek in Munich (cat. 61); while the portrait of Mme de
present owner in 1961. Pompadour that was sent to the duke in 1764 was probably retained by
Grafin Forbach, since it, like Mannlich's conversation piece of the duke and
his morganatic family in which her own pose was modeled on that of the
Pompadour, appears to have been acquired by baron Edmond de Rothschild
(with an erroneous provenance from the de Bernis family; see Mannhch,
1948, p. 121; Dahl & Lohmeyer, 1957, pp. 160-61, 169 n. 19, 309; A&W
170/2).
It is not clear whether these pictures were among those exhibited in the
Salon of 1761. The livret simply lists an unspecified number of "Pastorales et
Paysages, sous le meme Numero." Saint-Aubin only illustrates two land-
scapes (Dacier, III, no. 6, 191 1, p. 54, facsimile), but two of the critics imply
there were more (A & W docs. 796, 800). It could be that they were simply
using "landscape" in the wider sense, to embrace the pastorals as well, but
this is not self-evident. Saint-Aubin s two drawings are so fuzzy that it is hard
to demonstrate anything more than a negative with them. They do not
suggest either of the present pictures, nor is Ananoff and Wildenstein's
proposal of the Blanchisseuses dans un paysage (A &W 532) very convincing:

290
 —

not only does the drawing itself lack the vertical accents of the picture, but
the pendant clearly represents a stone bridge rather than — as it should La
passerelle (A & W 531).
It is regrettable that we do not know for certain whether these landscapes
were among those in the Salon, since one of the critics is particularly

pertinent about them (A & W doc. 796). Having insisted upon the
importance of constant expeditions to study nature on the spot (something
one suspects that Boucher had long abandoned: he is never mentioned as
taking part in the excursions of his friend Wille, for instance), he goes on to
praise Boucher as the preeminent landscape painter of the day, but to "fear
that with infinitely rare talents, too much artifice and too many pleasing
colors are deployed in landscapes in which plain and simple nature should
reign, and that the pretty and the affected usurp the place of the beautiful and
the natural." ("Mais n'est-ilpas a craindre qu'avec des talens infiniment
precieux, on ne mette dans des paysages ou doit regner la simple et naive
nature, trop de manieres, trop de couleurs gracieuses, et que le joli et Vajjecte

ne prennent la place du beau et du naturel")

Bouchers misfortune with his critics was a double one. On the one hand,
the definition of what was natural had shifted and become more rigorous
since he had begun painting landscapes inspired by the picturesque motifs of

291
 the French countryside over twenty years before; on the other hand he had
begun to fall back on formulae, putting all his skill into the cunning of his

brushwork. As Diderot observed after talking about Bouchers landscapes in

the same Salon:

He is made to turn the heads of two types of people society figures —

and artists . . . the latter, who see the degree to which this man has
overcome the sheer difficulties of painting . . . bow their knee to him;
he is their god. . . . He is to painting more or less what Ariosto is to
poetry. Boucher has afaire that is so perfectly his own that one
. . .

could give him a figure to execute in any piece of painting whatsoever,

and it would be instantly recognizable. (II est fait pour tourner la tete a
deux sortes de personnes, les gens du monde, et les artistes qui voient . . .

jusqu'd quel point cet homme a surmonte les difficultes de la peinture

. [ils] flechissent le genou devant lui; c'est leur dieu.
. . Ce peintre est . . .

a peu pres en peinture ce que VArioste est en poesie. Boucher a une . . .

faire qui lui appartient tellement, que dans quelque morceau de peinture
qu'on lui donndt une figure a executer, on la reconnaitrait sur-le-champ
[Diderot, 1975, P- II2 ]-)

One is conscious in this passage, as so often, that Diderot was motivated

by reactions to things extraneous to the paintings themselves — to society and
to the old debate over the competence of non-artists to pass public judgment
on works of art —but even so one must acknowledge the partial validity of his
criticisms. The charm of these landscapes resides precisely in their handling
and in their artifice: it is the painter that we are meant to address ourselves to,
not the motif. As always, we are conscious of a splendid excess: effects
intrinsically natural are piled upon one another in impossible and idyllic
confusion. Taken alone, each detail — the creeper trailing over the weir, the
gnarled willows, the crooked fences, the distant ruin (which is curiously
reminiscent of the eroded tombs on the via Appia) — has verisimilitude, but
the whole defies belief. Nor is it, as has been advanced (see exh. cat. 1983,

Atlanta, no. 65), the artificiality of the stage set — of which neither picture has
either the components or the composition; it is rather, as Diderot said, the

subordination of everything to the demands of the brush, which proclaims

"Boucher" in every stroke.

7j The Death of Socrates

Oil on canvas, en camaieu brun
16x 22 in. (41 x 55 cm)
Musee de Tesse, Le Mans (inv. 1821)

A&W536
PROVENANCE
Deposited by the Reunion des Musees Na- The Death of Socrates strikes a most unusual note in Bouchers oeuvre: a
tionaux in 1957.
severe classical subject, taken from history rather than mythology, set in a
prison, centered upon death, and requiring exclusively male protagonists.
One's first reaction is that it cannot be by Boucher, but must be by his more
artistically ambitious son-in-law, Jean-Baptiste Deshays.

292
 ——

DRAWING
La mort de Socrate (paired with La mort de
The idea is seductive, since this sketch has a vigor —almost a coarseness
that seems alien to Boucher, and more characteristic of Deshays. But the
Callirhoe), pen and bister wash heightened
with white, n pouces x 14 pouces, Randon de alternative attribution will not hold: the picture lacks the crude contour-
Boisset'sposthumous sale, 27 Feb. 1777 ff., lot defining black lines found in Deshays's sketches, and the paint has a liquidity
331:"D'un bon faire & tres capitaux" [given to
alien to his abrupter hand. The often schematic faces of the protagonists can
M. de Sireul (who had contributed the
Anecdotes of the collector as a preface) by his be paralleled elsewhere in Boucher's oeuvre: the face of the standing disciple
nephews and heirs]; de Sireul's posthumous holding a book at the left is a throwback to the type Boucher employed for
sale, 3 Dec. 1781, lot 81 [bought by Paillet
ff.
elderly men early in his career (see cat. 7, 8), while the most summarily
for 180 livres 1 sol and 80 livres 2 sous]; misc.

sale (Paillet), 17 Dec. 1787 ff., lot 136 [bought

defined heads in the background relate to others in the backgrounds of the St.

by Bereyter for 146 livres 1 sol]. Peter Attempting to Walk on the Waters (cat. jj), and of the grisaille and
camaieu sketches for St. John the Baptist Preaching (A &W 558, 559; the
third of the sketches they include, no. 560, now in the Art Institute of

Chicago, is, however, most probably by Deshays). Seen in black-and-white

illustration, there appear to be seductive similarities between the present
sketch and that for Deshays's altarpiece of the Marriage of the Virgin in Saint-
Pierre, Douai (Musee de la Chartreuse, Douai; see exh. cat. 1983-84,
Rotterdam, no. 63; exh. cat. 1984, Langres, no. 8), but seen in the flesh, the

harsh colors and coarse facture of the latter reveal a much more
uncompromising hand at work. By comparison with his former teacher,
indeed, Deshays made very little use of grisaille or camaieu for his sketches,
evidently preferring more pronounced accents. Nevertheless, just as in the
for him —unusually gentle scene of the Virgin's marriage, Deshays ap-
proached Boucher so closely that the picture was until recently ascribed to
the latter, so, in the present sketch of an unwonted historical subject, Boucher
appears to have responded to the influence of his former pupil.
There is no record of a finished picture to resolve the question of

attribution. Nor does it help that both Boucher and Deshays are recorded as
making wash drawings of the subject. Boucher's passed through the
distinguished collections of Randon de Boisset and de Sireul, while Deshays
made two of different sizes, one of which was in his own posthumous sale,

293
 —

and reappeared either in the shape of the drawing in the Ghendt sale in 1779

(15 Nov. ff., lot 254), or in that of the Le Brun sale of 29 April ff. 1782,
lot 165.

Why the two artists should have taken this interest in a subject generally

regarded as the epitome of neoclassicism is not immediately apparent. It had

already been depicted by Dandre-Bardon in a painting exhibited in the Salon
of 1753, when-the episode was proposed as a moral exemplar by La Font de
Saint- Yenne, in his Sentiments sur quelques ouvrages de Peinture, Sculpture et

gravure in 1754 (see Rosenblum, 1970, pp. 56, 73-75). Yet it was not until

1 76 1 that the suggestion was taken up, when it was adopted by Challe for his

Fig. 187. J-P. de Saint-Quentin, The Death of pioneering classicizing picture in the Salon of that year (see Diderot, 1975, pp.
Socrates (1762). Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. 89, 124-25, fig. 56). The following year it was both the subject of a picture by
Sane (Locquin, 1912, pp. 249-50) and adopted as the first classical theme to
be set in the Academy's annual competition for its pupils. Sane s picture was
fulsomely praised by Cochin, and the latter was behind the choice of subject
for the Grand Prix as well.
The present sketch is utterly remote in handling and spirit from the lost
pictures by Challe and Sane, both of which aspired to the condition of bas-
8§BV reliefs, and even from the declamatory Poussinism of the picture by the 1762

prizewinner, J-P. de Saint-Quentin (fig. 187; Ecole des BeauxTArts, Paris),

despite the fact that he was a pupil of Bouchers. It has much greater affinity
with the busy vitality of some of Boucher s own drawings, especially the one
of the Last Supper that belonged to Mariette (fig. 188; Albertina, Vienna, inv.
Fig. 188. The Last Supper. Albertina, Vienna. 12.123; apparently executed over the offset of a drawing in the Art Institute of

Chicago, of which there copy by J-B. Huet on the New York art market,
is a
exh. cat 1984, New York, no. 22), and it is also reminiscent of another scene
set by him in a prison, the Corps de Garde engraved in aquatint by Floding
in 1762 (J-R 1013).
It seems possible that Boucher was even inspired to produce this sketch by
the competition of 1762. The competitors that year included not only one of
his pupils, but also (among the architects) his son. The rules of the

competition, which required the candidates to make their sketches in

seclusion, and to adhere to these when painting their finished picture, would
have precluded Boucher offering any guidance —even were it to have been
welcome in such an event by this date —so that the sketch can only have been
made for his own purposes. It must reflect his awareness of the new trends in
painting, and his desire to meet their challenge — a desire that resulted in a

number no completed
of drawings and sketches of classical subjects, but in
paintings, only in the failure to execute even those commissioned for the
gallery at Choisy or for the Royal Castle in Warsaw. That the desire was
present we know from a letter of Cochin s to Marigny of 16 October 1764
concerning the gallery at Choisy (Engerand, 1900, p. 225). In it, he proposed
four artists to paint the elevating classical subjects that he had proposed: Carle
Vanloo, Vien, Deshays, and Boucher, "who has for so long desired to treat a
historical episode, and for whom the scale required by this gallery is an
everyday thing." ("M. Boucher, qui desire si longtemps d'avoir enfin ['occasion
de trainer un morceau d'histoire et pour qui la proportion, a laquelle cette
galerie assujettit, est si ordinaire") In the event Boucher produced nothing
not even a sketch or a drawing — of the episode from the life of Titus or
Trajan that he would have been required to paint; he was instead proposed by
Cochin as the artist best fitted to provide the graceful and agreeable

294
 —

substitutes preferred by the king, at whose behest these sermonizing paintings

had been taken down almost as soon as they were put up (Engerand, 1900,
p. 401).

Perhaps Boucher had already been discouraged by the present sketch.

Though it is a virtuoso piece of painting, as always, the stoic message of the
episode is dissipated by the baroque agony of the chief protagonist, and
Boucher's difficulty with his features makes it hard to identify him as an old
man, let alone as Socrates. The identification of the subject of the picture has

indeed been questioned, but the empty cup of hemlock beside the dying
man, and the disciples recording his last words, leave little doubt about it. It

is, however, precisely the ambiguity of the scene that demonstrates how far

Boucher was from having grasped the pictorial correlative of the exemplum
virtutis.

76 The Assumption of the Virgin

Oil sketch on canvas
50/4 x 29/4 in. (127.5 x 74-5 cm )

National Galleries of Scotland,

Edinburgh (inv. 2179)

PROVENANCE
Catalogue de Dessins, Tableaux et Estampes. The posthumous sales of Deshays, Baudouin, and their common father-in-
Apres le decks de M. DESHAYS, peintre du
law, Boucher, produced a clutch of sketches of the Assumption by the last of
Roi, dans l'appartement du Defunt, rue Neuve
des Petits-Champs, a cote de la porte du Jardin
these. Evidently, some of these pictures were identical with one another. Since
du Palais Royal (Remy), 16 Mar. ff. 1765, in Deshays's sale in 1765 contained no less than three, all of the same
the section headed Esquisses et Ebauches de
Boucher, &c, either lot 123: "Une autre
M.
[i.e.,
dimensions, one in grisaille and two colored —one of which was bought in
while Baudouin's sale in 1770 and Boucher's in 1771 each contained one
esquisse de l'Assomption] coloree, de quatre
pieds quatre pouces de haut, sur deux pieds colored sketch of the same dimensions, it would appear that one of them had
trois pouces de large" [sold for 24 livres], or bought the colored sketch that was sold, and the other had acquired the
lot 124: "Autre Assomption coloree, de la
picture that was bought in. The grisaille sketch had been bought by the
meme grandeur que la precedente" ["Neant,"
i.e., bought in]; then either Catalogue des architect de Wailly, yet in his sale in 1788 there was no such picture, but only
Tableaux . . . &c. apres le dices de Mr. Bau- two sketches of same dimensions by Boucher, representing the
virtually the
dou'in, Peintre de I'Academie Royale, Hotel
Annunciation. Since we have no other record of such a subject painted by
d'Espagne (Remy), 15 Feb. ff. 1770, lot 5:

"Une autre belle ebauche, representant une

Boucher (although there is a drawing for an altarpiece of the Annunciation,
Assomption, peinte sur toile. Hauteur 4 pieds albeit of contested authorship, in the Musees d'Angers, cf. exh. cat. 1977-78,
3 pouces; largeur 2 pieds 3 pouces" [bought by London, no. seems fairly clear that the auctioneer made a slip of the
12), it
Monval for 40 livres], or Catalogue Raisonne
pen, and that both sketches were in fact of the Assumption, de Wailly having
des Tableaux . . . &c. qui composent le Cabinet
DE FEU M. BOUCHER, Premier Peintre du acquired one of the colored sketches in Baudouin's or in Boucher's
Roi, Vieux Louvre, appartement du defunt sr. posthumous sale, to add to the grisaille that he already owned.
Boucher, 18 Feb. ff. 1771, lot 85 bis: "L'As-
What do these large oil sketches of an unwonted religious theme by
somption de la Vierge, ebauche peinte sur toile
de 4 pieds 4 pouces, sur 2 pieds 3 pouces de Boucher, all in family ownership, signify? All three seem to be identifiable
large" [bought by Varanchamp for 36 livres]; today (the grisaille — actually en camaieu brun — in a private collection,
then either Cabinet d'un Artiste (Le Brun
Boileau), 22 Jan. "Une
& A& W 526; and the other colored sketch, fig. 189, in Musee des Beaux-
the
Dijon, A & W 527, wrongly stated to be en
ff. 1787, lot 130: belle
esquisse en hauteur representant l'Assomption
Arts in grisaille); not only do

de la Sainte Vierge. Hauteur 47 pouces, largeur they all relate to one another, but they also suggest a very late placing within
27 pouces. Toile" [sold for 3 livres], and the artist's output. They were evidently produced not at all long before
Catalogue d'une Collection . . ., Hotel de
Deshays's death, and the fact that they were all in his possession suggests that

295
296
 they were somehow to have been exploited by him. The present picture has,
indeed, been erroneously attributed to him in the past (see Sandoz, 1977, p.

74, no. 50C). Deshays, however, is known to have been commissioned to

produce only one Assumption, in 1758 for the priory of Bellefonds, near his

native Rouen, for which two sketches are known (Sandoz, 1977, pp. 73-74
and pi. v, nos. 5oBa, $oBb). These bear no relation to the present picture or
to the colored sketch in Dijon, although there is some thematic affinity with
the painting en camaieu brun, in that in this sketch alone the Virgin is

ascending from the midst of the Apostles surrounding her tomb. It does not,
however, seem possible to detach this sketch en camaieu brun
compositionally from the two colored sketches, and all three appear to date
from later than 1758 on stylistic grounds.
The sequence of sketches would indeed rather appear to imply that it was
instead Boucher who took Deshays's composition as his point of departure (if

Deshays was not in turn taking his cue from the Assumption included in the

eight drawings by Boucher inserted into Mme de Pompadours Office de la

Sainte Vierge [printed in 1757], A & W fig. 97, which were exploited by
Baudouin in a set of miniatures for the same patron). In this sequence, the
earliest sketch would be the one en camaieu brun, which is the only one of

Fig. 189. Colored sketch of The Assumption. the three that can strictly be called an Assumption; it shares with the second
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. of Deshays's sketches the device of prominently featuring an Apostle cut off
at the waist below, gazing up at the Virgin, so as to dramatize the fact of her
ascent. The next sketch in the sequence would be the present one, in which
the vacated tomb is still present, but in which a vigorously posed angel takes
the place of the Apostle. This is just one of a number of changes that begin to
convert this into a Glorification of the Virgin rather than strictly an
Assumption: a putto-angel presents Mary with a lily from the right, a dove
(symbolizing the Holy Ghost, and already present in the first sketch) is

descending, and she is crowned with stars. The pose of the angel on the left is

almost unaltered from the sketch en camaieu brun. In the third and last

sketch of the sequence, the picture in Dijon, which is also the most finished
of the three — albeit regrettably disfigured by subsequent completion or
repainting of the upper parts, including the face of the Virgin — the tomb has
disappeared altogether. The only allusion to it is made by the putti-angels
about to cast the roses that, in the legend, took the place of the Virgin's body.
Boucher was in consequence forced to discard the pose of the bottommost
angel used in the present sketch — despite the fact that it is the most powerful
feature of the latter —and to bring him up into the clouds. He has also
changed the position of the arms of the second angel, making him join them
together across his breast, in the gesture of humility previously adopted by
the Virgin. She, by contrast, now indicates herself with one arm, and flings

the other wide, thus partially reverting to the attitude she has in Deshays's
sketches. In this last sketch of Bouchers, however, she no longer ascends, but
sits, while again looking downward as in the first sketch, thus further

accentuating the iconography of the Glorification, as opposed to that of the

Assumption. In a pen drawing in the Albertina (fig. 190; AA 654, fig. 114;

AA 653, fig. 113 gives every sign of being merely a copy, and bears the quite
—which would appear
m impossible date of 1738)
the same time, without being part of the process of composition, since it
plucks features at random from all the sketches, both those by Boucher
to have been executed around

Fig. 190. The Assumption. Albertina, Vienna. himself and those by Deshays — the introduction of part of a crescent moon

*97
Bullion (Constantin & Le Jeune), 6 Dec. ff. turns her into an Immaculata. The Madonna in the red-chalk "premiere
1787, lot 43: "L'assomption de la Vierge. pensee d'une Assomption" formerly in the collection of Henry Pannier
Esquisse terminee, agreablement composee.
Hauteur 47 pouces, largeur 27 pouces"; or
(Nolhac, 1925, pi. facing p. 192), is also clearly an Immaculata, although it is

Catalogue de Tableaux des Trois Ecoles . .

.• just possible that this was the initial design in the series.
&c., appartenans a M. DE WAILLY, Architecte It seems very curious, not only that there should have been this wealth of
du R01, &c, son logis, rue de la Pepiniere,
activity, with sketches that are themselves almost the size of altarpieces for a
Faubourg Saint-Honore (Paillet & Julliot /z/s),
24 Nov. ff. 1788, lot 50: "Deux Esquisses, domestic chapel, but also that no finished picture should have resulted from
toutes deux representant l'Annonciation [recte them. No other work by Boucher was prepared in this way. Yet the sketches
l'Assomption?]. Sur T. 4 pieds de haut sur 2 de
are too richly painted to have been abandoned ebauches. One could almost
large" [sold with two other pictures in lot to
Jolly for 30 livres 3 sous]; and then PMarcille imagine that the Dijon sketch was a half-completed picture — quite finished
sale, 12-13 J an -
1857, lot 4 or lot 9; R.T.G. but very free in the lower half, and only sketched in (and crudely "com-
Paterson bequest to the National Gallery of
pleted" subsequently, thus accounting for its defects) in the upper half. It is
Scotland in 1955.
much more probable, however, that all the sketches are studies for an
ANALOGIES altarpiece of notable dimensions. And there still remains the puzzle as to why
i. The second colored sketch, now measur-
all three sketches should have been in Deshays's possession when he died.
ing 112 x 61 cm, whose prior history is
This mystery it does not seem possible to resolve, and it is only possible to
impossible to disentangle from that of the
present one, and which was by Anthelme
left put forward hypotheses as to the intended function of these sketches. One
and Edma Trimolet to the Musee des Beaux- possibility would be that they were preparations for some further manifesta-
Arts de Di|on 1878
tion of piety on the part of Mme de Pompadour (see cat. 57); her death in
in (fig. 189).
2. Sketch en cama'ieu brun, now measuring
140 x 71 cm, Deshays's posthumous sale, 26 1764 would then have accounted for the sketches having been put up for sale
Mar. ff. 1765, lot 122: "L'Assomption de la a year later, without any use having been made of them. Another and more
Vierge, Esquisse en grisaille, sur toile, de
arguable possibility is suggested by de Wailly s apparent eagerness to own
quatre pieds quatre pouces de haut, sur deux
these sketches.
pieds trois pouces de large" [bought by de
Wailly for 15 livres 19 sous]; de Wailly sale, 24 Charles de Wailly was the architect who was entrusted with the reconstruc-
Nov. ff. 1788, lot 50 [one of a pair of sketches tion of the Lady Chapel in Saint-Sulpice, which was finally carried out in
carelesslv identified as for an Annunciation, see
1774. This was necessitated, however, by something that had occurred much
above]; H. D. sale, Pans, 14 June 1946, lot 28.
3. Sketch with twelve figures [i.e., including earlier —
the damage caused to the chapel by the fire that destroyed the Foire
all the Apostles?], [Baillet], baron de Saint- Saint-Germain in 1762. Before the fire, the altar of the Lady Chapel had been
J[ulien] sale, 14 Feb. ff. 1785, lot 95: "L'As-
occupied on special feast days by a life-size statue of the Virgin in silver,
somption de la Vierge, composition de douze
figures; esquisse terminee. Hauteur 4 pieds et
modeled by Bouchardon, popularlv known as Notre-Dame-de-la-vieille-
demi, largeur 30 pouces. Toile." vaisselle because the silver was supposed to have been obtained from the
4. Colored sketch, 112 x 60 cm, [Hurault]
dishes that the fund-raising cure, Languet de Gergy, had eaten from and
sale, Paris (exp. Feral), 19 Feb. 1874, lot 1

[bought in by Eugene Feral]; bv descent to

subsequently made away with whenever he was asked to dine; and for the
Jules Feral (exh. cat. 1932, Paris, no. 5). rest of the year by a painted substitute by Chevalier (Lemesle, 193 1, p. 36).

This simulacrum appears to have been destroyed in the fire. It was ultimately
replaced by Pigalles Immaculata (1754-74) in an altar redesigned by de
Wailly, which took concealed lighting from the lantern built out over his
remarkable trompe. It would seem eminently possible that, before arriving at

this bold solution, de Wailly had considered a more conventional altar with a

painted altarpiece. The fact that the chapel already contained four canvases of
the Life of the Virginby Carle Vanloo and that the vault was decorated with a

fresco of the Assumption painted by Lemoine (itself damaged in the fire and
subsequently restored by Callet) would naturally have suggested that the
altarpiece should be a Glorification of the Virgin such as Boucher finally
arrived at in his sketches, or an Immaculata such as Pigalle finally sculpted.

That this hypothesis is not pure speculation is suggested by a little-noticed

passage in the correspondence between Cochin and Marigny (Furcy-
Raynaud, 1903/04, II, p. 88). At the end of a very long letter thought to be
datable to October 1766, in which Cochin recounted to Marigny how he had
gotten Bachelier and de Loutherbourg to settle their differences over the
formers accusation that the latter had attempted to wrest his studio from

298
 him, he added a note about how he had used the occasion to get Bachelier to
make amends to Boucher for a fault that he had also inadvertently
committed: "Mr. Boucher was under the impression that he [Bachelier] had
made deliberate moves to rob him of the commission for a picture that he was
to have made for Saint-Sulpice. Mr. Bachelier assured me that he had known
nothing of this commission being promised to Mr. Boucher . .
." ("A/.

Boucher avoit dans I'idee qu'il [Bachelier] avoit sciemment fait des demarches
pour lui enlever un tableau qu'il devoit faire pour Saint-Sulpice. M. Bachelier
m'assura qu'il n 'avoit point squ que ce tableau etait promts a M. Boucher
. . .").

Cochin does not name the subject of the picture, and his wording rather
implies that Bachelier s demarches had not been crowned with success. For
this reason —and would surely have been too long before for
also because it

Boucher to —
have taken undeclared umbrage over it this did not concern the
vast experimental painting in encaustic of the Resurrection destined for Saint-

Sulpice, which Bachelier exhibited in the Salon of 1759, and over which
Diderot counseled him: "Go back to your tulips!" ("M. Bachelier, mon ami;
croyez-moi, revenez a vos tulippes" [see Diderot, 1975, pp. 47, 67; it is not
clear if, after the chorus of condemnation it aroused, it was ever actually
installed despite certain indications that it was, see Malbois, 1926,
pp. 11 5-19]). No other picture is known to have been painted by Bachelier or
anyone else for Saint-Sulpice around 1766, so it seems most probable that the
disputed commission did concern an early and unexecuted project for a new
altarpiece for theLady Chapel. Possibly Boucher had intended to pass the
commission and his ideas on to his son-in-law Deshays, whose aptitude for
this kind of painting was generally recognized. Only further research in the

archives relating to Saint-Sulpice, or the researches into de Wailly currently

being undertaken by Mile Monique Mosser, might one day produce the
answer as to why Boucher should have produced three large sketches of the
Assumption, and why two of them appear to have been acquired by the
architect.

77 St. Peter Attempting to Walk on the Waters

Oil on canvas
92/2 x 67 in. (235 x 170 cm)
Signed bottom left: Boucher I 1764
Cathedrale de Saint-Louis, Versailles
A&W579

PROVENANCE
Sacristy of Saint-Louis, Versailles (by 1779); It is one of the singular facts about Boucher's career that, despite his professed
?seized in 1793 and placed in the Museum ambition to work on a large scale, and notwithstanding his production of a
Central du departement de Seine-et-Oise in
the former palace of Versailles; returned to the
substantial number of drawings devoted to religious themes, he passed up one
church in 1802 (?); now hung in the Chapel of of the major opportunities for doing so— to wit, the production of
St. Peter in the north aisle. altarpieces — until almost the end of his life.

After he had renounced any ambition (no doubt for want of clients) to
paint large old-master-like compositions on Old Testament themes, such as

299
 —

DRAWINGS the Sacrifice of Gideon (cat. 6) and Moses before the Burning Bush (cat. 14),
i Notre Seigneur and S. Pierre sur les caux,
.

his only large-scale religious compositions revolved around the essentially

black chalk,two in a lot of four drawings in
Boucher's posthumous sale, 18 Feb. ff. 1771,
domestic motif of the Holy Family (see the remarks of Antoine Bret, 1771,
lot 376 [sold for 24 livres 1 sol]. pp. 52-53; A& W doc. 1082), together with a small altarpiece of St. John the
Pierre sur les eaux, composition dif-
2. S.
Baptist in the Wilderness (fig. 191). The latter (see Slatkin, 1975) was for the
ferente du precedent, Boucher's posthumous
sale, 18 Feb. ff. 1771, lot 377, with five other
funerary chapel acquired by Mme de Pompadour for her daughter and herself
drawings [bought by Chereau for 25 livres 1 in the Eglise des many of Bouchers other sacred pictures
Capucines, and
sol]. were for her as well: the Lumiere du Monde (cat. 57) for the chapel in
3. }Compositwn dc deux figures principals
Bellevue, the large Rest on the Flight now in the Hermitage (cat. 68), and the
qui paroissent des Etudes pour un Tableau de la

Peche miraculeuse [John 21:1-14, frequently little Infant Jesus Giving His Blessing to the Infant St. John now in the Uffizi

confused with Matthew 14:24-33, because in (A &W 503).

it St. Peter also casts himself into the water;
Then suddenly, in the last decade of his life, he painted a number of large
conceivably identifiable with the drawing in lot

377 of Boucher's sale], black chalk heightened

sketches of the Assumption for an unknown destination (cat. 76), and the
with white on blue paper, io'/j pouces by 12 present St. Peter Walking on the Waters and an undated John the Baptist
St.
pouces, posthumous
1781, lot 176 [bought
sale of

by Payant
de Sireul, 3 Dec.
for 6 livres].
ff.
Preaching for the then parish church of old Versailles (A & W
562). His name

4. ?Unc Etude en petit d'une figure de Saint

is, however, conspicuously absent from among the six artists invited to
Pierre, black and white chalk on blue paper, 8 contribute altarpieces to the recently completed church in 1761, despite the
pouces by 6'A pouces, posthumous sale of de presence among them of his own pupil and son-in-law Deshays (see L'Avant-
Sireul, 3

identifiable with
Dec. ff. 1781, lot 201 [conceivably
one of the two studies in lot
Coureur, 16 Feb. 1761, pp. 106-07, cited in A& W II, p. 222). Nor was his

376 of Boucher's sale]. name added to the roll with that of Noel Halle (see L'Avant-Coureur, 25 May
1761, p. 328, cited in A&W II, p. 222). And despite the dating of the present
picture to 1764, and the probably similar dating of the St. John the Baptist
Preaching, they are not recorded in either Piganiol de la Forces Description
Historique de la Ville de Paris et ses environs in 1765 or Hebert's Dictionnaire
Pittoresque et Historique in 1766, nor even in the 1768 edition of Dezallier
d'Argenville's Voyage Pittoresque des Environs de Paris, but only in the 1779
edition of the last (p. 140).
It is easiest to propose a sequence of events in the case of the St. John the
John was the name-saint of /e^««e-Antoinette,
Baptist Preaching. St.
marquise de Pompadour (hence the painting of him in her chapel in the
Capucines), and it therefore seems likely (since there was already a St. John
the Baptist Baptizing Christ by Amedee Vanloo among the altarpieces
commissioned in 1761) that this was her personal contribution to the church,
in keeping with the newfound devoutness that she began to manifest after the
death of her daughter in 1754, and prior to being named dame du palais de la
Reine in 1756 (see Argenson, IX, pp. 195-203). The gift may well have been
an embarrassment to the church authorities, but one from which they were
soon released by her death. After a decent interval the picture could be put
up, without any need to acknowledge the donor.
Can such an explanation be stretched to account for the St. Peter Walking
on the Waters too? The date attached to the signature is the same as the year
of Mme de Pompadours death. There is, as has been said, no record of the
picture's having been commissioned, and there is no sign of its having been
installed until 1779. When it was, it was in the sacristy, which suggests that its

originally intended location, surely as an altarpiece, was no longer available

(that could not however have been in the chapel dedicated to St. Peter, since

Deshays's St. Peter Delivered from Prison —opposite which it now hangs
had occupied this position since 1761). Yet there seems no particular reason
for connecting a picture of this subject with Mme de Pompadour. An
Fig. 191. St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness. addition was built onto the church in 1764, Trouard s Chapelle des
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Catechismes (see Gallet, 1976, pp. 205-06, fig. 3), but this was not intended

300
3 oi
 to have a painted altarpiece, and the subject would anyway have been
inappropriate.
There is one institution with which this subject has a special connection,
and that is the papacy. For St. Peter attempting to walk on the water is the
subject of Giotto's mosaic known as the Navicella, which was regarded as

sufficiently important to be transferred from the portico of Old St. Peter's in

Rome New. The two main figures in this mosaic, Christ and St.
to that of the
Peter, inspired those of the Baroque reaffirmation of the theme in the heart of

the basilica, Lanfranco's altarpiece (subsequently replaced by a copy in

mosaic) on the northwest pier altar. It is therefore particularly striking that
the composition of Boucher's picture should be indebted to Lanfranco's
(which he would have known through the engraving of it bv Gerard
Audran). This may simply have been a case of the artist needing guidance for
the iconography of the theme, which had gone almost undepicted in France,
but it may have had greater significance than that. The reason for the scarcity
of representations of it in France was that its message was ultramontane, a

reinforcement of the claims of the popes as the successors to St. Peter.

It is hard to discover any political reason for such a picture having been
commissioned from the chief court artist at this date, just as the expulsion of
the Jesuits was reaching its conclusion (though it is true that the initiative in
this was taken by the Parlements rather than the king). There may, however,
be a reason connected with Saint-Louis itself. At this date it was only a parish

church. According to information kindly supplied by Nicole de Blic of the

Services d' Archives d'Yvelines, when Versailles was designated the seat of a

constitutional bishop in 1790, popular opinion made Notre-Dame-de-

Yersailles his cathedral. After the restoration of the cult, however, a synod of
diocesan clergy in 1796 chose Saint-Louis as the seat of the new bishop;
following the Concordat, it was there that his successor was enthroned in

1S02, and from thence forth it remained the cathedral.

It would require further research to determine when efforts to raise
Versailles to the status of a see began, but if they already had in Louis XV's
lifetime, one would expect the king to favor the church whose construction
and decoration he had himself paid for. In which case, it might not be too
speculative to suggest that Boucher's picture was intended to stand for the
claims of the papacy, in anticipation of the pope's expected concession of the
church's new cathedral status.

78 The Departure of the Pigeon Post

Oil on canvas
Oval, 12 3/, x 10/2 in. x 26.5 cm)
(32
Signed on a stone, bottom right:
/ Boucher I iy6$
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York; Gift of Mrs. Joseph Heine in memory
of her husband, I. D. Lew, 1944(44.141)
A & W 594

302
PROVENANCE
Exhibited in the Salon of 1765, under no. 11:

"Quatre Pastorales, dont deux sont ovales";

Mme Geoff rin, Paris; ?anon. sale, Paris (exp.

Laneuville), 29 Feb. 1856, lot 6, as "La

Colombe messagere. Grave"; ?Eugene Tondu
sale Paris, 10 April 1865, lot 14, as "Le Petit

Messager. Delicieux tableau du Maitre; sujet

grave"; Sir Anthony de Rothschild, London
and Tring Park (until 1876); the Hon. Mrs.

Eliot Yorke [his daughter], London and Ham-

ble Cliff; her posthumous sale, by order of
Lady Battersea [her sister], Christie's, London,
6 May 1927, lot 26; Wildenstein & Co., Paris
(in 1928) and New York; Mrs. Isaac D. Levy,
New York (exh. cat. 1939, New York, no. 22);
Mrs. Rosetta Devis Heine, New York (exh.
cat. 1942, New York, no. 2); sale of Mrs.
Joseph Heine, Parke-Bernet, New York, 25
Nov. 1944, lot 251 [bought in]; given to the
museum by Mrs. Joseph Heine in 1944.

ENGRAVING
Le depart du courier, engraved and published
by J.
F. Beauvarlet (J-R 298) with a dedication
to Mme la marquise de Montesquiou and the
following verse:

Pars! Confident discret! Pars! mats dans le

voyage
Evite et le Chasseur et le cruel Vautour.

Souviens toi que ton sort est de servir VAmour

Et qu'un baiser d 'Agnes est le pnx du message.

Beauvarlet exhibited the drawings that he made

for this and its pendant, L 'arrivee du courier,
in the Deux
Salon of 1769, no. 252, as simply
They are identifiable thanks to the
pastorales.
drawings made by Saint-Aubin in his copy of
the livret (Dacier, I, no. 11, 1909, exh. cat.
1984, Paris, La Monnaie, nos. 37, 147). The
drawings were in his posthumous sale, 13 Mar.
1798, lot 84.

It is distinctly surprising to find Diderot breaking off one of his customary

diatribes against Boucher's exhibits in the Salon of 1765, to praise this little

pastoral and its three fellows — all the more so in that he then returns to the
attack, on another picture of exactly the same character, with: "Shall I never
be rid of these damned pastorals?" ("TVe me tirerai-je jamais de ces maudites
pastorales?" [Diderot, 1979, pp. 80-82] ). The probable explanation emerges a
little later, when Grimm adds a note to Diderot's description of seven small
landscapes by Vernet, to say that they and the four pastorals were all intended
for a boudoir of Mme Geoffrin (Diderot, 1979, p. 123). Diderot was a

member of Mme Geoffrin s circle, and he would have known that she was the
correspondent of some of the same foreign sovereigns and dignitaries who
were recipients of Grimm's Correspondance litteraire, in which his reviews

were circulated. He would scarcely have wanted to run the risk that his
criticisms of works of art commissioned by her might filter back to her (for
equally laudatory praise of Boucher's technique in this set of pictures, see
under cat. 81).

Fig. 192. L'arrivee du courier, engraved by But then it is equally surprising to find Mme Geoffrin commissioning four
J-F. Beauvarlet after Boucher. such pictures from Boucher, when one considers that it was only a year later

303
that she was insisting to King Stanislas Augustus of Poland on taking over
the supervision of Vien s and Bouchers pictures in the set of exalted classical

compositions that he had commissioned for the Royal Castle in Warsaw

Moiiy, 1S75, pp. 208ft.), a commission that Boucher finally withdrew from,
after making innumerable drawings of his allotted subject. The Continence of
Scipio, because he could not tolerate her constant interference (see exh. cat.

1975, Brussels., no. 74). Not onlv was Boucher a friend of hers, however, but
she also had a weakness for the pastoral, responding warmly to one of the
more improbable literarv essays in the genre, Marmontels La Bergere des
Alpes, and commissioning from Yernet a rather uncharacteristic picture

illustrating an episode from it, which was shown in the previous Salon in
1763. On that occasion, Diderot made less attempt to disguise his distaste for
the mode, but took care to refer to Mme Geoffrin herself as "famine celebre a
Paris" (see exh. cat. 19S4, Paris, La Monnaie, no. 119). When it came to his
tenderness toward her commissioning of Bouchers Pastorales in 1765,
however, all his good work was undone by his editor, Grimm, who tore their
little fantasy apart, and accused Diderot of having been so indulgent out of
niceness of character, to avoid being entirely negative about Boucher
(Diderot, 1979, p. 81).

According to Diderot, Mme Geoff rin's four Pastorales formed a sequence,

despite the fact they could scarcely have been hung as such, since the first

two were oval and the next two rectangular (though their overall dimensions
were the same). In the first, shown here, the shepherd attaches his love letter
to the neck of a pigeon and bids it fly to his shepherdess across a river. In the
second (the picture is lost, but we know its composition from the engraving
by Beauvarlet [fig. 192; J-R 30c], while a slightly variant rectangular version
has been given to the Musee de Versailles, subject to retention of a life

interest), she is seen welcoming the bird. In the third (again lost, but its

composition is known from an engraving by Bonnefoy [J-R 313]), a variant

of the picture previously painted for Caroline Luise of Baden (cat. 72), she
reads the letter with a female companion beside a watering trough. Finally in

the last picture (likewise lost, and its composition known only from the
engraving by Bonnefoy [J-R ,12]), the two lovers are united, and sit under a

tree with a faithful dog and favorite sheep.

For the unusually indulgent Diderot (1979, p. 81):

everything is subtle, delicate, prettily imagined; these are four little

eclogues in the manner of Fontenelle. It is possible that the behavior

found in Theocritus, or in Daphnis and Cbloe — simpler, and more
naive — would have appealed to me more. Everything that this shepherd
couple are doing, mine would have done too; but the moment before
they wouldn't have been intending to, whereas these ones knew in
advance exactly what was going to happen, and I don't like that — at

least, not unless it were much more candidly stated, fie tout est fin,
delicat, joliment pense; ce sont quatre petit es eglogues a la Fontenelle.
Peut-etre les moeurs de Tbeocrite, on celles de Daphnis et Cbloe, plus
simples, plus natives, m'auroient interesse dazantage. Tout ce que font ces

bergers-ci, les miens Vauroient fait; mais le moment auparaiant lis ne

s'en seroient pas doute; au lieu que ceux-ci sazoient d'azance ce qui leur
arnzeroit, et cela me deplait, a mains que cela ne soit bien franchement
prononce.)
 The severe Grimm, adopting the knowing man-of-the-world pose nor-
mally affected by Diderot himself, cannot refrain from bursting out in an
annotation to this (Diderot, 1979, p. 81):

My god, my dear philosopher, I fear lest all that may still be a trifle false

in conception as it is in color. A shepherd and a shepherdess who have

succeeded in turning a pigeon into a deliverer of the penny post are
dreadfully corrupted — all the more so in that rustic love knows none of
the shackles put upon that passion by civil society. ... I believe that a
shepherdess who had so corrupted the morals of a dove to accustom it

to this servile would have other things to do, when her

and abject role,

lover is beside her, than to keep a lamb on her knees. This lot are
straight out of French opera. (Ma foi, mon cher philosophe, je crains
. . .

que tout cela ne soit encore un pen faux de pensee comme de couleur. Un
berger une bergere qui ont reussi a fair e d'un pigeon un facteur de la
et

petite poste sont prodigieusement corrompus, d'autant plus que Tamour

champetre ne connait aucune des entraves que la vie civile a mises a cette
passion. . . .
Je pense aussi quune bergere qui aurait assez perverti les

moeurs de la colombe pour Vaccoutumer a cet emploi servile et abject,

aurait autre choses a fair e, quand son amant est a cote d'elle, qua tenir
un agneau sur ses genoux. Tous ces gens-la sont de Topera francais. . .
.)

That these are not real peasants, one does not need to have recourse to the
statistics of adult literacy in France in the eighteenth century to ascertain.
Nonetheless, it is probable that the theme of pigeons as messengers of love,
which is one that occurs several times in Bouchers late works —including
once more in this very Salon (no. 14), provoking Diderot to his final

exasperated outburst about "ces maudites pastorales" —was one drawn from
the sentimental literature of the period (though I am unable to identify a
specific source) rather from the stage. A contributory element was no doubt
the fact that pigeons/doves were the birds of Venus, the goddess of love.

79 The Shepherds Idyll

Oil on canvas
94/2 x 93/2 in. (240 x 237.5 cm)
Signed on the fence, bottom right:/ Boucher 1/68
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Gift of Julia A. Berwind, 1953 (53.225.1)
S&M1463 A&W654

80 The Washerwomen
Oil on canvas
95 x 93 in. (241. 5 x 236 cm)
Signed on the fence, bottom right:/ Boucher 1768
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Gift of Julia A. Berwind, 1953 (53.225.2)
S&M1751 A&W655

305
 Toward the end of his life, as if to disguise the deterioration of his eyesight by
the dexterity of his hand, Boucher painted a number of large decorative
canvases. Besides the present pair, there is the pair of 1768 now at Kenwood
(fig. 193; A&W651, 652; though the difference of facture between these
reveals that La cueillette de cerises was left to studio assistants to execute);
there are the two Marches of 1765 and 1769, from Bergeret s collection, now
in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (figs. 194, 195; A & W 660, 661;
though — as Ananoff and Wildenstein have cleverly demonstrated —the first of
these is the enlargement of a picture originally shown in the 1761 Salon); there

are the six large mythological canvases of 1769 from the Hotel Bergeret de
Frouville (A & W 670, 671, 6y^-6yy), of which two are being shown in this
exhibition (cat. 84, 85); and there are the three landscapes of 1769 on the art
market in New York (A & W 681-683).
In painting these large decorative canvases, Boucher was in a way returning
Fig. 193. The Exchange of Produce, signed and
dated 1768. Kenwood. to the themes and character of the pictures he painted a little after his return

from Italy, to the themes of the set of large Pastorales formerly in the
collection of Edmond de Rothschild (see cat. 27 and figs. 118-20). But whereas

306
PROVENANCE the protagonists of the earlier pastorals are primarily portrayed for their
?Commissioned by the first

the Chateau d'Henonville, near Beauvais;

Roslin d'lvrv for
rough rusticity —and in one a crude sexual pass is made— in these later

Hotel d'lvrv, [5?] rue de la Baume, Paris; sale pastorals a strong sentimentalizing process has occurred. Greater importance
of thebaron L. [Roslin] d'lvrv, Galerie is also given to the landscapes over the figures, which include such stock
Georges Petit, Paris, 7-9 May 1884, lots 3 and
motifs from Boucher's repertoire as a putto-decorated fountain, a bridge, a
4; due de Montesquiou-Fezensac, [?5, rue de
la Baume, Paris]; Mr. Edward and Miss Julia
J.
distant tower, and crooked wooden fences.
A. Berwind, New York; given by the latter to Many from preexistent drawings or
of the figures appear to be adaptations
the Metropolitan Museum in 1953.
paintings. In the Washerwomen, the seated companion of the laundress with

ENGRAVINGS her child is adapted from a drawing now in the Forsyth Wickes Collection in
Etched by E. Champollion, in the same the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (fig. 196; A & W fig. 1711), and the
direction, for the sale of 1884.
standing women and child beside the donkey from a drawing of 1767

COPIES
engraved by Demarteau as number 168 (J-R 736), which was itself an
1. La fete du berger, 156 x 120 cm, misc. adaptation of a group in a landscape of 1760 (see A & W figs. 1472-1475).
sale, Rouen, 10-11 Mar. 1975, lot 260. The Shepherds
In Idyll, the standing woman's pose is adapted from one
2. Les Lavandieres, 72 x 91 cm, Auguste
Sichel sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 1-5 Mar.
already employed in a painting of 1766 engraved as La chasse (A & W
632,
1886, lot 178; misc. sale, Paris, 20 Mar. 1959, whereabouts unstated; a drawing of 1768 derived from this in exh. cat. 1984,
lot 6. New York, Didier Aaron, no. 4), as well as in other instances (A & W
figs.

307
 1286, 1612-1615); that of the seated woman at the right from a drawing now in

the Johannesberg Art Gallery (A & W fig. 1708), which also appears to have
been the prototype for a drawing engraved by Demarteau as number 137, La
dormeuse surprise (J-R 713); while that of the woman seated below her is

close (in reverse) to that of the woman exchanging an egg for a bunch of
grapes in the picture of 1768 now at Kenwood (A & W 652), and also to that
of the shepherdess in the lost picture engraved as Le gouter de I'Automne
(A & W 394), which was probably of the same year (see cat. 81).

no case is the correspondence exact. It is evident that Boucher was

In
Fig. 194. The Rest on the Journey, signed and painting, as contemporary parlance had it, "de pratique" from imagination —
dated 1765. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and memory. There is indeed every chance that it was one of these two
Gift of the Heirs of Peter Parker.
pictures that Sir Joshua Reynolds saw Boucher atwork on when he visited
him in 1768, when he recorded with dismay: "I found him at work on a very
large Picture, without drawings or models of any kind. On my remarking
this particular circumstance, he said, when he was young, studying his art, he
found it necessary to use models; but he had left them off for many years"
(Reynolds, 1959, p. 224). It is clear from Boucher's other late paintings, and
from his continuing output as a draftsman, that Boucher was playing Old
Father William with the younger artist, but in this particular case we can
accept the evidence of Reynolds's own eyes. What is more, by this date the

drawings that Boucher dashed off "de pratique" may even have been superior
to those that he studied model (Diderot, XVIII, 1876, pp. 301-02).
from a

We do not know whom he was painting these large canvases for, but their
Fig. 195. The Return from Market, signed and
provenance is highly suggestive. They first appear in the posthumous sale of
dated 1769. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;
Gift of the Heirs of Peter Parker. baron Roslin d'lvry in 1884, with no indication of where they had come
from. Thirion (1895, p. 332) tells us, however, that they came from his hotel
in the rue de la Baume — a location that is all the more probable in that the

purchaser of the pictures, the due de Montesquiou-Fezensac, was his son-in-

law and succeeded him as owner of the hotel, and may thus have needed to
recover the pictures as an element of its decoration. The street was only
created in 1858, however, so that the two pictures must have been brought
there from elsewhere.
It is most probable that their original location was the Chateau
d'Henonville, the country estate of the fermier-general Roslin d'lvry, the
baron's ancestor. Roslin was the brother-in-law of the abbe de Saint-Non, and
we have the evidence of one of the La lecon de lecture a la
latter s etchings, of

ferme (J-R 1576), that Roslin not only owned drawings by Boucher, but kept
them at Henonville, since this is signed Saint
: Non Sc. a Henonville ij66
Boucher del. Through the marriage of another of Saint-Non's sisters to P-J-
O. Bergeret, as his first wife, Roslin was also a connection of this great patron
of Boucher's; it could even be that his desire to have this exceptional-sized

was inspired by emulation of the two huge Marches that

pair of canvases
Boucher painted for Bergeret. The spirit of the two pairs of paintings is
entirely different —but that probably reflects the Italian-educated taste of

Bergeret, as against the more conventional taste for pastorals of Roslin d'lvry,

who is otherwise not apparently recorded as a collector (it is possibly worth

noting that the sister of Casimir de Cypierre [see cat. 64] was a baronne
d'lvry, and that one of his daughters was married to Eugene, marquis de
Montesquiou-Fezensac). Moreover, these pictures were essentially intended as
Fig. 196. Seated Woman with Child. Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston; Forsyth Wickes Collec- items of grande decoration, and in the very year that they were painted,
tion. Roslin d'lvry was in the midst of great aggrandizement of Henonville, using

308
 .

the architect J-B-Y Barre (Thirion, 1895, p. 332; Gallet, 1972, p. 141). It may
well be, indeed, that they were intended for the salon — anachronistically
located by Thirion in the Paris hotel, but most plausibly originally in

Henonville —decorated with the superb set of furniture by L-C. Carpentier

that was also sold in 1884 (lot 307): "en bois sculpte et peint en blanc, couvert
de tapisseries des Gobelins a larges bouquets de fleurs se detachant en
couleurs polychromes sur un fond bleu tendre rehausse de branches de fleurs
executees en bleu, ton sur ton." Somehow the combination seems just right.

81 L'obeissance recompensee

Oil on canvas
20/2 X X 39 cm)
15/2 in. (52
Signed bottom right:/ Boucher iy68
Inscribed in ink on the back of the
canvas M. De La Ferte
:

Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nimes

(S&M1517) A&W656

PROVENANCE
First recorded in the Musee de Nimes in 1840 Boucher's last years were almost entirely given over to the painting of
(Perrot, 1840, I, p. 278, no. 6).
pastorals and pastoral landscapes. These tend to be of two different kinds: the
one, that of large, decorative paintings; the other, that of small-scale works
ENGRAVING
L'obeissance recompensee, engraved in reverse appropriate to a cabinet de peinture. His skill with the latter was to avoid the
and published bv Rene Gaillard, with Le possible consequences of his defective eyesight, and to paint with a breadth
gouter de I'Automne as pendant, both dedi-
that suggests the sketch, but does not leave the impression of something
cated to Monsieur Papillon De La Ferte, and
advertised in the Mercure de France in Dec. merely unfinished or preparatory. As the review of the 1765 Salon in the

V7 2 (J-R 1041. I0 4i)- Mercure de France (Oct. [I], p. 153) said of the pictures for Mme Geoffrin
(see cat. 78): "It is hard to imagine what sorcery has been used by an Artist
DRAWING
The extended hand of the boy on a composite accustomed only to working on a large scale, to bring himself down to this
sheet of studies of hands, formerlv in the quite different one, without forfeiting a jot of the breadth and freedom of his
collection ofDavid Daniels, New York brushwork." ("On a peine a concevoir par quelle sorte de magie de I'art, un
(A & W
fig. 1396B); his sale, Sotheby's,

London, 25 Apr. 1978, lot 66 (here fig. 197).

Artiste, accoutume a ne travailler que dans le grand, est parvenu a se reduire

dans cet autre genre, sans que son pinceau en soit devenu ni moins large m
COPIES moins libre") Employing forms that he knew well, he could give full rein to
1 Le chien savant, paper laid down on
the dexterity of his hand, creating the fouillifsj (literally jumble, hodgepodge),
canvas, en camaieu bleu, 23 x 33 cm, for-
merly with Cailleux (exh. cat. 1964, Paris, that was —according and Levesque (1792, IV, p. 599) not simply
to Watelet —
no. 77). the delight of amateurs, but the very phenomenon responsible for this new
2. Pastel, 60.5 x 43.5 cm, misc. sale,
piece of artistic jargon.
Versailles, 8 June 1974, lot 44.

3. Drawing, signed/. B. Huet 1768, misc.

The present picture, which is one of the most successful of these later

sale, Galerie Georges Petit, 15 June 1928 (Le

—possibly because
pastorals our one of
it is for sentimen-
tastes the least
Gaulois Artistique, 16 May 1928, illus. p. 239). —may have been painted through agency of
talized kind of
the just the

amateur whom Watelet and Levesque blamed perverting development for the
of— young—
especially by artists of and
their collections croquis esquisses
[Watelet & Levesque, 1792, sub voces].
It is hazardous to argue anything from the dedications of engravings, but
the precedents of the dedication to the marquis de Marigny, directeur general

309
3io
 des Bdtiments du Roi, of the engraving after a picture that appears to have
belonged to the Crown
(J-R 571-572); to Baron Harleman, surmtendant des
Bdtiments of the king of Sweden, of a picture that may have been destined for
the Crown Princess (J-R 1344-1346; but see cat. 53); or to Portail, garde des
Tableaux du Roi, of a picture that may also have belonged to the French
Crown (J-R 1342; Engerand, 1900, p. 45) — all these are possible precedents
for stating that the dedication of the engravings by Gaillard after this picture

and its pendant, to Papillon de La Ferte, may not have been unconnected
with his functions, as enumerated in them: Intendant et Controleur General
de TArgenterie, Menus Plaisirs et affaires de la chambre du Roi, et Tresorier
General de la Maison et Finances de Monseigneur le Comte de Provence. It

does not appear that the pictures were on the market, since they appear in no
Fig. 197. Composite sheet of Studies of Hands. sale; nor is there any evidence that they belonged to Papillon de La Ferte
Formerly in the David Daniels collection.
himself (the early ink inscription M. De La Ferte on the back of the canvas
New York.
probably had something to do with the engraving), not merely because
ownership of the originals by dedicatees appears generally to have been
mentioned, but also because they do not appear in either the inventory of
sequestration drawn up by J-B-P Le Brun after he had been guillotined, in

frimaire, l'an III (Nov./Dec. 1794; generously communicated to me by Katie

Scott), or in his posthumous sale on 20 February 1797. Nor, for that matter,

do any of the landscapes engraved by de La Ferte, purportedly after

Bouchers in his own collection (J-R 956-959, and A & fig. 1150). W If the
two pictures were neither on the market nor in de La Ferte s own collection,
the dedication (which generally presupposed some donation toward the
capital cost ofmaking an engraving) may indicate that they were in one of the
two collections with which Papillon de La Ferte had some connection: that of
the king, or that of his grandson, the comte de Provence (the future Louis
XVIII). The king's collections are very well documented, but much less is
known of those of his son or his grandson. Whether the comte de Provence
would have so far shared the tastes of his grandfather and his treasurer as to

own a pair of pictures by the aging Boucher requires further research to

determine. There are, in any case, no Bouchers to be found in his manuscript
Catalogue de mes tableaux. ij8i in the Archives Nationales (R5 523; I am
most grateful to Philip Mansell for alerting me to the existence of this, and to
Marie- Anne Dupuy for consulting it on my behalf).
A peasant girl in an analogous pose, but for the position of her feet, is

found in a black-chalk drawing of a Fisherman and His Companion in a sale

at Paul Graupe, Berlin (17 April 1929, lot 53), and in an oval painting of a

similar couple in a landscape, dated 1769, in the Walters Art Gallery in

Baltimore (A & W 666).

3"
 82 Landscape with a Fisherboy and His
Companions
Oil on canvas
19/2 x 25/2 in. (49.5 x 64.5 cm)
Signed on a rock, bottom right:
/ Boucher I 1768, with PDR [Peintre
du Roi] as if incised above
Manchester City Art Galleries (1981.6c)
A& W 658 [as a copy]

PROVENANCE
Catalogue des Tableaux . . . etc. du Cabinet de Many of Bouchers later landscapes are paired ovals, in which the primanlv
M ''
[reputedly the due de Caylus], rue des
decorative function suggested by the shape (see exh. cat. 1975, Paris, pp. 1— 13)
Saints Peres, proche la rue Taranne (Remyj, 19
Apr. ff. 1773, lot 1: "Deux paysages d'une seems to have elicited from him some of his less inspired essays in juggling
fraicheur de teintes agreable, par Franqois stock motifs. The present picture is, by contrast, one of a pair (the other
Boucher. Le second tableau a pour objet
. . .
being in the Ostergotlands och Linkopings Stads Museum, Sweden, fig. 198;
un jeune pecheur, une femme assise, et un
enfant. lis sont sur toile, et chacun porte 18
A& W 657; see for both, exh. cat. 1984, Manchester, P8, 9) in which, while
pouces 9 lignes de haut sur 24 pouces de large" many —the round tower and the fisherboy and drover
familiar motifs recur
[sold together tor 21c livres 19 sous]; sale of here, the boatsman and the former pendant —
mill in combination and
its their
Mme X, Galene Charpentier,
Mar. 1935, 3c lot
handling are fresh and delectable. They exemplify the marvelous prose poem
87 [not one of the objects formerly in the
collection of baron Carl Mayer de Rothschild], on Boucher's landscapes by the Goncourt, which includes the more sober
as pendant to lot 86, a landscape of 1765 assessment that: "Nature, for him, is a jolly racket. ... As a landscapist,
(A & W 6oc), but sold separately; Rene Fri- Boucher's sole preoccupation seems to have been to relieve his age from the
bourg; comte Rivaud de La Raffiniere, Paris;
Mme de X sale, Palais Galliera, Paris, 2S Nov. boredom of Nature" ("La nature, pour lui, est un joli tapage. . . . Paysagiste,

1972, lot C; David Carritt Ltd., London; from Boucher ne semble avoir d'autre preoccupation que celle de sawver a son temps
which bought by the Manchester City An I'ennui de la nature" [E. & J.
de Goncourt, 1881, pp. 214-15]).
Galleries in 1981.
Since this pair of pictures was in the reputed sale of the due de Caylus on
19 April ff. 1773, and since the catalogue of the latter's collection drawn up in

1772 reveals him to have owned eight Bouchers (see A 8c W II, p. 326), it

might be supposed that it was because Boucher was painting for a

connoisseur of his works that he painted with particular delicacy. The

equation is not so easily made, however. In the first place, not one of the
pictures in the catalogue of the due de Caylus's cabinet appears with certainty
in his supposed sale (the closest correspondence is between the "Paysanne
assise, Pair reveuse, et tenant dans sa main droite un bouquet de roses" on
page 225 of the catalogue of the cabinet, and the "paysanne assise et tenant

dans sa main droite une rose," which was lot 3 of the sale catalogue. Quite
apart from the discrepancy over the number of roses the peasant girl holds,
however, there is also the awkward fact that the picture in the cabinet was
apparently rectangular, measured 18 pouces by 16, and had no pendant,
whereas the one in the sale was oval, measured 16/2 pouces by 13 and had a

pendant of A Woman Sitting with Her Feet in the Water). What is more,
while the first lot in this sale, including this pair of landscapes, is stated to be
by Boucher himself, the second lot, another landscape, is only attributed to
him; and the third, the two ovals of women, carries no mention of an artist

at all.

Further indications that the sale was not actually his are afforded by the
Fig. 198. Landscape uith a Watermill, signed
and dated 1768. Ostergotlands och Linkopings facts that it was held by Remy at an address in the rue des Saints-Peres near
Stads Museum. the rue Taranne that is not known to have been inhabited bv the duke, and

3 12
 ,

r
\. that the proprietor kept his anonymity, whereas the catalogues of the due de
figures a la parte d'une horellerie;
XTC, plufuurs coches fie voicures
1'ati-

pu-
Caylus's collections of antiquities and natural history were published under
bliqucs aeraqucs par una croupe dc vo-
Itdru
&
chtv-jl,

trcs-agreabics
IK forte fin.

dc cc
dc touchc,
Ma it re : points
his own name by someone else that and the preceding year.
fur

fur £
bon, A.

dc haut.'
portent 8 pouccs dc large
The riddle of these two landscapes' ownership may not be resolvable. More
JEAN ASSELIN.
disconcerting is two pictures with identical compositions
the fact that
C8. Vn T^yfagc moriragncux, dans Icquc!
On voit dc belles ruinc*
des caux quetravcrfent pluficurs tigurcs
, fur le devanc
appeared in a bizarre anonymous sale held the next year, on 17 February ff.
&. animaux peint : fur coile , & porcc
34 pouccs dc large fur 18 dc haut.'; 1774. This we know, thanks to the drawings of them by Saint-Aubin in his
L. DE BOULOGNE.
6y. Vn Tableau dc forme ovale, rcprc-
copy of the catalogue, now in the John G. Johnson Collection in the
fcniant Jcfus-Clirifl qui apparoit en
jardinicr J 13 Magdelcine: pcint fur cui- Philadelphia Museum of Art (to the staff of which I am most grateful for a
\rc, 6c portc <, pouces dc large fur 7
dc liauc. >i~l
photograph of the relevant page; fig. 199). The sale was one conducted by the
tRANCOlS BOUCHER
. Un Payfagc agri-able, tra fc d'une- painter-dealer Paillet, and was prefaced with the surprisingly candid epigraph
from Martial's Epigrams: "There are bad ones, there are a certain number of
mediocre ones, and there are many good ones." ("Sunt mala, sunt quadam
,'
-3*^1 mediocria, sunt bona plura") This might have been designed to apply
Fig. 199.
anonymous
Page from the catalogue of an specifically to the two landscapes, for whereas the first of them (lot 70) — the
sale, Paris, 17 February ff. 1774, description and the drawing of which by Saint-Aubin in the catalogue
with marginal notes and illustrations by
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (John G. Johnson
correspond to the composition of the picture in Linkoping — is described as
Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art). being by Boucher himself, the second —
(lot 71) the drawing of which by

3i3
 Saint-Aubin corresponds to the composition of the present picture — is

merely described as "de l'ecole de ce Maitre." Furthermore, the distinction is

reflected in the difference between the prices that they fetched: the autograph
work sold to Langlier for two hundred louis, and the school work to an
unnamed buyer for seventy-two louis.
Could these pictures really be the same as those in the "Caylus" sale the
year before, and could the second of them have been demoted so quickly? To
anyone who saw the Lmkoping and Manchester pictures reunited two years
ago, it would be impossible to believe that one was autograph and the other
not —indeed, thanks to differences in preservation, the Manchester picture
even seemed to have a slight edge over the other. There appear to be two
possible explanations. The first, and less plausible, is that — since the height of
the pictures in the 1774 sale was given as one-and-a-quarter pouces greater
than that of those in the 1773 sale, the second pair simply consisted of an
autograph and a nonautograph replica of the first. This difference was,
however, probably ascribable to more approximate measurement in the

second sale, while the coincidence of the two sales (and subsequent
nonreappearance of the second pair of pictures) strains belief in such a

solution. The other, and more plausible, hypothesis —and one that has the
merit of likewise accounting for the divided existence of the "Caylus" pictures
at that time and since — is that the buver of them in the 1773 sale (who mav
well have been Paillet) had only resold the Manchester picture before the 1774
sale (possibly to a collector who already wanted a pendant for the picture
with which it was sold in 1935), and commissioned a copy of it to re-create
the pairing for the Linkoping picture. In the event, the discrepancy between
the two must have been too great to sell them as a pair, so that they were after
all sold separately. But for the unusual honesty of Paillet, as suggested by his

epigraph to the sale, it is a proceeding of which the sale catalogue would not
normally have made us aware: Caveat lector is generally as necessary a
warning now to the user of eighteenth-century sale catalogues, as caveat
emptor was at the time.

83 The Abduction of Proserpine

Oil on canvas, en camaieu brun
23 x 19 in. (58 x 48 cm)
Signed bottom center:/ Boucher I 1769
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Quimper (inv. 873.1.385)
(S & M 220, as Neptune et Amphitrite) A& W 669
PROVENANCE
^Catalogue de Tableaux . . . &c. provenans du It is with considerable pleasure that one views this picture, revealing as it does
Cabinet de feu M. BARBIER, Peintre de
that the fluency of Boucher's brush was unimpaired in the year before his
VAcademie de Saint Luc, Hotel d'Aligre
death. Despite the fact that in this late sketch he produces something halfway
& Graux), 19 July 1779, lot 6:
(Joullain
"Neptune & Amphitrite; Esquisse grisaille de between a drawing and a painting, with outlines quickly indicated in dark
forme ovale, par le meme [Boucher]. Hauteur brown (something that is already observable in the Venus Rescuing Pans from

3M
21 pouces, 6 lignes, largeur 17 pouces 6 lignes. Menelaus in the Worcester Art Museum, A& W 613), his painterliness is still

Toile"; ?sale of vicomte E. de Plinval, Paris,

evident in the rich application of the chocolate brown medium and the trailed
14 Apr. 1846, lot 2 [still as Neptune & Amphi-
white highlights over the gray-green ground. The forms of all the bodies and
trite]; comte de Silguy (1785-1864), Quimper,
by whom bequeathed to the museum [as of the women's faces are rendered with complete assurance, and they are
Jupiter et une nymphe]. deftly manipulated into a grouping that sits naturally within the oval; it is

only in giving Pluto's face feature and expression that Boucher's touch
falters — as it always had when faced with the male physiognomy.
It was probably because of the demands of clarity within the restricting
oval that Boucher dispensed both with drawn by jet black
Pluto's chariot
horses, and with Proserpine's flower-picking companions (all of which are
found in his Beauvais tapestry of the subject, A&W 345), in this depiction
of the abduction of Ceres's daughter by the god of the underworld. That he is
Pluto (the Hades of the Greeks) is made clear by his bident, or two-pronged
spear, and by the billowing smoke and flames, suggesting the open mouth of
the underworld. The girl resting on the urn represents one of the sea nymphs
known as the oceanids, with whom Proserpine (Persephone in Greek) was

315
playing when the god abducted her. It could even be that the abduction
depicted is of one of the oceanids herself, Leuce, who was turned after her
death into the white poplar, but this tale is improbably obscure for the
context in which this sketch was in all likelihood created.

It is most plausible — in view of its oval shape — that this represents a first
thought for one of a number of oval medallions that Boucher designed for
incorporation in-omamental surrounds by Maurice Jacques for weaving by
the Gobelins. These formed one of the most successful series to be woven
there while N'eilson was in charge of a workshop, albeit most of them, as

seems always to have been the intention, went to foreign, and more
particularly, hnglish, clients ''see Fenaille IV, 1907, pp. 263-64,. The great
advantage of the series for these clients ''and for the Gobelins, was that they
could order a set of hangings and coverings for a whole room, both walls and
furniture, and that the wall hangings created the illusion of framed pictures
hung over a damask ground — originally crimson.
Regrettably, the genesis of this series is inadequately documented, but it

appears to have been first projected in 1758, when Boucher or his assistants

inserted sketches of a rectangularTriumph of Venus, flanked by upright ovals

of Pan and Syrinx and Anon on the Dolphin, into an ornamental surround
painted by Jacques (cat. 92). Boucher appears to have gone on to execute a
: riant oval sketch of the Pan and Syrinx for this project ''Galene
Gailleux; exh. cat. 1964, Paris, no. 76,, but otherwise there was a lull in

proceedings, evidently because the Seven Years' War prevented contact with
potential hnglish customers. When the idea was taken up again after the
Treaty of Paris in 1763, the layout of the tapestry designs was less cramped,
with either a single large transverse oval, or a smaller upright one, in the

center, or with two of the smaller upright ovals balancing one another at the
sides.

The first pair of upright ovals that Boucher actually painted for the
Gobelins, for which the canvases were delivered to him in 1763 ''Fenaille, IV,
p. 229;, consisted of the Vertumnus and Pomona of 1763 and the Aurora and
r J:phalus of
1764 now in the Louvre 'A be W
482, 481;, although he did not
claim payment for them until 1765, and they were not finally paid for until

1771 (Fenaille, IV, pp. 230-31; A be W docs. 925, 954,. At the same time,
Boucher supplied models for the large transverse ovals of Septune and
Amy/none and Venus and Vulcan (A be W docs. 926, 95c, and nos. 483, 484;,
although in the event he did not use the oval canvases supplied by the widow
Ilamant, and these were actually in the form of oblong paintings that were
more employable in their own right, and also adaptable to a different form of
tapestry, when occasion arose. These v/ere followed by another upright oval,

(A Venus on the Waters, painted in 1766 CEngerand, 190c, p. 55; Fenaille, IV,

pp. 231-32, 237; A be W docs. 96c, 965, rcc3, icc.7, 1009, and no. 637/638),
which was looted from the Gobelins in 187c ''and is almost certainly
identifiable with the painting now in the North Garolina Museum of Art,
Raleigh,. Finally, two quite different paintings of pastoral themes, originally
commissioned by N'eilson on his own account, La diseuse de bonne azenture
and Lapeche, which v/ere painted in 1767, were turned over to the
manufactory for use as large transverse ovals in 1768 ''Fenaille, IV, pp. 232,

237; A be W doc. 965, and nos. 64c, 641;.

These were all the pictures that were used in this N'eilson series at the
Gobelins in Boucher's lifetime, but more were evidently required, to provide
sufficient variety. What appears to have happened first is that a reduced copy
of a Jupiter and Callisto of 1769 in the collection of the due de Caylus (now in

the Wallace Collection, A& W 668. Could this originally have been painted
for the prince de Conde? See Macon, 1903, pp. 128-29) was made to the same
size as the Venus on the Waters (with which it was looted in 1870, and now
hangs as its North Carolina Museum of Art), very possibly by
pendant in the

Boucher's studio and in his own lifetime. To this was added a Psyche
Examining the Sleeping Cupid (first woven from in the 1770s) described as a
copy in the inventories taken in 1792 and 1794 (Fenaille, IV, p. 239: the

occasional ascription of the copy to Belle is probably attributable to the fact

that he executed a painting of this subject and a copy of Charles-Antoine

Coypel's Psyche Abandoned as additions to the latter's set of Scenes d'opera

for the Gobelins). This appears in fact to have been a picture worked up from
a large colored oval sketch made by Boucher in his latter years (A & 197: W
wrongly described as a grisaille and seriously misdated), and originally to
have been made by Briard in 1771, for use in a set of four tapestries with
Boucher medallions, which served as the meuble d'hiver in the grande
chamhre of the Palais Bourbon, that may well be identifiable with the set now
in the Louvre (see Macon, 1903, p. 129, and Fenaille, IV, pp. 239, 299). Some
years later, the due de Penthievre lent his four pictures of the story of Sylvia
and Amyntas (see cat. 62, 63) to the Gobelins, from which copies were made,
and a set of tapestries incorporating them was woven for the Duke of Portland
in 1783 (Fenaille, IV, pp. 233, 300).

All this shows that the series continued to evolve for many years after
Boucher's death. It is therefore highly probable that he continued to make
designs with it in mind, beyond the seven pictures that were used as models
for the medallions in his lifetime. It is possible that the reduction of the
Jupiter and Callisto was prepared under his supervision —and even with his

help) — for this purpose, even though it was not in fact woven from until
several years after his death. The series was variously referred to as la tenture

des Elemens or la tenture des Metamorphoses when it was being prepared

(Fenaille, IV, pp. 229-30). The Jupiter and Callisto would have fit very well
into the latter concept, but the Abduction of Proserpine could easily have
taken its place in the former, as the element of Fire. Just as the smaller
upright oval of Venus on the Waters was apparently intended to replace the
large transverse oval of Neptune and Amymone as the element of Water, when
the space available for a tapestry was too small for the latter (Fenaille, IV,

p. 236), so the Abduction of Proserpine could have taken the place of the Venus
in Vulcan's Forge. If such was the idea, however, it was probably quickly
abandoned, since in the very same year Boucher made use of the pose of
Proserpine in the Boreas Abducting Oreithyia instead (see cat. 84, 85).

3V
 84 Juno Asking Aeolus to Release the Winds
Oil on canvas
90 x 79 in. (228 x 201.5 cm)
Signed lower right:/ Boucher I 1/69
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
A & W 674

85 Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus to

the Nymphs ofNysa

Oil on canvas
88 x 80 in. (222 x 203 cm)
Signed on rock, center left:

f.
Boucher I 7769
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
A& W 676
PROVENANCE
Hotel Bergeret de Frouville, [3] rue de Ven- These are two paintings from a set of six of similar dimensions, which
dome [from 1864 rue Beranger], Paris; this together constitute a larger decorative scheme than Boucher had ever
hotel passed successively through the hands of
Jean-Francois Bergeret de Frouville (d. 1783);
previously undertaken (save, in some respects, in the ceiling of the salle du
his daughter, Marie-Charlotte, whose second conseil at Fontainebleau), despite the fact that he was in failing health and had
husband, Antoine-Jean-Baptiste Herve d'Ar- only one more year to live when he painted them. Yet there is no record of
bonne, sold it in 1811 to Gabriel-Louis-Fran-
them before the end of the nineteenth century, and we have no certain
$ois Perier (d. 181 5); his son, Amedee-Gabriel
Perier (d. 1838); his cousin Pierre-Louis evidence of by whom or for where they were commissioned.
Raffard de Marcilly; his widow [?], Eugenie- They are first mentioned by Alfred de Champeaux in 1891 (p. 412), as
Zoe de Marcilly, bv whom the hotel was
having been removed from the Hotel de Marcilly, in the street originally
disposed of to the city of Pans for use as a

school in 1882, and the paintings removed and known as the rue de Vendome, and now called the rue Beranger, in the
sold to a M. Johnson; baron Edmond de Marais in Paris. According to him, they were sold by the last private owner
Rothschild, Hotel de Pontalba, 41, rue du
of the hotel, the comtesse de Marcilly, to a certain M. Johnson (from whom
Faubourg Saint-Honore; baron Maurice de
Rothschild, 4], rue du Faubourg Saint-
they must have soon been acquired by baron Edmond de Rothschild for his
Honore; looted and taken to the German hotel in the Faubourg Saint-Honore, see Dilke, 1899, p. 59), at the same time
Reich in the Second World War, and not as she removed the associated boiseries to her new hotel in the avenue d'lena.
reinstalled after restitution; baron Edmond de
The hotel in the rue de Vendome had only been acquired by the de Marcilly
Rothschild from whom acquired via the
Hallsborough Gallery, London, by the Kim- in the nineteenth century, but an investigation of its previous proprietors
bell Art Foundation in 1972, with the two brings to light an interconnecting kin group of patrons through which
similar-sized paintings from the same set.
Boucher very probably came to execute this exceptional commission (the

DRAWINGS history of the house was examined, but these links were not pursued, by
Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus to the Denys Sutton, in exh. cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 71; more helpful than the sources
Nymphs of Nysa that he cites there is the thorough analysis of the building and its successive
1 . Head of Mercury, engraved in reverse bv
Demarteau, no. 412 (J-R 831), without indica-
proprietors contained in P. Jarry, 1930, pp. 9-11).

tion of ownership, c. 1773; verv possiblv the The former Hotel de Marcilly (no. 3, rue de Vendome/Beranger) was
red- chalk drawing heightened with white in the actually an agglomeration of three houses, extending from the rue de
sale [of the due de Rohan-Chabot], 21 July ff.
Vendome around the corner into the rue Chariot. The main building, with its
1777, lot 166; and in the supplement to the [de
Ghendt] sale, 15-22 Nov. 1779, lot 611 (where porte cochere in the rue de Vendome, had been built about 1720 by the
described as "touchee avec esprit" and as financier Abraham Moras (who was, with increasing prosperity,
Peirenc de
measuring izpouces x 9 pouces).
subsequently to build the hotel that now houses the Musee Rodin, in the
more fashionable Faubourg Saint-Germain). This was sold by his son,

318
 s

2. Studies for Two Busts of Women, for the Francois-Marie Peirenc de Moras, to Jean-Francois Bergeret become (later to
two nymphs at the right, [?] black chalk Bergeret de Frouville) on 18 April 1768. The remaining two buildings, one on
heightened with white, c. 300 X 365 mm,
formerly in coll. of Mme Hector Petin
the angle of the rue de Vendome and the rue Chariot, and the other.with a

(A & W fig. 1763). porte cochere on the rue Chariot, had been built by the sculptor Charles
3. Counterproof of 2, black chalk height- Poullain about 1750. These were bought by Bergeret from his son, Charles-
ened with white on gray-blue paper, 300 X
Laurent Poullain, also a sculptor and director of the Academie de Saint-Luc,
365 mm, formerly coll. Georges Plach, Palais

Galliera sale, Pans, 3 Dec. 1966, lot 2. on 23 August 1768.

Jean-Frangois Bergeret was the younger brother of one of Boucher's major
Juno Asking Aeolus to Release the Winds patrons in his later years, Pierre-Jacques-Onesyme Bergeret (later to become
1. Compositional sketch, pen and bister
Bergeret de Grancourt; see G. Wildenstein, 1961, esp. pp. 40, 59-60, no. 40;
wash, Cayeux sale, 11 Dec. ff. 1769, lot 205
[bought by La Combe for 21 1 livres]; Collet and in this exhibition, cat. 52). In 1749 he had married Elisabeth de la Haye
sale, 14 May ff. 1787, lot 140 (8 pouces x 13 Desfosses, the daughter of Salomon de la Haye Desfosses (brother of the
pouces) [bought by Constantin for 11 livres];
immensely rich fermier-general, Marin de la Haye, who owned not only the
misc. sale (Le Brun & Constantin), 31 May ff.

1790, lot 145 (1 1 pouces x 15 pouces); MM. Hotel Lambert, but also paintings by Boucher, including cat. 34, 35 in this
Cailleux, Paris (exh. cat. 1964, no. 53: 245 X exhibition) and the sister both of Charles -Marin de la Haye who was —
338 mm) [A & Wfig. 1756]. probably the M. de la Haye who owned so many of the drawings by
2. Aeolus Releasing the Winds, black and
white chalk on ochre paper, 292 X 200 mm, Boucher that were engraved by Demarteau and of the wife of that other —
H. Shickman Gallery, New York (exh. cat. great collector (and amateur engraver) of Boucher drawings, Blondel
1968, no. 91). d'Azaincourt. In buying these three contiguous properties, J-Fr. Bergeret
Study of a Nude Woman Lying on Her
3.

Side, Seen from Behind (used for the oceanid

became the direct neighbor of his father-in-law, at what is now number 5 , rue

in the foreground), black and white chalk with Beranger.

touches of blue pastel, on orange paper, 280 x It can be seen from all this that, if J-Fr. Bergeret had not himself already
350 mm, Goncourt coll. (engraved by Jules de
been a client of Bouchers (for it is not clear from Georges Wildenstein
Goncourt; Goncourt, 1881, I, p. 54), posthu-
mous sale of Edmond de Goncourt, 15-17 reference to his owning two overdoors by Boucher and several pictures of
Feb. 1897, lot 22; Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre paysages et architecture jointly painted by Boucher and Hubert Robert,
(R.F. 3879) [AA 499, fig. 91 ; A& W fig. 1440] whether or not these were at Frouville, and so had been painted for his father
(fig. 204).
Study of a Nude Woman Supported on
4.
from whom he only inherited the estate in 1771), he was at the center of a kin
Her Stomach and One Leg, with Her Arms group of some of the artist's most supportive patrons. In view of this, and in
Outstretched (used for the nereid), black and view of the fact that he had just acquired the houses in the rue de Vendome in
white chalk with touches of red on grayish
x 390 mm, Leon Michel-Levy's
1768, it seems highly probable that this set of pictures was painted in 1769 for,
paper, 270
posthumous sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, and descended with, the Hotel Bergeret de Frouville.
lot 26 [bought by Schoeller]; M.A.G. sale, Less certain is the truth of de Champeaux's assertion that Mme de Marcilly
Pans, 8 May 1934, lot 84; Cotnareau, Paris;
had, when removing the fittings of the hotel on its purchase by the city of
Cailleux, Paris; given by Robert H. and
Clarice Smith to the National Gallery of Art, Paris for use as a school in 1882, broken up the salon to keep the boiseries for
Washington, in 1980 [AA 500, fig. 92; exh. herself, while selling the paintings. From his description of the boiseries and
cat. 1982, Tokyo, no. 121].
chimneypiece, and from Paul Jarry's illustrations of them (1930, pis. 36-37),
Two Studies of a Nereid, black and white
5.
it seems highly improbable that the Bouchers should ever have been inserted
chalk on yellowed blue paper, 254 x 326 mm,
G. W. Lundberg coll., Paris; acquired by the into so very Louis Seize a setting, whose remnants, furthermore, betray no
Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre in 1982 (R. F. sign of ever having made any provision for inset paintings. On the other
38.983) [exh. cat. 1984, Paris, no. 79]
hand, the curvilinear frames shown around the Boreas Abducting Oreithyia
(fig. 205).
Nereid and Oceanid, black and white
6. and the Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus inde Nolhac (1907, pis. facing
chalk on buff paper, 210 x 363 mm, E. Des- were evidently fitted to them in the Hotel de Rothschild, since the
pp. 90, 96)
peret coll., Paris [not in his sale, 7 June 1865];
illustration of Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus included by Lady Dilke
?Fletcher Raincock; Sotheby's, London, 13
Dec. 1973, lot 49 [A & W fig. 1754; evidently- (1899, pi. facing p. 60) shows the picture not only without the frame, but also
derived from the painting]. without the additions to the top and bottom of the canvas that this
7. ?"Un Dessin aux crayons noir & rouge
necessitated. In view of the composite nature of the Hotel Bergeret de
sur papier gris, representant une Nymphe de la

men Elle a le bras droit appuye sur une tete de

Frouville, and of the fact that J-Fr. Bergeret did not die until 1783, there
Dauphin. Hauteur 11 pouces, largeur 14 seems no reason why it should not have contained both a more Louis Quinze
pouces," de Sireul's posthumous sale, 3 Dec. room incorporating the Bouchers, and another with the Louis Seize boiseries.
ff. 1 78 1, lot 148 [bought by Payane for 10
livres].
The earliest accounts of these pictures describe them as cartoons for
tapestries, an error that is to be explained not only by their broad decorative

319
3"
Fig. 2co. Venus at Vulcan's Forge, signed and
dated 1769. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.

Fig. 2ci. Boreas Abducting Oreithyia, signed Fig. 202. Aurora and Cephalus, signed and Fig. 203. Venus on the Waters, signed and
and dated 1769. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort dated 1769. The J. Paul Getty Museum, dated 1769. The J. Paul Getty Museum,
Worth. Malibu. Malibu.

handling, but also by the similarity of some of their subjects and

compositions to tapestries for which Boucher had supplied pictures. The full

set of paintings comprises, in addition to the pair shown here, another two of
identical dimensions and same museum, representing Venus at Vulcan s
in the

Forge and Boreas Abducting Oreithyia (figs. 200, 201), and two narrower
canvases of the same height, representing Aurora and Cephalus (described by
Lady Dilke as "the inappropriate slumbers of Un Berger endormi") and
Venus on the Waters, which appear to have been installed, not in baron
Edmond de Rothschild's hotel in the Faubourg Saint-Honore, but in his

chateau at Boulogne-sur-Seine, hence their having been sold separate!}' at

auction, to end up in the J.

Paul Getty Museum in Malibu (figs. 202, 203;
A & W 670, 671).

322
 —

Venus at Vulcan s Forge was one of Boucher's best-tried themes (see cat. 17,

67), as was Venus on the Waters, and their compositions are very similar to
previous depictions of the subject by him. Aurora and Cepbalus he had also

portrayed on a number of occasions (cat. 18 in this exhibition; A&W 161,

/
^ 481, but not 291, which is by another hand
Oreithyia only once before, as a tapestry for Beauvais (A
repetition of the theme, however,
altogether), but Boreas

Boucher did not go back

&W
Abducting
349). In this
to his previous
depiction of it for inspiration, but to his sketch of Pluto abducting Proserpine
(cat. 83), from which he took the pose of Oreithyia.
Fig. 204. Study of a Nude Woman Lying on
Her Side, Seen from Behind. Cabinet des In regard to the subjects of the two pictures shown here, Boucher had
Dessins, Louvre. already depicted Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs of
Nysa, in the early picture painted for Derbais that is now in the Wallace

Collection (fig. 39; A&W 106). Not surprisingly, with such a lapse in time,
there no compositional similarity between the two, despite the fact that as
is

recently as 1767 Boucher had drawn on the Derbais composition when

making a drawing to be engraved by Saint-Aubin for an edition of Ovid's
Metamorphoses (J-R 1561). Again, Boucher would seem to have borrowed the
essentials of the chief figure, the nymph holding the infant Bacchus, from
what appears to have been a late picture of quite a different subject, Cupid
Teasing Venus at the Bath, which (if it was ever executed) is known from a
preparatory drawing by Boucher himself and a miniature by Charlier (A &
W figs. 622, 623), as well as from a variant large-scale sketch in oil (A &W
198), which may be all that was ever produced.
The story behind the episode is that Bacchus had been fathered by Jupiter
on Semele, and rescued from the flames thatconsumed the already pregnant
princess when she had rashly asked the god to come to her in his full majesty.
After completing his gestation sewn up in Jupiter's thigh, the infant Bacchus
was taken by Mercury to the nymphs of Nysa, to be brought up out of the
range of Juno's jealous rage. It was at Nysa, whose location is much disputed,
that Bacchus discovered how to make wine —hence the cupid clutching
grapes, and the other two bearing aloft the vine-entwined, pinecone-tipped
staff, or thyrsus, with which he was to lead his wine-drunk following of
satyrs and maenads. The goat stands for the fact that, in some accounts,
Fig. 205. Two Studies of a Nereid. Cabinet des Mercury was smuggled to the nymphs in this disguise.
Dessins, Louvre.
Juno Asking Aeolus to Release the Winds was not a subject that Boucher
had previously painted. He had, however, evidently contemplated it before
possibly for a tapestry in view of the format — since the two chalk drawings
that have been associated with this composition ([1] black chalk, 226 x 293
mm, formerly A. Mos collection, sold R.W.P de Vries, Amsterdam, 2 Nov.
1928, lot 117; Christie's, London, 6 July 1977, lot 93; [2] red chalk, 255 X
325 mm, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 29 Oct. 1980, lot 67; Christie's, London, 3
Apr., 1984, lot 81 [the relationship between the two is somewhat baffling,
and —without having seen either — impossible to pronounce on]) not only
bear no relation to it, but are also manifestly earlier in date. It is even possible
that they are studies for a horizontal painting with a slightly different subject,
Venus implorant le secours d'Eole contre Telemaque, an oil sketch for which
was in Chardin's posthumous sale, 6 March ff. 1779, lot 12. On the other
hand, the wealth of drawings that can be legitimately associated with the
present composition is evidence of how thoroughly Boucher prepared this

unfamiliar subject, and again belies the report given currency by Sir Joshua
Reynolds (see cat. 79, 80) that he did not make studies from the life in his later

3*3
 years. The status of the drawings is not always straightforward, however,
since some of them are clearly worked up from the painting, or from genuine
studies for this, rather than the other way about.
The episode of Juno coming to Aeolus to ask that he release the winds
stands at the beginning of the Aeneid. Pitiless in her detestation of the
Trojans, even after their final defeat by the Greeks and the destruction of
Troy (partly because she had never forgiven the Trojan prince Paris for giving
Venus rather than her the prize for beauty), she was determined to prevent
them from setting sail under the leadership of Aeneas to found a new
kingdom in Italy. Aeolus, who was not a god, had been given charge of the
Winds (which he kept locked in a cave on Lipara) and admitted by Jupiter to
the feasts of the gods, at Juno's suggestion. Hence his readiness to do her
bidding. Neptune, however, regarded the creation of storms at sea as his
prerogative, and was to rescue Aeneas by threatening the Winds with his

vengeance ("Quos ego . . ."), and calming the waves —here symbolized by
the nereid and the oceanid. The young woman seated below Juno is the
fairest of her attendant nymphs, Deiopea, whom the goddess offered Aeolus
in marriage as an additional inducement to do her bidding.

3 24
 Boucher as a Tapestry Designer
EDITH A. STANDEN

The year 1734 was an important one for Jean-Baptiste Oudry; he became
codirector of the tapestry manufactory at Beauvais, where he had been
working as a designer since 1726. He was under contract to provide eight full-

size cartoons every three years. But he had an even more demanding task at

the time for the Gobelins manufactory, designing the huge tapestries of the
Chasses royales; in July 1734, the original order of three scenes was enlarged
to five. It is clear that he needed another artist to fulfill his obligation to
Beauvais.
Francois Boucher, home from Italy, was at the meetings of the Academie
Royale de Peinture et Sculpture on 24 November 1731 and 30 January 1734,
when his reception picture was accepted. Oudry was not present on either
occasion; he seldom attended meetings of the Academie. But both artists had
exhibited at the "Exposition de la Fete-Dieu" in 1725, and Boucher had
already begun to make a name for himself. Oudry was right when he decided
young man was capable of designing on a very large scale; it was
that this

probably in 1734 that he chose Boucher as the person to supply the twenty-
eight running ells (aunes de cours) of paintings that had to be provided for the
Beauvais looms. The first Boucher-designed tapestries, three pieces of the

series known as the Fetes Italiennes, are recorded in the registres de fabrication
as woven in 1736.

For the next thirty-five years the manufactory produced primarily

tapestries after Boucher; records of many years in the 1740s and almost all

through the 1750s show no wall hangings made after any other artist.

Without the six series Boucher designed between 1734 and 1755, the words
"Beauvais tapestries" would have a very different connotation; the French
Rococo, indeed, would be deprived of its grandest achievement. One could as

well imagine Venetian eighteenth-century painting without the ceilings of

Tiepolo.
The registres give fourteen titles for the pieces that make up the Fetes
Italiennes, but adocument of 1754 shows that Boucher provided two sets of
four paintings. The extant tapestries do, in fact, fall into two groups. In one,
1

the four compositions of the Operateur and the Curiosite (always woven
together), the Bohemienne (also called the Bergere), the usually combined
Chasseurs and Filles aux raisins, and the Pecheuse were all woven at least once
by 1739; the other four, the Collation (also called the Cabaretier), Jardinier,
Danse, and Musique, were none of them woven before 1744. Two narrow
pieces were only woven once, in 1762, long after Boucher had stopped
working for Beauvais. 2
The first four tapestries are full of reminiscences of Italy, as are Boucher's
paintings of the early 1730s —umbrella pines, shattered columns, fragments of
classical sculpture. The ruined temple and fountain of the Munich Halte a la

fontaine (see cat. 27) are found again in the Pecheuse; could Oudry have seen
this painting and asked for four tapestry designs like it, only larger? The
1. Weigen, 1933, p. 232.
people, also like those in the paintings, are mostly only slightly idealized
2. Standen, 1977th], pp. 1 10-13. peasants. In the second group of four tapestries, the Italian ruins have almost

3*5
 Fig. 206. La toilette de Psyche, Beauvais
tapestry. Palazzo Reale del Quirinale, Rome.

disappeared, the people have become young gentlefolk and are even waited
on by servants, like the picnickers of the Collation. All the scenes are well
designed for reproduction in wool and silk; there must be no large plain areas
in tapestries, which quickly become mere stretches of cloth to the viewer, and
the details, though lively, must not detract from the main figures nor be seen
purely as pattern.
The only set of more than five pieces of the Fetes Italiennes that has

remained together is that in the Metropolitan Museum, eight panels made for
the Chateau de Gatellier in 1762 (see cat. 87-89). Photographs of the room in
which they hung show that they were set into boiseries and so had no
borders. The largest single piece known is in the Philadelphia Museum of
Art; it combines the Operateur, Curiosite, Filles aux raisins, and Chasseurs; it

has the arms of Rohan-Soubise, like two more panels owned by the prince de
Ligne at Beloeil, Belgium. There is a set of five in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome,
perhaps the one made for President Masson in 1739, and another in the

Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Many other tapestries of the

series are in public and private collections or have appeared in sales, so that a

fair proportion of the approximately 120 pieces in about thirty sets that are

listed in the registres are known to exist.

The only weakness of the Fetes Italiennes is some incoherence in the

compositions. Boucher apparently supplied paintings of groups of people

with suitable backgrounds; these could be woven separately or variously
juxtaposed according to the desired dimensions of each tapestry. The singers,
who are always on the far right of the Operateur, seem to have come from
another setting, perhaps Musique or Danse. On wide versions of the latter are

a Savoyard, a pedlar, and some customers who would be much more suitably
placed in the country fair of the Operateur. A painting, The Little Pedlar at

Gray (cat. 37), has been identified as a cartoon and may represent one of
Bouchers original groups.
Boucher's next series for Beauvais consists of five episodes in the story of
Psyche. Again the tapestries are of different sizes, but the figures added to the
wider versions are in keeping with the compositions. Two scenes, the Arrivee

} i6
 and the Richesses, take place in the most stupendous baroque palace
imaginable, and even the garden of the Toilette (fig. 206) has a largely
architectural setting. In contrast to these are the rugged cave where Psyche
takes refuge in the Abandon (an eighteenth-century Englishman would have
called the scenery "horrid") and the untamed Nature surrounding the
Vannier. Large pieces of the series can be some ten feet high and eighteen
wide (3 x 5. 50 meters); Boucher here shows how magnificently he could
design on this scale. The details, so necessary to good tapestry design, are of
unsurpassed sumptuosity, but they never compete with the lovely, clearly

drawn figures. No tapestries have ever been better designed.

Three pieces of the Psyche series were woven in 1741 and a complete set in

1742, probably the five tapestries in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The set

made for the king of Sweden in 1745 is still in the Royal Palace in Stockholm;
the room where it hangs was decorated in 1754 and is the finest place in the
world in which to appreciate what Beauvais could do. Frederick the Great
bought a set in 1764 that is now split between museums in East and West
Berlin. There are other sets of four pieces and a number of single tapestries
extant.
Strangely, the series did not do as well as the Fetes; only some ten or twelve
sets, less than fifty individual pieces, were made. It may have been very
expensive to weave, because it contains so many figures and so few passages
that could safely be left to apprentices. Or were prospective customers put off
by such overwhelming exuberance, bursting with life and energy? The only
purchaser after the king of Prussia was the king of France, whose taste
presumably was not consulted. Also, once the neoclassic style had begun to
dominate in the late 1760s, these Boucher tapestries probably looked
overblown as well as old-fashioned.

At the Salon of 1742, Boucher exhibited "huit Esquisses de differens sujets

Chinois pour etre executez en Tapisseries a la Manufacture de Beauvais"; the
entrancing sketches are now at Besancon (cat. The full-scale cartoons
41-44).
are described in the manufactory records as made by "Dumont," always
identified as Jean-Joseph Dumons, then a tapestry designer at Aubusson. A
set of four pieces was woven in 1746. Only six of the designs were used for

the tapestry series, and the only complete sets were made for Louis XV in

1758, 1759, and 1767. Otherwise, the sets were from two to five pieces; about
fifty panels are recorded. The most famous set is the one that went to China
in 1764; some pieces are said to be still in Peking, some went back to Europe
after the Boxer Rebellion. 3

A certain confusion exists in the present state of knowledge of this series.

There are the titles in the registres de fabrication ; the sketches in Besancon;
the Beauvais tapestries, widely scattered and poorly published; and, adding
enormously to the general disarray, a vast number of copies and vaguely
similar chinoiseries woven at Aubusson. Perhaps these are the work of
Dumons, who had so much practice in this type of design. There is a set of
six Beauvais pieces in the Palazzo Reale, Turin, and one of five is owned by
the Earl of Rosebery (cat. 91); a sixth piece formerlv in his collection was not
from the same set and was sold in 1978. Individual tapestries are found in a

number of collections and sales, including the piece in this exhibition from
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (cat. 90) and several in Copenhagen; these
are from the set given by Louis XV to Count von Moltke, a high Danish
3. Leroy, 1900, pp. 419-27. official, in 1759.

3 27
 A letter of Oudry s dated 12 August 1747 says that Boucher had then
finished two tapestries of his next series, the Amours des Dveux. The 1-
nine
pieces of this series are not known to have been woven as a single set; the king
took his set of six pieces several times for use as gifts, and customers bought
many sets, usually of three or four pieces: at least eighty tapestries are
recorded. The number of purchasers drops off, as usual, in the 1760s, though
Frederick the Great bought a set in 1765, all but one of which are known to
exist. Four of th e . . " made for Don Felipe, the Infante of Spain, in 175c.
are in the Quirinale, Prince Esterhazy 's set of 1752 was lost in World War II,

and two of Baron Bemstorff 's order of 1754 are in the Metropolitan Museum.
Many more have been identified.
Some of the subjects are ever treated by Boucher elsewhere, but others
1 n

are among the ones he repeated most frequently. The painting of the Rape of
Europa cat. 54 , in the Louvre that was bought by the king in 1747 has the

same main group as the corresponding tapestry, and the Venus at Vulcan's
Forge is only one in a sequence of representations, from a 1732 painting in the

Louvre to onr I [769 in Fort Worth, ''see cat. 17, 67; fig. 200 j. Boucher was
quoted as saying that the subject was "une tache fort artrayante a remplir." *

But the great Beauvais tapestries, sometimes five meters wide, are his most
imposing presentations of the scene.
The Fra ra is listed as a tapestry series first woven in 1752, but
on; •
-.ties are named and one of them, the Castagnettt as never woven
and probably never existed. Few pieces were made and few- have been
located. It seems probable that the paintings were ordered primarily to supply
extra subjects for Am des Dveux sets when all the cartoons of this series
_ise on the looms. The painting of Vertumnus and Pomona
5. 161; in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco consists of five vertical
strips, with a horizontal section at the bottom joined together; thus it is

presumably the cartoon, which was cut and placed under the warps of the
horizontal looms used at Beauvais.
All the Fragments d' Opera art full of echoes of earlier works by Boucher.
This is even more true of his final Beauvais series, the Soble Pastorale, all five

pieces of which were first woven in 1755; a sixth piece, the bergere, woven
once new Boucher design;, may have been the
in 1769 (impossibly late for a

bohemienne from the Fetes Italiennes. Some closely related paintings are
dated 1748 and may not have been made primarily as cartoons/ The scenes
are like th
•

. Italiennes twenty years earlier: group - jng

people in landscapes full of classical temples, sculpture, fountains, and urns.
The strange mill at Charenton, built like a bridge over the river, painted by
Boucher in 17 cat. 69,), reappears in the Fontaine d'Amour tapestry, and
"
pendant, the Vieux colombier, in ihtjoueur de flute. The compositions are
incoherent, without rhyme or reason, the groups casual]}- I I .ether,

and the vita.." :nt earlier series has disappeared. There are no more
peasants and, though all the characters are in lustrous silks, they do not seem
as fashionably dressed as the gentlefolk of the Fetes Italiennes. Very little

except placid lovemakir. . g - . on; a sense of general languor prevails.

Beauvais had its troubles in the 1750s. Oudry 's partner, Nicolas Besnier,
-::ired at the end of 1753, an(^ ^s successor, Andre-Charlemagne Charron,
who took early in 1754,
' '
was faced with the disaster of Oudrv 's death a
4. Boniger, 189S, p. 96.
s. w doc r ^ ater This - meant the lo ;
I rioucher as well. A note by Charron has
6. Tcrwnvend, 1940, pp. 84-86. survived that mentions Oudry 's death as the moment when "M. Boucher

328
Fig. 207. Le Lever du Soleil. Wallace Collec- Fig. 208. Le Coucher du Soleil. Wallace Collec-
tion, London. tion, London.

refusoit des tableaux et ou la manufacture couroit le risque de le manquer." ;

Oudry had also been sunnspecteur, cordially hated, at the Gobelins

manufactory, and the post was immediately given to Boucher; the marquis de
Marigny directeur des Bdtiments, in charge of all the royal manufactories,
wrote to him, "Vous sentes bien que je comte sur vos ouvrages pour cette

manufacture." 8
Two of Boucher's most radiant paintings, in fact, had already been made as

cartoons for Gobelins tapestries, the Lever and Coucher du Soleil of 1752,
now in the Wallace Collection, London, both over ten feet tall (3.21 meters
and 3.24 meters; figs. 207, 208). Cartoons did not have to be cut into strips at

this manufactory. The tapestries were made for Marigny s sister, Mme de

Pompadour, and must have been among the finest ever woven at the
Gobelins, but she soon returned them to the manufactory; in 1768, they were
sold, probably to an Englishman, and have never been heard of since. The
designs were not woven again.
Boucher made another large painting in 1757, one of four cartoons, the
others being by other artists; this was the Venus at Vulcan s Forge in the

Louvre (cat. 6y), in a Gobelins Amours des Dieux series. There are tapestries
after it in Rome and Baltimore; Vulcan and one of the nymphs are close to
their counterparts in the Beauvais tapestry of the same scene. The Gobelins
series was not a success; the workshop heads wrote to Marigny of their
troubles in 1765, "personne ne voulant faire faire de Tapisserie pour un meme
salon, d'apres plusieurs Maitres." 9 Boucher also painted one of the large
7. A & Wdoc. 322.
8. Fenaille, IV, 1907, p. 227. tableaux d'Enfants, also in the Louvre, that the artists made to go with the
9. Fenaille, IV, 1907, p. 163. Amours des Dieux; it was only woven twice, for Marigny and for his sister.

329
 Fig. 209. Croome Court Room, The Metro-
politan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1958.

Also considered to be part of this series was another of Boucher's finest

works, the painting of the Genies des Arts in Angers, which was woven at

Mangny's order for his sister in 1761.

These Boucher paintings for Gobelins tapestries were almost all made for
two of the most important people in the kingdom and were of little use to the
manufactory. There is an incident recorded when Boucher was ordered to
perform a trivial task. Marigny wrote to Jean-Germain Soufflot, director of
the royal manufactories, on 12September 1757, about new borders that were
needed for two of his sisters tapestries (the Lever and Coucher du Soleil); he
added, "Ma soeur desire que le dessin de ces bordures soit fait par M.
Boucher." One can imagine the dismay at the Gobelins. Soufflot was quick to
express his zeal and answered that, not trusting the measurements given by
Mme de Pompadours upholsterer, he had been to her hotel to verify them.
Then he and Boucher had spent a morning at the Gobelins examining existing
tapestry borders; then, "comme c'est affaire d'ornement et que le sieur

Jacques [Maurice Jacques, a flower painter attached to the manufactory] le

peint fort bien, M. Boucher lui a donne ses idees, et moi les mesures, pour
qu'il en fasse une esquisse." Gilded wooden frames were brought to the
Gobelins, so that Boucher could pick the most suitable for copying. On
15 July 1758, the borders were being woven and Soufflot wrote that the designs
"ont occupe longtemps M. Jacques qui a suivi avec zele les conseils de M.
Boucher et fait avec plaisirs les changements qu'il a pu desirer dans le cours de
l'ouvrage." It was also arranged that the king should pay the bill. '° One
senses the uneasiness of the great painter and the great architect when they
had to report that the orders of the king's maitresse en titre had not been
10. Mondain-Monval, 1918, pp. 61-63, $7- precisely obeyed.

330
 ^

Boucher had at this time many important commissions, so it is not

surprising that his other paintings used at the Gobelins are small sketches and
easel pictures. Four of the latter were made just before he was created premier
Peintre in 1765 and relinquished his position at the Gobelins to Jean-Baptiste
Pierre. They were used for the central medallions in the series called the
Tentures de Boucher, the happiest of all Gobelins inventions, but an at least

equal role is played in each large panel by the alentour or background; this is

usually a brilliant crimson damask pattern, with the wealth of flowers, birds,
animals, and trophies that make the series one of the great triumphs of the art
of tapestry. Boucher's mythological scenes in the medallions are strong
enough to stand out against the competition, playing the part of the saints
and shepherds that dominate the millefleur backgrounds of tapestries woven
nearly three hundred years before.
The first set of the Tentures de Boucher, made for Lord Coventry's house,
Croome Court, between 1764 and 1771, is in the Metropolitan Museum (fig.

209). Several others are in the English country houses for which they were
commissioned. By the time the second set was woven, another Boucher
painting for a medallion was available and, by 1768, Jacques Neilson, a
workshop head from 1749 to 1788, then working so hard to supply the
milords, had himself bought two more. Long after Boucher's death, in 1783,
four paintings of Tasso's story of Sylvia and Amyntas, dated 1755 and 1756,
were borrowed by the manufactory to use as new subjects for the medallions
(see cat. 62, 63). The Tentures de Boucher continued to be woven until long
after the arrival of neoclassicism —though for Russia, Germany, England, and
Spain, not for France. A panel with Neilson's name and the date of 1788 has
the usual rococo alentour, but a purely classical border."
Finally, there are the Enfants Boucher, a bewildering multitude of small
tapestries, mostly upholstery panels, with many related paintings, drawings,
prints, and porcelain figurines. No thorough study has been made of these
often delightful little pieces. Many bear the name "Neilson," showing that
they were woven at the Gobelins, and a 1792 inventory of the manufactory
lists "31 petits tableaux representant desjeux d 'Enfants, tant originaux que
copies." 12
A large set is found on furniture in the Residenz Museum, Munich.
It is sometimes said that the designs were also woven at Beauvais, but there is

no convincing evidence for this. The only furniture coverings in the registres
de fabrication that can be identified as Boucher's are details from the Noble
Pastorale.

It is hard now to imagine what a room hung with a new set of Psyche or
the Amours Dieux must have looked like. Beauvais tapestries are often
des
faded and were not meant to be displayed separately like pictures. But when
one stands in the presence of even a few pieces in good condition, they
conjure up a world of splendid shapes and colors, never petty, restless, or
merely pretty, but always in harmony with the furnishings of the period and
the costumes of the people who lived among them.

n. Exh. cat. 1980, New York, no. 21.

12. Fenaille, IV, 1907, p. 405.
13. Badin, 1909, pp. 68-70.

331
 Appendix

A partial list of public institutions owning tapestries designed by Boucher, not

including furniture upholstery and other small pieces, follows herewith as an aid
to further research.

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Foire chinoise

Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery. Collation from Fetes Italiennes; Venus et Vulcain
from Gobelins Amours des Dieux
Berlin, East, Schloss Kopenick. Toilette de Psyche
Berlin, West, Schloss Charlottenburg. Beauvais Amours des Dieux, 4 pieces;
Psyche et le vannier
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Dejeuner from Noble Pastorale
Brussels, Musees Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire. Mars et Venus from Beauvais
Amours des Dieux
Cambridge, England, Fitzwilliam Museum. Apollon et Clitie from Beauvais
Amours des Dieux
Chaahs, Abbaye de. Musique from Fetes Italiennes
Chantilly, Musee Conde. Dejeuner from Noble Pastorale
Chartres, Musee des Beaux-Arts. Beauvais Amours des Dieux, 3 pieces
Chicago, Art Institute. Pipee aux oiseaux from Noble Pastorale
Cleveland, Museum of Art. Foire chinoise; Joueur de flute from Noble Pastorale
Compiegne, Palais. Enlevement d'Orythie (fragment) from Beauvais Amours des

Dieux
Copenhagen, Amalienborg. Chasse chinoise (fragment); Foire chinoise
Copenhagen, Kunstindustrimuseum. Ariane et Bacchus combined with Jupiter et
Antiope from Beauvais Amours des Dieux
Copenhagen, Rosenborg Palace. Chasse chinoise (fragment)
Detroit Institute of Arts. Richesses from Histoire de Psyche
Leningrad, Hermitage Museum. Neptune et Amimone from Beauvais Amours des
Dieux
Lisbon, Gulbenkian Collection. Jupiter et Antiope from Beauvais Amours des
Dieux
London, Victoria and Albert Museum. Bohemienne from Fetes Italiennes
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Beauvais Amours des Dieux, 3 pieces
Ludwigsburg, Wiirttemberg State Collection. Tentures de Boucher, 4 pieces
Malibu, J.
Paul Getty Museum. Jardimer from Fetes Italiennes; Histoire de
Psyche, 4 pieces; Bacchus et Ariane combined with Jupiter et Antiope from
Beauvais Amours
des Dieux; Tentures de Boucher, 4 pieces
Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Foire chinoise; Apollon et Clitie from Beauvais
Amours des Dieux
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fetes Italiennes, set of 8; Operateur et
Curiosite, Danse from Fetes Italiennes; Venus et Vulcain, Ariane et Bacchus
from Beauvais Amours des Dieux; Vertumne et Pomone from Fragments
d 'Opera; Tentures de Boucher, set

Osterley Park, England. Tentures de Boucher, set

Paris, City Neptune et Amimone from Beauvais Amours des Dieux
of.

Pans, Grand Palais, Tuck Collection. Richesses combined with Toilette de Psyche
Paris, Musee Jacquemart-Andre. Chasseurs combined with Filles aux raisins from

Fetes Italiennes
Paris, Louvre. Tentures de Boucher, 4 pieces
Paris, Mobilier National. Mars et Venus, Venus et Vulcain from Beauvais Amours
des Dieux; Venus et Vulcain from Gobelins Amours des Dieux; Tentures de
Boucher, 4 pieces
Paris, Musee Nissim de Camondo. Pecheuse from Fetes Italiennes

33 2
 Museum of Art. Operateur, Curiosite, Filles aux raisins, Chasseurs
Philadelphia
combined from Fetes Italiennes; Histoire de Psyche, set; Peche chinoise
Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Operateur with Curiosite from Fetes
Italiennes
Rome, Palazzo Quirinale. Histoire de Psyche, 4 pieces; Beauvais Amours des
Dieux, 4 pieces
Rome, Palazzo Venezia. Fetes Italiennes, 5
pieces
San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums. Bohemienne from Fetes Italiennes
San Marino, Huntington Art Gallery. Fetes Italiennes, 5
pieces; Noble Pastorale,

5
pieces
Schwerin, Staatliches Museum. Neptune et Amimone from Beauvais Amours des
Dieux
Stuttgart, Wurttembergisches Landesmuseum. Ariane et Bacchus with Jupiter et

Antiope from Beauvais Amours des Dieux

Turin, Palazzo Reale. Tenture chinoise, 6 pieces
Vienna, Austrian National Collection. Tentures de Boucher, set
Waddesdon Manor, England. Noble Pastorale, 3 pieces
Washington, Corcoran Gallery of Art. Psyche conduite par Zephir
Washington, Hillwood Museum. Operateur with Curiosite from Fetes Italiennes;
Ariane et Bacchus, Jupiter et Antiope from Beauvais Amours des Dieux
Washington, National Gallery of Art. Renaud endormi from Fragments d'Opera

333
 Italian Village Scenes

86 The Charlatan and the Peep Show

Wool and silk tapestry (Beauvais)
10 ft. 7/2 in. X .13 ft. 8 in. (324 x 417 cm)
Inscribed on rock at left: boucher 1736
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
The Jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7. 119)
A&W 128/9

87 The Gypsy Fortune-Teller

Wool and silk tapestry (Beauvais)
9 ft. 7 in. x 6 ft. 7/2 in. (292 x 202 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Gift of Mary Ann Robertson, 1964 (64.145.2)
A&W 129/6

88 The Collation
Wool and silk tapestry (Beauvais)
10 ft. 10 in. x 8 ft. 6 in. (330 x 259 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Gift of Mary Ann Robertson, 1964 (64. 145.3)
A&W135/5

89 The Gardener
Wool and silk tapestry (Beauvais)

9 ft. 2/2 in. x 6 ft. 1 in. (281 x 185 cm)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Gift of Mary Ann Robertson, 1964 (64.145.4)
A&W 137/2
PROVENANCE
The set is recorded as made for "M. Boulard The set of Italian Village Scenes to which three of these tapestries belong
de Gatillon," who also acquired tapestry
includes five other pieces, also in the Metropolitan Museum. It was woven in
upholstery for a sofa and six armchairs (Badin,
The furniture now in the
1762 under the direction of Andre-Charlemagne Charron, the last in a
1909, pp. 60, 69). is

Louvre; the tapestry covers show figures after number The French title for the
of weavings of the series that began in 1736.
Boucher, but from the Noble Pastorale. The
series, Fetes Italiennes, may be connected with the names of several popular
purchaser was actually Boulard de Gatellier
operas, such as the Fetes Venitiennes by Andre Campra; the tapestries
and the set remained in the family chateau near
the Loire until 1898, when it was purchased by certainly show people amusing themselves rather than working, and "fetes"
the Duveen firm; borders were then added to or "holidays" is an appropriate description.
the wall hangings, which were sold to R. W.
The Charlatan and the Peep Show (L'operateur and La curiosite, always
Hudson, an English collector. After Hudson's
death they came into the hands of the London woven together) and the Gypsy Fortune-Teller {La hohemienne) belong to the
dealer Frank Partridge and about 1928 they first group of four compositions by Boucher, all woven by 1739; the

334
were bought by George and Florence Collation and the Gardener (Le jardinier) are from the second four, not made
Blumenthal (Rubinstein-Bloch, VI, 1930, pis. before 1742. They reveal the influence of Watteau and Bloemaert, charac-
67-72). The set was given to the Metropolitan
Museum by Mary Ann Robertson in 1964.
teristic of Bouchers early work (Slatkin, 1978, pp. 130-31).

The Charlatan and the Peep Show of the set Boucher was the mainstay of the Beauvais weavers for over twenty years,
has been replaced in this exhibition by another from the Italian Village Scenes of 1736 to the Noble Pastorale. Even when in
example.
1755 he abandoned Beauvais for the Gobelins, his designs remained on the
ENGRAVINGS looms; no new cartoons by any other artist were woven until 1761. The
A print, Foire de Campagne, by Charles- Italian Village Scenes, his first work for weavers, have the liveliness and
Nicolas Cochin shows many of the same
fits

figures as the Charlatan and the Peep Show

brilliance to be expected from a highly gifted young man facing his first large
(A & W 127/1, fig. 457). The central boy in commission and asked to design for a craft new to him. They show both the
the group of three around the box of plaisirs artist and the weavers at their best.
was reproduced in a crayon-manner engraving
The Charlatan and the Peep Show represents a country fair, presumably in
by Giles Demarteau (Slatkin, 1977, fig. 45),
and the drawing for the mother with a sleeping Italy, judging from the scattered fragments of Roman architecture; the ruined

child to the right of the peep show was round temple is like the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. The charlatan, helped by a
engraved in 1769 by Louis Bonnet (Slatkin,
pretty girl, a trumpeter, and a monkey, is peddling his nostrums from a raised
1977, fig. 47). The woman with a music book
appears in a print by P. Aveline, La Musique
platform, while below him three eager small boys cluster around a box that
(A & W 144/1, fig. 486). holds little wafers called "oublies" or "plaisirs." The box has a numbered disc

335
336
337
 The couple on the left of the Gypsy Fortune-
by C. L. Duflos,
Teller are in prints

L'Hommage Champetre, and P. Aveline, La

bonne aventure (A & W
81/1, fig. 462; 150/1,

fig. 461). The young man reclining on the left

of the Collation appears, with another com-

panion, in Les Amours Pastorales by Duflos
(A & W 135/3, fig. 476), and the woman with
a parasol compared to the shep-
has been
herdess with a distaff, La Bergere Laborieuse,
by J. M. Liotard (Slatkin, 1977, fig. 53). The
young man with the gimblettes is in a print by
Daulle after Boucher's painting Les charmes
de la vie champetre (A & W 148/1, fig. 491).

DRAWINGS
The girl on the left in the Charlatan and the
Peep Show, with a basket on her arm, and the
child behind her are found on a drawing in the
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, and one of the
girl selling plaisirs was formerly in the

Heseltine collection (Slatkin, 1977, figs. 43,

44). A Young Girl in black chalk in the

Boymans Museum, Rotterdam, is close to the
head and hand of a figure watching the
charlatan, and the boy working the peep show
resembles a drawing sold at Sotheby's,
London, 28 Nov. 1962, no. 33 (Slatkin, 1977,
figs. 46, 48). A sheet with studies of hands
sold at the same auction house on 25 Apr.
1978, no. 66, includes those of the seller of
plaisirs and some of her customers. A drawing
for the seated woman holding a music book in

the Staatliches Museum, Schwerin, is consid-

ered a copy by Oudry after Boucher (exh. cat.
1982-83, Paris, p. 156, fig. 74b). In the Gypsy
Fortune -Teller the young man with the
gimblettes is after a drawing in the Louvre
(Slatkin, 1977, fig. 51).

OTHER VERSIONS
The Charlatan and the Peep Show
The Charlatan appears in the manufactory
records as woven twelve times between 1738
and 1762, the Peep Show only once, but all the
published tapestries consist of the two subjects
combined; it is, indeed, difficult to see how
they could have been separated. Examples are
in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, possibly from a
set made in 1737-40; the Virginia Museum of on top and a pointer that can be twirled; the digit at which it comes to rest
Fine Arts, Richmond, with the initials of A-C.
indicates the number of wafers the purchaser will receive for his money. The
Charron, director of the manufactory from
1753; tne Huntington Collection, San Marino, large peep show, or "curiosite," is operated by a young man who pulls strings
Calif. the Hillwood Museum, Washington,
; to change the pictures; a woman stoops to look through a viewing hole.
D.C.; and the Philadelphia Museum, with two
The characters in the Gypsy For tune -Teller are, like those in the Charlatan,
other subjects and the arms of Rohan-Soubise,
made in 1738. The Metropolitan Museum country people, though, except for the gypsy, somewhat fancifully dressed.
owns another version from the Boulard de But the picnickers in the Collation are gentlefolk, waited on by a man
Gatellier set besides the one in this exhibition.
servant; the short-sleeved jackets worn by the reclining men and the straw hat
Sales with examples include those of Paul
Dutasta, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris,
that one of them has at his feet suggest that they are playing at being peasants.
4 3,
June 1926, no. 193; Francois Coty, Galerie The pale rings held by one of them are a string of gimblettes, pretzel-shaped
Jean Charpentier, Paris, 30 Nov.-i Dec. 1936, hard biscuits. Wider versions of this tapestry show that the building on the
no. no; the Earl of Iveagh, Elveden Hall, sold
left may be an inn. The Gardener goes back to a classical setting; the statues
by Christie's, 22 May 1984, no. 1766. The
music-making trio as a separate subject is in are Hercules with his lion skin and club on the right and perhaps Bacchus on
the J.
Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Calif. the left.

338
The Gypsy Fortune -Teller schild, Sotheby's Monaco, 24 June 1976, no. d'Orsay, Paris, 23 Feb. 1978, no. 119a. The
This design is recorded under the name of 118. A small panel showing part of the shep- Danesfield collection is said to have another
La bohemienne as having been woven thirteen herdess and the girl behind her was in the (A & W 135/4), and there was one in the set at

times between 1738 and 1762; it is probably Georges Hoentschel sale, Galerie Georges the Chateau de Balleroy, near Bayeux, which
identical with La bergere, woven four times. Mar. -2 Apr. 1919, no. 364.
Petit, Paris, 31 was sold in 1925 (Badin, 1909, p. 60 n.). The
Examples are in the Huntington Collection; Nineteenth-century versions were in the Mrs. figures, except for the dog, are seen under the
the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Grace T. Tobey sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, canopy and round temple of the Charlatan on
Palazzo Venezia; the Fine Arts Museums of 21, 22 Nov. 1941, no. 446, and the Mrs. Jacob a 19th-century tapestry from the William
San Francisco; and the collection of the Prince H. Schiff sale, American Art Associa- Baumgarten workshop that was in the Schiff

de Ligne, Beloeil, Belgium, with the Rohan- tion-Anderson Galleries, New York, 7-9 Dec. sale, no. 592.
Soubise arms. Mme Barzin, Pans, owned one 1933, no. 593; the latter was made in the
in 1967, and the dealers French & Co. lent one workshop of William Baumgarten, New York. The Gardener
to the exhibition "Age of Elegance" at the The design is recorded as woven eleven
Baltimore Museum of Art in 1959. Sales with The Collation times between 1746 and 1762. There is an
examples include those of L. & A. Satori, The tapestry with this name was woven example in the J. Paul Getty Museum, and one
Kende Gallerv, Vienna, 24 Feb. 1926, no. 115; thirteen timesbetween 1745 and 1762 and it is combined with another subject was in the
Gaston Menier, sold again at Christie's, probably identical with Le cabaretier, recorded Chateau de Ferrieres, owned by baron Guy de
London, 8 May 1973, no. 116, with the name as woven twice. There are examples in the Rothschild. The same combination was used
of the manufactory director Besnier, who Huntington Collection and the Walters Art comte Greffulhe sale,
for a tapestry in the
retired in 1753; Gustav Bader, sold several Gallerv, Baltimore. Baron Guy de Rothschild Sotheby's,London, 23 July 1937, no. 62. A
times, most recently at Christies, Rome, 14 has a wide piece, formerly at the Chateau de narrow example was sold at the Palais d'Orsay,
Oct. 1982, no. 25; baronne Eugene de Roth- Ferrieres, and one was sold at the Palais Paris, 23 Feb. 1978, no. 119b.

90 Lafoire chinoise
Wool and silk tapestry (Beauvais)

11 ft. 11 in. x 18 ft. 2/2 in.

(357.5 X 546.25 cm)

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts

PROVENANCE
Edward T Stotesbury coll., Philadelphia; sold The Chinese Series (La tenture chinoise) is the only one listed in the Beauvais
at Parke-Bernet, New Nov. 1944,
York, 18
manufactory records as after the cartoons of one artist working from sketches
no. 34, when it was described as from Duveen
Brothers, Inc. It had belonged to M. Stettiner
by another. There are two documents that make this statement. One, an
in 1921 (exh. cat. 1921, London, p. 7). inventory of 1754 in the Beauvais municipal archives, reads: "Six tableaux de
Desseins chinois, dont un se partage en deux, peint par le sieur Aumont sur
ANALOGIES
les esquisses du sieur Boucher et par lui retouche, fournis par ledit sieur
Like those of other pieces of the series, the

figures of the Foire were adapted for use by the Oudry, contenant vingt cinq aunes cinq seizes sans les bordures ny les
weavers of Aubusson (exh. cat. 1973, Berlin, rapports fournis depuis" (Weigert, 1933, p. 232). These are presumably aunes
p. 228, O. 5). An example showing the fore-
de France, 1.19 meters each; the usual measure used at the manufactory was
ground group on the left with the tent,
canopy, and palm trees, but no other figures, the aune de Flandre, .7 meter, made up of sixteen batons, but sometimes a
was sold at the Palais Galliera, Paris, 7 Apr. weaving is recorded in aunes de France, including the first set of the Tenture
1976, no. 98-99b; it had originally been joined
chinoise (Badin, 1909, pp. 55, 61; Delesalle, 1964, pp. 95-98).
to a version of the Danse.
The other document, Archives Nationales, Paris, also dated 1754,
in the

OTHER VERSIONS lists "Six tableaux dont un se partage en deux representant des desseins de
A tapestry in the Cleveland Museum of Art chinois peint par le S. Dumont sur les esquisses de S. Boucher et retouche par
omits
Louis
all

XV
the right side.
at
It

the top and so has a claim to

has the arms of
Oudry" (A & W doc. The cartoon in two parts was perhaps Lapeche;
581).

belong to the set that was taken to China several tapestries are known that show the left or the right side of the design
(M. Jarry, 1972, p. 224, pi. II). But in the only.
fullest account of this set (Leroy, 1900, p. 420),
If the man who made the cartoons and, presumably, the later additions
the Marche chinois of the Peking set was taken
to Paris by a French officer, later owned by the ("rapports fournis depuis"), was, as is usually supposed, Jean-Joseph
Maison Braquenie, and bought by Pozzo di Dumons, he was living in Aubusson, far from either Paris or Beauvais, in

339
Borgo; he hung it in his Chateau de 1743 when four pieces of the series were first woven. Whether Boucher
Montretout, which was destroyed bv fire in
retouched the cartoons in Paris, or Oudry in Paris or at Beauvais, would be
1871.
hard to determine. Certainly the areas on the wider versions of the tapestries
An extremely wide example (20 ft. 9 in., 630
cm) was sold at Sotheby's, London, 3 Mar. that are not in the sketches are in Bouchers stvle, but Oudrv is recorded on
1978, no. 1; it had been atMentmore, owned another occasion as making additions to Boucher's designs; the Psyche
by the Rosebery family, but it is not from the
same set as the five pieces now
Dalmenyat
cartoons had "rapports fait depuis par ledit sieur Oudry" (Weigert, 1933,

House (see cat. 91). It shows more plants and p. 232).

trees on the left, but extends on the right Ten sets of the Tenture chinoise in from two to six pieces are recorded as
beyond the two palm trees to include a very
woven from 1743 to 1775, several of them for the king. Sets that have
large, brass-bound chest (a tea chest?), more

vases, and some distant trees (M. Jarry, 1981,

remained together are one of six pieces in the Palazzo Reale, Turin (Chierici,
pis. 12, 14, as in a private coll.). The chest is by Besnier and Oudry and so certainly made before
1969, p. x, pi. 10), signed
partly seen on a tapestry of about the same
1753 when their partnership came to an end, and one of five pieces, including
width (64c cm) from the Moltke set in the
cat. 91, now at Dalmeny House, Scotland, owned by the Earl of Rosebery,
Amalienborg Palace, Copenhagen, and on
another piece in the Ri)ksmuseum, Amsterdam which has the same two names. One set of six pieces made in 1759 for the
(Bulletin Rijksmuseum, 5, 1957, pp. 20, 21). king and given to Count Adam Gottlob von Moltke, court marshal and royal
The Marche (presumably the Foire) of the
favorite in Copenhagen, still exists in part in the Danish royal collection
Turin set is less wide.
(A & W 226/2, 228/10, 229/1, 229/2; M. Jarry, 1981, p. 26).
A set of six subjects was sent to the Affaires Etrangeres in 1763, "livree a
M. Bertin pour envoyer en Chine" (Badin, 1909, p. 84); it was probably the
one made in 1758, described as "pour le magazin," "avec armes du roi dans la

bordure" (Badin, 1909, p. 61). The history of this set is complicated (Leroy,
1900, pp. 413-30; Bernard-Maitre, 1951, pp. 9, 10; see also cat. 41-44), but

340
 another set, made in 1754 and 1755, is also listed as having the royal arms in

the borders, so the presence of these arms on a tapestry does not necessarily
mean that it was looted from the Summer Palace in Peking during the Boxer
Rebellion.
No Beauvais upholstery with chinoiserie designs has been identified. A
sofa and eight armchairs were delivered with six wall hangings to the Affaires
Etrangeres in 1769, but when M. de Croizilles acquired six armchair covers in

1745 to go with his two chinois pieces, they were described as "a fables," that

ornamented with scenes from La Fontaine's Fables designed by Oudry.

is,

Andre-Charlemagne Charron, director of the manufactory, had a Tenture

chinoise in 1763, but when his wife acquired furniture in 1768, the upholstery
had figures from the Noble Pastorale (Badin, 1909, pp. 61, 6y, 69, 85).
Lafoire chinoise appears in a set woven in 1743 and is listed again in 1744,
1750, 1754, 1758, 1763, and 1775. All those tapestries of which the dimensions
6
are given were of comparable heights, ranging from 4/16 to 5
/i6 aunes, but the
widths varied greatly. The design of the example in this exhibition has been
made slightly wider than Bouchers sketch (cat. 42). The blue-and-white
Chinese vase on the right is now seen in its entirety, and the metal ewer
beyond new; on the left, there is a different head behind the woman with
it is

her back turned, and the folded parasol carried by a boy is completely visible.
But the greatest change was the most necessary one for a successful tapestry:
the addition of the trees on the right. Boucher's great expanse of open sky
would not have worked as well in the coarser medium of wool and silk as it

does in oil paint. The daring layout of the sketch, with its diagonal of airy
space extending to a vast distance, with dark foreground figures silhouetted
against it, has been replaced by a more conventional, balanced composition,
eminently proper for tapestry, a form of art in which pictorial innovations
seldom succeed.
The actual event depicted, a lively fair, is much the same as that shown in

the Charlatan and the Peep Show (cat. 86); the dignified gentleman under the
canopy is the Chinese equivalent of the gesticulating quack of the earlier
design. In the sketch his face smooth and youthful, but in the tapestry he
is

has long, drooping moustaches and, were it not for the prancing mountebank
beside him, could be taken for a Confucian sage.

91 Le jardin chinois

Wool and silk tapestry (Beauvais)

10 ft. 5 in. X 8 ft. (318 X 244 cm)
The Earl and Countess of Rosebery, Dalmeny House,
Scotland

PROVENANCE
Acquired by Baron Meyer Amschel de The set of the Tenture chinoise Dalmeny House consists of five pieces, Le
at
Rothschild (1818-1874) for his seat Mentmore repas chinois, La danse, La peche, La chasse, and La toilette or Le jardin
in Buckinghamshire, built in 1854 (Mentmore,
1884, vii, xvii). His only child, Hannah,
chinois (Mentmore, 1884, II, pp. 19-23, all illus.). Three of them have the
I, pp.
married Archibald Philip Primrose, fifth Earl names "Besnier et Oudry," showing that the set was woven while these two
of Rosebery, in 1878. men were codirectors at Beauvais, between 1734 and 1753. One Tenture

34i
ANALOG IKS
Imitations made at Aubusson have appeared in

a number of sales, including those of the

princesse de X . . ., Galerie Charpentier,
Paris, 2, 3 Dec. 1952, no. 213; Palais des
Congres, Versailles, 3 Mar. 1968, no. 168A
(A & W 230/4); Palais Galliera, Paris, 29 Nov.
1974, no. 129.

chinoise of five pieces is recorded as woven in 1750 "pour PEspagne" (Badin,

OTHER VERSIONS
1909, p. 61), but it included a Foire and not a Chasse, so it could not have
Palazzo Reale, Turin.
New York private coll. (A & W 230/2, fig.
been the Rosebery set.

695). Apparently the same as the piece sold at The Jardin chinois was first woven in 1743 and was included in the sets of
Drouot Rive Gauche, Paris, 26 June 1978, no.
1744, 1754, 1763, and 1775; that of 1744, woven for M. Bergeret, the owner of
195, though the reproduction seems to have
been cut.
the sketch (cat. 43), was wide, presumably reproducing Bouchers design in
Private coll. (probably in France). Closer to its entirety. Similar dimensions are recorded for the weavings of 1750 and
the sketch than the other versions, showing The sets of six pieces made for the king presumably also included a
1754.
more
(M.
of the building, but without the pergola
Jarry, 1981, pi. 10).
Jardin. The example in a private collection in New York (A & W 230/2,
American coll. or dealer, 1926 (Hunter, fig. 695) is also taller than it is wide but shows the man leaning forward and
I926[b], p. 88, illus.), with the royal arms; carrying a long branch.
possibly the piece brought from Peking to
Bouchers design is eminently suited for reproduction in tapestry. It is full
England by Col. Greathed and owned by the
Paris dealer Lowengard, in 1900 (Leroy, 1900, of attractive detail, but the figures of the women are clearly defined and
p. 420, no. 1). pleasingly calm; there is no feeling of triviality or restlessness.

34^
 92 Sketch for a Gobelins tapestry
Oil on canvas
19/2 X 35 in. (50 X 90 cm)
Mobilier National,
Paris

PROVENANCE
The sketch is described by Jacques as "presente The first step in the creation of a tapestry is the petit patron or modele, a
a M. le Directeur general comme utile a la
careful sketch from which a full-scale cartoon can be made of the desired size
Manufacture" (Fenaille, IV, p. 229). Marigny
presumably turned it over to the Gobelins
of the finished product. At the Gobelins manufactory, these sketches were
immediately. paid for by the king. A bill exists submitted by a flower painter employed
there, Maurice Jacques, for work done in 1758. It includes several esquisses,
ANALOGIES
one "peinte a l'huile composee d'une bordure d'ornemens, de trois
The scene in the medallion on the left, two
nymphs surprised by a satyr, has been con- medaillons en ornemens, avec des festons et groupes de fleurs epars dans
nected with a painting of Pan and Syrinx toute l'etendue de l'esquisse, les sujets des milieux ont ete faits ches M.
exhibited at the Salon of 1761 (A & W 549) and Boucher" (i.e., in his workshop; Fenaille, IV, 1907, pp. 228, 256; A& W
the central medallion with a Birth of Venus
(A & W 577) and a Triumph of Venus (A & W 456/5, fig. 1273). Another sketch listed in the bill was cat. 92, described as
485); the last relationship seems slight. The "dans le gout de celles susdites, dont les sujets des milieux sont faits par M.
Arion and the Dolphin medallion on the right
Boucher, lesquelles esquisses ont ete faites sur l'idee de M. Soufflot" (Fenaille,
is close to the central figures of the 1748
painting in Princeton (cat. 55).
IV, pp. 229, 255, illus. pi. facing p. 228; A& W fig. 1370). The director of
For some later versions of the Tentures de the royal manufactories, Jean-Germain Soufflot, annotated the bill: "A
Boucher, another Boucher design with Venus, a remettre lors de l'execution en grand," so Jacques could not have been paid
dolphin, and cupids was placed in one of the
medallions, but it is not closely related to the
for several years. He asked 150 livres for each of the two sketches.
similar subject in cat. 92 (Fenaille, IV, pi. What was Soufflot s contribution to these basically similar compositions? A
facing p. 294). clue is given in a letter that he wrote to his superior, the marquis de Marigny,
on 23 September 1758. In it, he requested approval for a new design of a
Chancellerie, the set of tapestries that the king gave to his chancellors, and

343
 added: "on pouroit, je crois, Monsieur, faire un fond de mosaiques dans
lesquelles seroient des fleurs de lys, enferme dans une belle bordure a laquelle
seroit attacheeun tableau de moyenne grandeur qui feroit le milieu de la
piece." The design would be inexpensive to weave, "parcequ'elle peut occuper
des ouvneurs inferieurs, en exceptant la partie des figures" (Fenaille, III,

1904, p. 142). It was also eminently suitable for private commissions, as the

tapestries based on it could easily be made larger or smaller to suit the

customer.
The credit for substituting a silk damask pattern for the fleurs-de-lis
appropriate for royal gifts has been assigned to the head of the basse lisse

(horizontal loom) workshop, Jacques Neilson (Fenaille, III, p. 177), but it is

clearly indicated on the two sketches, red in one and blue in the other.
Neilson first used it on a set of Don Quixote tapestries in 1760, but the
central medallions are not here so clearly defined as framed paintings, hung
by ribbons with bows at the top from an apparent molding, as they are in the
1758 sketch and in the Tentures de Boucher.
The sketches of Jacques and Boucher were not used for making cartoons
until a customer for hangings of this type appeared. He was the sixth earl of
Coventry, who came to Paris to buy tapestry in August 1763. Substantial
changes were then made in the design, with larger Boucher paintings of
different subjects in the medallions; these paintings are now in the Louvre
and and are dated 1763 and 1765. But most of Jacques's original
at Versailles

design, including the simulated frame and its garlands and the musical trophy
with a bagpipe at the base, is to be seen on the walls of the Tapestry Room
from Lord Coventry's seat, Croome Court, now in the Metropolitan
Museum (fig. 209; Standen, 1964, pp. 18, 49, figs. 20, 22, 28).

344
 The Influence of Boucher s Art on the

Production of the Vincennes-Sevres

Porcelain Manufactory
ANTOINETTE FAY-HALLE

To consider the relationship between the painter Boucher and the

Vincennes-Sevres porcelain manufactory is to consider in a classic fashion
the relationship between a model and the work based upon it in another
medium, and the relationship between the primary arts as the source of
inspiration, and the minor arts that — or at least such was the case in the

eighteenth century — often create fashion and sometimes direct the

evolution of taste.
One thing should be clear from the outset: Boucher's models were of
vital importance in the development of Vincennes-Sevres porcelain, and
particularly its sculpture. From 1752 to about 1766 almost all the
freestanding Sevres figures were derived from the work of this artist.

During these years the same was true of painted figurative decoration,
although this was less clear-cut because there were still large numbers of
designs which included flowers, birds, and landscapes that were un-
touched by Boucher's influence, and also because the painters as often

adapted as simply copied the models from which they worked. 1

As Boucher's influence was all-pervasive at Sevres at a highly important

period in its history — the time at which the greatest French porcelain
manufactory was achieving its own coherent style, so his influence
affectedEuropean ceramics as a whole. This was owing to the position
achieved by Sevres during 1755-60 when it overtook the dominance of
Meissen.
We know by those who created the Sevres manufactory,
the goal set
which had been set up at the Chateau de Vincennes in 1738 and moved to
Sevres in 1756: It was to compete with Meissen and Japanese porcelain. 2
To achieve this goal they had to solve the countless technical problems
inherent in porcelain production. About 1745-47, this was accomplished,
and it is then that we find the first team worthy of royal patronage
being recruited in various capacities. Hendrik van Hulst was entrusted
with "assuming direction over the ornament and painting, "3 and with
that responsibility in view he set out his production standards and
goals:

The diversity of tastes is the guardian angel of any manufactory

revolving around objects of adornment: what does not please some will
i. In the exhibition catalogues Porcelaines de
Vincennes (1977-78, Paris), out of 447
please others. With porcelain most bizarre and fanciful
in particular, the
painted or gilded objects, 37 have painted designs will enjoy greater success than the most elegant and rational.
decoration based on Boucher or in his
Provided we eschew the heavy and the trivial, and turn to the light, the
style, that is to say almost all those
novel, and the varied, our success is assured. 4
decorated with figures.
2. Lechevallier-Chevignard, 1908, I, p. 10.

3. Lechevallier-Chevignard, 1908, I, p. 25.

In the light of the success achieved, Boucher's style must at the time
4. Lechevallier-Chevignard, 1908, I, p. 28. have seemed the perfect realization of Hulst's intentions!

345
 White-Glazed Porcelain
In 175 1 Jean-Jacques Bachelier was recruited, and it is to him that the
principal role in thedevelopment of unglazed or biscuit porcelain can be
attributed. The Meissen porcelain factory in Saxony had launched the
5

fashion for glazed and polychrome-enameled figures. To compete with

Meissen, Vincennes also produced some glazed and painted models, for
example La source, now in the Louvre. 6 However, now abandoning
polychromy, Vincennes devoted itself to glazed but unpainted figures,
which evoked the famous blanc de Chine. Bulidon, Chabry, Chanou,
Depierreux, Louis Fournier, Laurent Hubert, Pierre Laurent, Patouillet,
and Le Boiteux are some of the creators of these gods and goddesses,
naiads, children, and animals —
always delightful because of the quality
and even sensuousness of the material from which they are formed and to
which they are so well suited. Emile Bourgeois, indeed, criticized these
sculptors: "they had no personality: like them, their figurines lack
originality"" Nonetheless, from 1747 to 1751-52, their work laid the
ground on which the work of the succeeding generation would flourish, a
generation that no longer invented on its own but deferred, both in spirit
and in form, to a single master — —
Boucher and in so doing would ignore
Hulst's injunctions.
There are several white-glazed figures and groups that suggest com-
parison with Boucher. Such is the case with the Leda, which the
manufactory archives attribute to Depierreux in 1747, 8 if we connect that
reference with a figure of which several examples exist, one lightly
polychromed, y and if we compare the figure with Demarteau's engraving
of the same subject.'^ The resemblance— if not the similarity is striking: —
Leda's right arm is the sole element not in the same position in both
examples. When Falconet turned to the same subject in 1764, this time
5. Biscuit porcelain has a matte appearance
inspired by Ryland's engraving," he would alter the position of one of
like marble, for which it was a sort of
substitute, propitious to sculpture. Leda's arms in the same manner: in porcelain, raised arms spell trouble.
6. Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, no. 501, under By and large, Depierreux's glazed figure is much closer to the "spirit" of
its 18th-century name.
Boucher; Falconet, idealizing the canon of female beauty, tended toward a
7. Bourgeois, 1909, I, p. 13.
Exh. neoclassicism of which his more naturalistic model betrays no trace.
8. cat. 1977-78, Paris, p. 171, no. 493.

9. Reproduced in Les porcelaimers du XVIII' We do not know the name of the modeler at Vincennes who created the
ncde franqais, preface by S. Gauthier, group known as Le berger galant (cat. 97), mentioned in the Vincennes
Paris, 1964, p. 139; attributed to Mennecy.
archives under 1752, but we can see that the work is a literal reproduction
Another example in white enamel was
acquired by the Musee National de Ce- of an engraving by A. Laurent entitled Le pasteur galant. 11 It is most
ramique de Sevres in 1985, inv. MNC likely a porcelain from 1752: fidelity to an engraved source is characteristic
25216.
of this period.
10. J-R 834. Demarteau's engraving, published
in 1773, is clearly posterior to the Vin- The case of L'heure du berger' > is a bit more complex. It is possible, of
cennes group, and indeed to Bouchers course, to compare this white-glazed group to the Repos de Diane,
own life, but must reflect a common, engraved by Pelletier after Boucher,' 4 for the pose of the female figure, but
earlier, original composition.
11. Bourgeois, 1913, pi. 8, no. 386; J-R
what the anonymous sculptor of this group retained above all is the
1
535-1 S39- essence of Boucher's style, his deft sensuality. Here there is a perfect
12. J-R 1313. equivalence between the spirit of a creative artist and the work inspired by
13. Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, no. 487; engrav-
him.
ing, J-R 1454.
14. The group cannot derive directly from Among other works in white-glazed porcelain, mention should be made
Pelletier's engraving as it was published in of the Chinois soutenant une corbeille,'^ known from three examples, one
1749 and Pelletier was only born c. 1736,
of which is in the British Royal Collection and another in the Musee
but again one can imagine a source com-
mon to both engraving and porcelain. National de Ceramique de Sevres. Bouchers name has been evoked in

15. Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, nos. 467, 468. connection with this group, but without any evidence. As for the other

346
 16
group published by Bourgeois under the title Cbinois a la corbeille, also
attributed to Boucher and dated by Bourgeois to 1750, in all likelihood it

is an 1891 cast based on a Pont-aux-Choux creamware porcelain group

now in the Musee National de Ceramique.' 7

The Enfants Boucher and the Enfants Falconet

Beginning in 1752, a new team of modelers was being asked to take
Boucher as their source: Blondeau, Suzanne, and de Fernex. A few fairly

rare early works by them still bear traces of clumsiness, as can be seen in
the white-glazed versions of La petite fille a la cage and the Porteur
lS
d'oiseau. Thereafter these sculptors began to demonstrate real fidelity to
an artist who was not their actual master, but who compelled obedience
without being physically present: indeed, the manufactory either just

purchased drawings from him or acquired engravings of his works.' 9

Today the Sevres manufactory possesses only one of Boucher's

drawings. 20 On the back is written Le petit Jardinier: dessin de M. Boucher
apartenant a la manufacture de Vincennes, le29 aoust 1749. In 1752
Blondeau used it as a model, but from it he made ajeune suppliant in
which the shovel has disappeared (cat. 99). Aside from that, Blondeau was
entirely faithful, conveying admirably both the puppy fat of the boy and
the ease of his pose. The sculptor's task was made easier because the
painter had included with the child a small hillock on which a basket rests,
a subsidiary motif indispensable for supporting the porcelain.
This figurine is only one of the first examples of what was to be a long
series of little girls and boys engaged in eating gruel, reaping, carrying
baskets of flowers or birds, laundering, patting dogs, Under mowing, etc.

the skilled hands of Blondeau, Suzanne, and de Fernex, Boucher's drawn

and painted models come to life in the terra-cottas, some of which still
exist in the collections of the Musee National de Ceramique de Sevres.

Molds were then taken from the terra-cottas in order to reproduce them in
porcelain. 21 From 1752 on, the manufactory archives mention a large
number of Enfants Boucher in the warehouse and workshops. One detail
helps us distinguish them from the other children that were being turned
out in increasing quantities at Vincennes during the same period: they are
all clothed and engaged in identifiable pastimes, often in adult occupa-
tions. Such is not the case with the anonymous Enfants saisons, 12 which
i6. Bourgeois, 1913, pi. 3, no. 145. are barely clad; the Enfants Erancois, 2 ^ attributed
by Emile Bourgeois
17. Inv. MNC 23169. to Louis Felix de la Rue after originals by Francois Flamant (i.e.,
18. Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres;
Duquesnoy), which are nude and whose modeling is agonizingly weak; or
exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, nos. 508, 514.
19. Rosalind Savill (1982) makes an extremely the Enfants La Rue, 14 which were modeled by Louis Felix de La Rue after
precise, if not exhaustive, survey of the use drawings by Boucher. The latter date from 1754: the factory has records of
of Boucher models at Vincennes and at
payments to de La Rue. 2 These children are nude and the quality of their
^

Sevres.
20. Savill, 1982, p. 162, fig. 1.
modeling is unusually high. Grouped by threes on hillocks, playing with a
21. On the technique of biscuit manufacture, fish, a bird, grapes, or a conch shell, they amuse themselves with all the
see Brunet & Preaud, 1978, p. 14. seriousness of children, and we can only regret the rarity of surviving
22. Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, no. 477-80.
examples. De La Rue is the author of other groups of Sevres children:
23. Bourgeois, 1909, I, pp. 36-37; and 1913,
pis. 4 and 5, nos. 231-59. Bacchus a la panthere of 1754 and some paperweights intended for the
24. Bourgeois, 1913, pi. 6, nos. 224, 262, 264, controller-general Machault d'Arnouville. 26 De La Rue's works have great
266.
charm, as, for that matter, do the majority of the works of Suzanne,
Exh.
25.
26. Exh.
cat.

cat.
1977-78, Paris, p.

1977-78, Paris, pp. 151, 180,

165.
Blondeau, and de Fernex —
which have perhaps simply been too successful
nos. 515, 516. for their own good.

347
 The Sevres manufactory, however, did not leave well enough alone.
Carrving on with the creations of Vincennes in most spheres, it was in
turn to produce immense quantities of "Boucher children," under the
auspices of its new director of the sculpture workshops, Etienne-Maurice
Falconet, who held the post from 1757 to 1766. With these so-called
"Falconet children," we are confronted with a whole troop of children
who seem downright some topple over into outright vulgarity
restless; 2"

as in the two groups entitled Le Maitre and La Maitresse d'ecole. Yet in

adapting Boucher's design iS of La Maitresse d'ecole Falconet was careful

not to show the actual punishment (by beating on the naked bottom), but
rather the moment immediately preceding it, as Rosalind Savill has
noted. -^ As we have said, Hulst was wary of the "trivial": his fears were
justified . . . and this is somewhat surprising, since Falconet's work as a

whole did not tend toward naturalism. This series of works can only be
explained by the response to the demand for a fashion vastly appreciated
by both the manufactory's patrons and its clients. In forcing his talent in
an uncongenial direction, Falconet could hardly have hoped for more.

Biscuit Porcelains and the Theater

Boucher's reign was not limited to models of children. His painted
works teem with shepherds and shepherdesses, pastoral figures with a
certain air of the court about them. Indeed, the figures might better be
described as "theatrical" than as "courtly." In the early 1750s, as Rosalind
Savill has so rightly emphasized, ;:
following Bourgeois, »' Boucher and
Falconet drew their inspiration for the majority of these figures or groups
of young men and women (and some of the children we have just
mentioned, i.e., La petite fille a la cage, Le porteur d'oiseaux, La petite
fille au tablier, Le moissonneur, and La moissonneuse) from works

performed at the Opera-Comique. Here, there is not a trace of overt

naturalism, notwithstanding the fact that the features of Mme Favart
inspired those of La Bergere assise or that Mme Arimath's beauty
underlies that of Le Batelier de Saint-Cloud, albeit a breeches part. Other
works were originally designed by Boucher for translation into sculpture
by Falconet himself, Allegrain, Vasse, and Coustou to decorate the dairy
of Mme de Pompadour's Chateau de Crecy Vincennes was not slow to
seize upon the profit it could derive from the models, some depicting the
most famous actors of the day inspired by fashionable plays (Les amours
de Bastien et Bastienne, La Yallee de Montmorency, La fete d 'Amour, Le
Batelier de Saint-Cloud), and others first created as sculpture for the most
prominent woman in the realm. Many of the groups or figures that were
reproduced in biscuit, such as the famous Mangeurs de raisins (cat. 100)
based on Boucher's painting Pensent-ils au raisin ? (cat. 53), were among
the prettiest of the Vincennes models, and it is easy to understand their
popularity. Furthermore, while the basic composition of the biscuit is

formed from molds that allow for a reproduction identical with the
model, parts of the secondary decorative elements (bunches of grapes,
27. Savill (1982) provides the list, pp. 169-70, flowers, etc.)were then modeled freehand by the repareur (assembler).
n - I2 -
Different versions thus included variants, which gave the client a wider
1 3 3"
range from which to choose.
'
i
29. Savill,
,!
1982,
will, 1982, p. 164.
p. 166.
T-J-L-L- L L If
^ or despite their obvious charm, these pastoral biscuit sculptures are
>
•
1

31. Bourgeois. 19:9. 1, pp. 16 et seq. afflicted by the same defect as the various other children inspired by

348
 Boucher: they relentlessly reiterate the same type of figure, the same
aesthetic; the variety insisted on by Hulst is absent.
was unable to escape from Boucher's influence
In this area, Falconet
between 1757 and 1766, and even such groups as Baiser donne and Baiser
rendu of 1765 are still faithful to the painters spirit. Yet the reductions
of his own sculpture, such as La Baigneuse and Pygmalion, presage a
new era.

Boucher and Scenes Painted on Porcelain

In her article entitled "Francois Boucher and the Porcelains of
Vincennes and Sevres" (Savill, 1982), Rosalind Savill has given a very
precise evaluation of the influence of the painter on the porcelain
manufactory, clearly demonstrating that the models were first reproduced
in blue or pink camai'eu, with all the stylization that implies, and then, in

the late 1750s, redone in polychrome against a landscape background:

Vincennes can be said to have followed the spirit of the engravings after
Boucher, Sevres that of the paintings that had originally served as the

models for the engravings.

In this sphere we same subjects as those treated in sculpture:
find the
the breakfast services in the Louvre and the Wadsworth Atheneum are
famous for faithfully reproducing on the tray the same Le Prince
engraving, La chasse,* 2 whereas the cups, saucers, teapots, etc., reproduce
in turn La petite fille a la cage, La petite fille au tablier, Le jeune suppliant,

etc. The Vincennes painter of these two sets, Andre-Vincent Vielliard, was

so prolific in this genre that Anne-Marie Belfort has devoted an entire

article to the subject, "L'Oeuvre de Vielliard d'apres Boucher."^ From it

we learn that the painter, although of relatively meager talent, did not
slavishly follow his models, and he did not shrink from making
modifications to suit himself, changing the positions of arms or legs,
clothing children that Boucher had created nude, changing the activities in
which they are engaged, etc., all of which make Vielliard's cupids into real
puzzles. At their best such alterations, of course, become genuine
originality. All of the cupids painted at Vincennes were not done by

Vielliard, nor are they all based on Boucher; systematic investigation of

the sources of inspiration for the various porcelain painters has not yielded
any great which only underlines the truth of the statement in the
results,

introduction to Rosalind Savill s article: "By 1776, only six years after
Francois Boucher's death, the term He gout de Boucher' was an accepted
description in sales catalogues of children painted on Sevres porcelain."}-*
As for genre scenes derived from Boucher, in the vein of the Mangeurs
de raisins, they were of course perfectly suited to Sevres painted scenes. ^
Sometimes, they hew to masterpieces —
for example, the depiction of La
musique on a small milk jug (cat. 94). In other instances, their qualities or
3z. J-R 1384. defects are simply those of the painter reproducing them on porcelain.
33. Belfort, 1976, pp. 6-35. Some categories of models derived from Boucher deserve special
34. Savill, 1982, p. 162.
attention: first, because of their rarity, are the landscapes. Indeed, we
35. Savill, 1982, p. 166.
36. Fnck Collection, VII, pp. 246-55, Lav. know of only one example of landscapes by Boucher reproduced on
18-9- 10 to 1 8-9- 2. One vase reproduces
1

the Premiere veue de Charenton (J-R

vases — the two pots-pourris myrte (from a set of three) in the Frick

Seconde veue des en-

Collection, New York.3 6
1342), another the
virons de Charenton (J-R 1343), both Allegorical, mythological, or poetic scenes are equally rare. Rosalind
engraved by Le Bas. Savill cites the famous Bernard Molitor secretaire (Huntington Collection,

349
 San Marino) with a plaque painted bv Charles-Nicolas Dodin in 1783,

which depicts Rinaldo and Armida and is based on the painting done by
Boucher upon his reception into the Academy in 1734 (see cat. 26). 7 In >

the sphere of history pictures there were plenty of models by other

painters upon which the porcelain manufactory could draw. Boucher was
not the painter who was particularly turned to for that kind of inspiration.
Furthermore, this type of work is — in the majority of cases — contrary to
what was generally done at Vincennes and at Sevres on the basis of designs
by Boucher: here, the copy is a literal one. We are dealing with a technical
prowess that is remarkable for the porcelain's intact retention of the
freshness of eighteenth-century polychromy, but it is not an original
creation, nor even an adaptation.
The chinoiserie objects are more interesting. First, it should be noted
that they are fairly few in number, both in the painter's work and in the
production of the porcelain manufactory, but they are all the more

pleasing for that. We are displaying three kinds of adaptation of Boucher's

designs, and they are practically all that are known. The bottle coolers
from the Musee National de Ceramique (cat. 95) are painted in pink
camai'eu, the glass cooler from the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris
(cat. 93 ) is polychrome; both pieces, however, are of equal quality, full of

charm and imagination. The pots-pourris from the Detroit Institute of

Arts (cat. 114), painted by Dodin, are quite different in character, but the
porcelain painter, with all his skill, has retained all the savor of the
originals.
A study of Boucher's influence on the porcelain of Vincennes-Sevres
thus demonstrates that it was vital and, in the sphere of biscuit sculpture,
less consistently beneficial than is usually thought. Hulst, in his

enthusiasm, declared his intention of achieving variety above anything

else. In fact, such was the success of Boucher's models that their repetition
represented good business for the manufactory, which simply gave its

clientele what it wanted. It should not be reproached for doing so, nor
should we be for preferring the white-glazed porcelain groups, whose
scintillating character was abandoned by Bachelier in favor of the matte
biscuit, to fidgety bambini engaged in adult pursuits. However, those are
considerations that havemore to do with the art of ceramics per se than
with Boucher himself. Most important in the final analysis is the ability of
the craftsman who seizes upon the work of a creative artist and makes it
37. Savill, 1982, p. 168, fig. 18. his own. In that context, Boucher was merely a vehicle!

350
 93 Glass cooler (seau a verre)
Soft-paste porcelain; polychrome and carmine red decoration
H. 4/2 in (n. 3 cm); diam. 7 in. (18.2 cm)
Vincennes, about 1745-50
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; Gould bequest (28693)

REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, The decoration of this glass cooler is borrowed from a print with a
no. 271.
chinoiserie subjectby Gabriel Huquier, the Chinois et Cbinoise pechant
au bord d'un vivier (J-R 1133). An ink drawing after the fishing scene,
kept at the Sevres manufactory (FS 5-1861-no. 24), was inscribed
F. Boucher by a later hand. This drawing, like the one mentioned in

cat. 95, may indicate that the painters at Vincennes worked mostly from

simplified drawings done after original compositions or elaborate

engravings.

94 Milk jug (pot a lait ordinaire)

Soft-paste porcelain; polychrome decoration

H. 4/4 in. (11 cm)
Mark: interlaced L's
Vincennes, about 1745-50
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres
(MNC13214)

REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, The artist who reproduced on this milk jug the engraving by Pierre
no. 168.
Aveline, La musique (J-R 229), displayed his inventiveness by adapting
the image to the shape of the vessel andby conferring on it a certain
"Meissen" quality that was then sought after by the Vincennes artists. The
miniaturization of the decorations —
which in fact recalls Watteau more
than Boucher —
started indeed in the Saxon manufactory.

35i
 95 Pair of bottle coolers (seaux a bouteille
ordinaires)

Soft-paste porcelain; pink camai'eu and

gold decoration
H. 7 /4
}
in. ( 1 9 .*7 cm);
W. with handles io'/4 in. (26.1 cm)

Marks: on one, interlaced L's, a dot; on

the other, interlaced L's, two dots
Vincennes, about 1750
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres;
Gift of the heirs of Mme Poidatz
(MNC 16058)

REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, The pink camaieu admirably transcribes the spirit of the prints that served
nos. 246, 247.
as models for the decoration of these vases. Gabriel Huquier is once again
the engraver copied by the Vincennes painter. One recognizes here four of
his Scenes de la vie chinoise: La peche au cormoran, Le carillon, Flutiste et

enfant timbalier, and Le the (J-R 1125-1128). It should be noted that the
manufactory at Sevres owns a drawing of La peche au cormoran bearing an
eighteenth-century registration mark and inscribed in a later hand with
Boucher's name.

35*
 9 6 Lejoueur de musette
Soft-paste biscuit porcelain
H. 9 in. (23 cm)
Mark: F incised under the base
Model attributed to Pierre Blondeau, i752(?)
Vincennes
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres (MNC 22449)

REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, Although not attributed by Bourgeois to Pierre Blondeau, this model
no. 492.
relates in both style and spirit to the Jeune suppliant (cat. 99), itself

attributed by Bourgeois to that artist. Gisela Zick (1965) seems to have

first established the attribution, which has since been widely accepted

353
 (exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais). The date 1752 put forward by
Bourgeois has also been generally accepted but lacks solid archival
evidence, and cannot be established on the basis of firmlv dated related
works, although the composition was probably originally executed as

upholsterv for the seat furniture commissioned bv Mme de Pompadour in

1751 (Fenaille, IV, 1907, pp. 384-88).

In any case the motif here adapted in porcelain is one that enjoyed
considerable success;.it was produced at Yincennes in both white-glazed
soft-paste porcelain and biscuit. One will also note the presence of an
incised F under the base of the example exhibited here, a mark which
indicates that this earlier model was still being produced at the time of
Falconet's direction of the manufactory.
A painting in the Boston Museum of Fine arts (A 6V. W 437), although
considered bv Ananoff to be a copv, is the onlv painted version of the
composition known to us. Boucher himself etched the composition
(J-R 196, completed by F. A. Aveline) under the title L'innocence, and
Gilles Demarteau engraved it as L 'enfant berger in 177c.
One also finds the subject on a Gobelins tapestry panel, mounted as

part of a screen in the Detroit Institute of Arts, and on a chair at the

Musee du Petit Palais, Paris. A brocade satin panel at the Musee des
Tissus, Lyon (inv. 1281), bears the same motif.

97 Le berger galant
White-glazed soft-paste porcelain
H. 9 in. (23 cm)
Model of 1752
Yincennes. about 1752
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres
(MXC 25135)

REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, p. 154 The do not identify the author of this
archives of the Sevres manufactorv
(not in exhibition).
group, which achieved particular popularity. Four examples were men-
tioned in 1752. Thev were sold in 1754 for 66 livres each. Besides the
example at Sevres, a second figure is now at the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts (Forsyth W'ickes Collection), a third appeared in the Mentmore sale

(London, Sothebv's, 24 Mav 1977, lot zoio), and a fourth was on the
London art market in 1984.
The model for the group is Andre Laurent
an engraving bv entitled Le
pasteur galant, after the painting executed by Boucher around 173S for the
salle d'audience of the Hotel de Soubise — now the Archives Xationales
in Paris (cat. 30; A 6V_ \Y 159). That the model was the engraving, executed
by Laurent in 1742, rather than an original drawing, is confirmed by the
fact that an engraving now kept at the manufactory at Sevres bears a
registration number indicating that it was at Yincennes before the
manufactorv transferred to Sevres.

354
 The motif of the Berger galant was, indeed, much favored by artists

working with porcelain. It appeared on the painted decoration of a pot a

pommade from Vincennes recently sold in Paris (Hotel Drouot, 23 Nov.
1979, lot 79). It can also be seen on the center of the tray of a gueridon
(J.
Paul Getty Museum, Malibu) executed by Charles-Nicolas Dodin in
1761. A pink pot-pourri vase with the same scene, painted by Dodin in

1763, is at Waddesdon Manor (Eriksen, 1968, p. 156, no. 56, pi. on p. 158),
and a vase hollandois of 1762 is in the Wallace Collection (Savill, 1982,

p. 167 and fig. 12).

The fame of the motif reached other European porcelain centers, as

exemplified, for instance, by a Meissen group modeled by J. J.
Kandler
about 1750-55, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (see Honey, 1934, pi.

XLViib), made by the addition of colorful garlands

particularly exuberant
of flowers. A later (about 1762) and somewhat different Meissen group
after the same subject is in the Hermitage (see exh. cat. 1970, Leningrad,
no. 96).

355
 98 Lefluteur
Terra-cotta
H. 9/4 in. (24 cm)
Vincennes, about 1752
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres
(MNC 77235

REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, The march and-mercier Lazare Duvaux sold a Vincennes porcelain version
no. 484.
of this celebrated group to the duchesse de Lauraguais in 1752 (Courajod,
1873, p. 132, no. 1181), thus allowing us to establish a terminus ante quern
for the date of this terra-cotta model, whose author is still unknown. The
skill of the artist, evidenced in the fine quality of the piece, lets one
suppose that it could, indeed, be the work of one of the more gifted
Vincennes artists (Pierre Blondeau, Suzanne, or de Fernex, for instance).
The original inspiration for the group is a figure from a painting exhibited

by Boucher at the Salons of 1748 and 1750, the Berger montrant a sa

bergere a jouer de la flute (National Gallery of Victoria; A& W 311) and
engraved by Rene Gaillard as L'agreable lecon. Rosalind Savill (1982,
p. 167) has pointed out that the engraving and the model face in opposite
directions, thus questioning the dependence of one upon the other, and
suggesting the convincing theory that the Vincennes group may ultimately

3S6
 derive from another intermediary, such as a drawing by Boucher. As
customary, the sculptor has rearranged the secondary elements of the
composition (tree trunk, sheep, etc.) and notably has added dog to it.
a
In order to execute a biscuit group, a mold must first be made from a
terra-cotta. As many molds are used as necessary. An assembler then
unmolds, assembles, and gives the finishing touches to all parts. His goal
is to mask all joins and to enhance the plastic qualities of the group by
reworking the modeling. Finally the assembler adds to the composition
secondary elements of his choice.
Various examples of this group are known. Wadsworth
The one at the
Atheneum in Hartford is of white-glazed soft-paste porcelain. The sheep
is standing up, and behind the shepherdess a basket rests on a pedestal.

The version at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, is of soft-paste biscuit
porcelain, and in this, colorful flowers spring from the basket. Under-
standing the intervention of the assembler is essential to seeing the
differences in quality among several examples of the same subject, and to
grasping the distance that separates the final product from the original
idea.

The popularity of the subject in its time is well indicated by its

Polychrome versions, based either on

repetition at other factories.
Gaillard's engraving or on one in reverse by J. E. Nilson after Gaillard,
were produced at Frankenthal about 1760, at Chelsea about 1765, and in
Vienna about 1765-75 (see Zick, 1965, figs. 23, 24, 16).

99 Lejeune suppliant
Soft-paste biscuit porcelain
H. 8 in. (20.5 cm)
Mark: F incised
Model attributed to Pierre Blondeau
Vincennes, about 1752
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres (MNC 775 5')
REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, This model is which an original preparatory drawing by
the only one for
no. 491.
Boucher has survived. Dated 1749, the drawing is still at the Sevres
manufactory. Its style is surprisingly coarse for the artist, but it is likely
that, given its function, Boucher insisted above all on volumes and
contour, which in turn were translated admirablv into three dimensions by
the modeler.
Boucher's original composition, ultimately altered probably bv Blon-
deau himself, according to Emile Bourgeois (1913, no. 362), shows the
artist's awareness of the need for support for small figures. Not only is the

voung boy firmly propped up by the basket of flowers beside him, but he
is sturdily set upon a base which is clearly indicated in the drawing where

he was also leaning on a shovel. Suppression of the shovel turned the

resting gardener into a young suppliant.
The rare comparison allowed by this figurine and its preparatory
drawing reveals both the faithfulness of the ceramicist to his model and his

357
 freedom of expression. Particularly remarkable is the fact that, starting
from a coarse drawing, Blondeau was able to create a work which
transcends its model and captures, in fact, the spirit of Boucher's finest
works. One can thus only regret the lack of information concerning
Boucher's actual involvement in the daily work at Vincennes.
Like most Enfants Boucher, the Jeune suppliant was executed in both
white-glazed porcelain and biscuit. Many examples have survived.

/OO Les mangeurs de raisins

Soft-paste biscuit porcelain

H. 8 3/4 in. (22.5 cm)
Mark incised on the front of the base: B
Model of 1752
Vincennes, about 1752
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres; Gift of the children
of the comte de Chazelles-Chusclan (MNC 775 5')

358
REFERENCE Thanks summaries of the otherwise unpublished early plays of
to the
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais,
Charles-Simon Favart for the Opera-Comique by the brothers Parfaict,
no. 496.
and their mention of Boucher's borrowing of the subject (Parfaict, 1756,
VI, pp. 78-79), it is possible to trace the inspiration for this group to the
beginning of the sixth scene of the pantomime of the Vendanges de Tempe
(1745, an earlier version of the Vallee de Montmorency): the little shepherd
is described as sharing grapes with his beloved Lisette (Zick, 1965, p. 26;
see also cat. 53). Boucher exhibited an oval version of the painting at the
Salon of 1747 (Art Institute of Chicago) and painted a rectangular one,
apparently for the Swedish architect Carl Harleman, which was engraved
by Jacques-Philippe Le Bas under the title Pensent-ils au raisin?
The more prosaic title given at the Vincennes manufactory to this

model, dated 1752 by Emile Bourgeois (1913, no. 398), did not prevent its
success. It was repeated manv times at Vincennes in both white-glazed and
biscuit versions, each one displaying the inventiveness of the assembler in

the various additions to the basic composition.

700

359
 101 Dejeuner Hebert
Soft-paste porcelain; vellow ground with blue camaleu decoration
Trav, ii x 93/, in. (28 x 25 cm)
Teapot, H. 4' 4 in. (11 cm)
Sugar bowl, H. y/A in. (9. 5 cm)
Cup, H. 1V4 in. (4.5 cm)
Saucer, diam. 4 in. (10.5 cm)
Marks: in blue on each, interlaced L s, a dot beneath;
a heraldic label facing upward [Yielliard]
Decorator: Andre-Vincent Vielliard (working 1752-90)
Yincennes, about 1752-53
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford;
Gift of J. P. Morgan, 1917
New York and Detroit
REFERENCES
Belfort, 1976, pp. 22-24; Brunei & Preaud, This dejeuner, like the one at the Louvre (see cat. 102), is named after
1978, pp. 32-33, pi. 111.
Thomas-Joachim Hebert, the famous dealer whose shop was on the rue
Saint-Honore. It also provides an "anthology" of Boucher themes used at
Vincennes. On the tray, one finds La cbasse after the engraving by Jean-
Baptiste Le Prince (J-R 1384); on one side of the teapot, L'innocence after
one by Francois Antoine Aveline (J-R 196), on the other side, the Babet or
Petite fille a la cage (see cat. 104); on the saucer, the Petit tailleur de pierre
which Jean-Baptiste de Fernex had modeled in biscuit in 1754.

70/

360
 )

1Z2

102 Dejeuner Hebert

Soft-paste porcelain: white ground with
colored flesh tone and blue camaleu
Tray, n 3/^ x 8*/, in. (30.1 x 22.5 cm)
Milk jug, H. 5 ^ in. 13.5 cm)
:

Sugar bowl. H. 4 in. (10.1 cm)

Cup, H. iVz in. (6.5 cm)
Saucer, diam. 5^ in. (13.5 cm)
Marks on tray: in blue, interlaced L's; A [1753];
a heraldic label facing upward [Vielliard]; incised
Marks on all other pieces: in blue, interlaced L's, a dot:
A: Vielliard: no letter date on either cup or saucer
Decorator: Andre- Vincent Vielliard
Vincennes, 1753
Musee du Louvre, Paris (OA 4C41
'.: ..

REFERENCES
Belfort. 19-6, no. >S, pp. 14-21, fig. 6: exh. This dejeuner, like the one from the VTadsworth Atheneum icat. ici),
cat. 1977—78, Paris, Grand Palais, no. 75. presents a range of Boucher designs that were used at Vincennes around
1753: the same figures exist as white-glazed or biscuit models. The little

girl on the milk jug is Babet or La petite fille a la cage (see cat. ici . The
Jenne suppliant (see cat. 99) is on the sugar bowl. Anne-Mane Belfort has

361
 recognized in the child blowing soap bubbles a disguised version of a flute
player by Boucher. The tray displays a composition after the engraving by
Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, La chasse (J-R 1384), that Vielliard used several
times, as for instance on the decoration of a flowered basin now at Sevres
(MNC 23179).

103 Plateau Hebert

Soft-paste porcelain ; white ground with
blue camaieu decoration
11 x 9 in. (28.3 x 23.2 cm)
Marks: interlaced L's, a dot beneath; a
heraldic lion facing upward [Vielliard]; A [1753]
Decorator: Andre-Vincent Vielliard
Vincennes, 1753
Musee du Louvre, Paris (TH 1231)

REFERENCE
Belfort, 1976, no. 58, p. 8, fig. 1. At Vincennes, the painter Andre- Vincent Vielliard specialized in the

figures of the Enfants Boucher, whether he faithfully copied them or

interpreted them according to his whim. In this work, for instance, the

putti are carefully reproduced; but instead of settingthem on clouds, as

Boucher had done (see La Rue's engraving La Poesie [J-R 1303], from the
Lure des Arts published by Huquier), Vielliard set them on a grassy
mound. This type of mound was used particularly in the painted
decorations of the mid-eighteenth century, as its round shape helped fit
the decoration into a circular piece.

362
 104 Babet or La petite fille a la cage

Soft-paste porcelain; polychrome

enamel and gilding
H. 8 in. (20.3 cm)
Model attributed to Pierre Blondeau,
1752
Vincennes, possibly 1753 (letter date

mostly effaced)
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres;
Gift of A. Gerard (MNC 10446)

REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, Like the Petite fille au tablier and the Moissonneur (see cat. 106, 107), this
no. 509.
one of the characters of the ballet-pantomime La Vallee
figure illustrates
de Montmorency by Charles-Simon Favart, a later redaction of Les

363
 vendangcs de Tempe. Typical of the Enfants Boucher is the parody of the
adult world by these children —
a reduction a d infantiam that fascinated

the eighteenth century in the same way that chinoiseries and other exotic
subjects did.
The Petite fille a la cage clearly illustrates how a motif formulated by
Boucher after any given mythological or, as in this case, theatrical subject
could be used not only by ceramicists but also by craftsmen active in other
fields. The exact model- (drawing or engraving) used by Pierre Blondeau,
according to Bourgeois (191 3, no. 493), is not known, but
contemporary a

small painting (A & W

443, fig. 1254) was executed by Boucher (perhaps
with some studio assistance) as a tapestry model for the Gobelins, where
it was woven as an armchair back (such an armchair can be seen at

Osterley Park).
The Sevres manufactory still owns a model as well as some old molds
for this figure,which enjoyed considerable success as proven by its
multiple editions in porcelain as well as in biscuit and the copies by other
European manufactories. It should be noted that besides the various
editions made at Vincennes (see Zick, 1965, p. 8), at Sevres Andre-Vincent
Vielliard used the motif as decor peint. One finds versions of this model
also among the productions of the manufactories of Wegely at Berlin and
Hannong at Strasbourg, and a white faience version of it was executed at
Delft (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; see Zick, 1965, pis. 13, 15, 20).

/o; Corydon or Le porteur d'oiseaux

Terra-cotta
H. 8'/, in. (21.5 cm)
Model by Pierre Blondeau, 1753
Vincennes, about 1753
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres
(MNC 7758)

REFERENCES
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, This figure, also from the Vallee de Montmorency, was often used as a
ik). 514; Belfort, 1976, pp. 17, 18.
pendant to the Petite fille a la cage (see cat. 104) and was equally repeated
at Vincennes and other European manufactories, while a figure issued

under Falconet at Sevres, the Floriste (1760), may be an adaptation of the

model (see exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, p. 181). It should also be
noted that a smaller version (13.5 cm) — in white-glazed soft-paste
porcelain — is at the Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres (MNC 1333),
and could be an earlier version of the same subject.
In the terra-cotta, the basket that supports the figure is empty, while in

the porcelain version it is filled with grapes. This is the kind of addition
the assembler was allowed to make to complete the figurine.

364
3^5
 io6 La petite fille an tablier

Soft-paste porcelain; white with blue enamel decoration

H. 8/2 in. (21.6 cm)
Mark on underside: interlaced L's
enclosing A [1753] in blue enamel
Model attributed to Pierre Blondeau, 1752
Vincennes, 1753
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Gift of R. Thornton Wilson, 1950, in memory of
Florence Ellsworth Wilson (50. 211. 167)

107 Le moissonneur
Soft-paste porcelain; white with blue enamel decoration
H. 7 /4 in. (19.7 cm)
3

Model attributed to Pierre Blondeau, 1752

Vincennes, probably 1753
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Gift of R. Thornton Wilson, 1950, in memory of
Florence Ellsworth Wilson (50. 211. 166)

REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, These two figures belong to a series based upon characters from a ballet-
nos. 499, 510.
pantomime entitled La Vallee de Montmorency, first performed at the
Paris Opera-Comique in 1752. This ballet derived from another, the
Vendanges de Tempe, first produced in 1745. Its author was Charles-Simon
Favart, a friend of Boucher's (see discussion by Alastair Laing in

"Boucher: The Search for an Idiom").

366
 Although direct models, engravings or drawings, from which these
figures were created are not known, they have traditionally been linked
with Boucher's influence upon the Vincennes-Sevres manufactory. More
specifically, old inventories and sales registers refer to these figures as

Enfants Boucher (Zick, 1965, p. 15). Their attribution to Blondeau was

made, however, only in 1913 by Emile Bourgeois (1913, nos. 436, 494).
The variety of the models executed in glazed porcelain (with or without
polychrome) and in biscuit, as well as the differences —
among them due
to the intervention and additions of the assembler — show the popularity
of this type of figure. The quality of the soft-paste porcelain and the
delicate highlights of color contribute to the success of these models.

108

108 Le grand jardinier

Terra-cotta
H. io /4 in. (27.3 cm)
}

Model attributed to Jean-Baptiste de Fernex

Vincennes, February 1754
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres (MNC 7752)
REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, The attribution of this piece to de Fernex is based on the theory that it
no. 485.
constitutes a pendant to the Grande jardiniere executed by the same artist.

The Grande jardiniere is mentioned in the Sevres archives among the

367
 works made in 1755 (Jardiniere de Fernexj and is similar ro the Bergere
tenant une corbeille de fleurs produced in 1754.
De Fernex, it indeed the author of this sculpture, adapted a typical

Boucher prototype. The child is shown engaged in an adult's activity. As

always, the sculpture is made stable by the addition of a support, in this
case a tree trunk. The details of the costume and of the flowered baskets
allow the assemblers to display their virtuosity

/09 Leporteur de mouton

Soft-paste biscuit porcelain
H. 8/1 in. (21.7 cm)
Mark incised on tree trunk.
at the back: F
Model of i754(?)
Yincennes, between 1-54 and \~66
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres;
Decle bequest MXC 8826)

no

368
REFERENCE The date and authorship of this model are uncertain. While Emile
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais,
Bourgeois attributed the model to J-B. de Fernex and dated it 1754, the
no. 513.
F mark is presumed to indicate a model executed during Falconet's tenure
at Sevres (1757-66). Svend Eriksen has in fact assigned the date 1765 to a
similarly marked example of the same model at the Pitti Palace, Florence
(1968, cat. 29).
It is perhaps this mark which has prompted some authors, including
Rosalind Savill (1982, p. 164), to see in this figure and its companion, the
Bergere assise, porcelain reductions of the limestone (pierre de Tonnerre)
sculptures created by Falconet by Coustou, Allegrain, and
(as well as

Vasse) for the dairy of Mme de Pompadour's chateau at Crecy in 1753.

There is, however, no evidence of this, and Svend Eriksen, for instance,
has prudently noted that the two compositions "are supposedly" part of
the commission.
If, on the other hand, the model was indeed executed in 1754 and can be

identified with the Jardinier agenouille mentioned in the inventory of

1 January 1755, Emile Bourgeois's identification of the sitter with the actor
Rochard de Bouillac, one of the performers in Les amours de Bastien et
Bastienne (1753) of Mme Favart and Harny, could be correct (1909, I,
p. 29).
Only biscuit porcelain versions of this model are known (see exh. cat.

1977-78, Paris, p. 180). By 1754, the fashion for white-glazed porcelain

was fading, and indeed the model might simply be a later creation.

no Le b atelier de Saint-Cloud
Soft-paste biscuit porcelain
H. 11/2 in. (29.3 cm)
Model attributed to Suzanne, 1755
Vincennes, about 1755
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres
(MNC 5269)

REFERENCE
Exh. cat. 1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais, La Vallee de Montmorency was not the only play whose characters
no. 458.
Boucher interpreted for the manufactory at Vincennes. The present figure
derives from another production of Charles-Simon Favart, Les bateliers de
Saint-Cloud (1741, revised in 1744), in which the famous actress Mile
Arimath appeared en travesti.
A drawing by Boucher in a private collection (see exh. cat. 1977-78,
Paris, Grand Palais, p. 153) might be the primary source for this

composition, of which the original terra-cotta is at Musee National de

the
Ceramique at Sevres (MNC 7994). Both the attribution of the model and
its date were advanced by Emile Bourgeois (1909, I, p. 31; II, p. 6).

369
 77/ Le petit vendangeur
Soft-paste biscuit porcelain
H. 5'/4 in. (15 cm)
Model by Falconet, 1757
Sevres, about 1-757
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres
(MNC 6566')

112 Le marchand de colificbets

(oh de gimblettes)

Soft-paste biscuit porcelain

H. 1

5 /,
in. (14.8 cm)
Model by Falconet, 1757
Sevres, about 1757
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres
(MNC 15596)

n3 Le petit pdtissier
Soft-paste biscuit porcelain
H. 5^4 in. (15 cm)
Model by Falconet, 1757
Sevres, about 1757
Musee National de Ceramique, Sevres
(MNC 18702)

The success of the Enfants Boucher encouraged the manufactory after its

transfer to Sevres in 1756 to multiply this type of model. Etienne-Maurice

Falconet, associated with the manufactory from 1757 until his departure
for Russia in 1766, fostered this production (eighteen groups or single
models were produced at Sevres under him) while giving it a style

distinctive from the earlier production at Vincennes.

The Enfants Falconet are somewhat more naturalistic than the Enfants
Boucher. They go about their occupations without the kind of affectation
that was the trademark of their predecessors. Yet they depend upon
original designs by Boucher as much as the figures of the years 1752-55.
Both the Petit vendangeur and the Marchand de colifichets were
engraved by Pierre-Frangois Tardieu, author of a series of engravings after
Sevres figurines (J-R p. 386) done in 1763, which followed a Premier Eivre
de Figures d'apres les porcelaines de la Manufacture Royale de France,
inventees en 1757, par Mr. Boucher, published by Francois Joullain in 1761.
To this first series for which the drawings were made by Falconet fils
belongs the engraving after the Petit pdtissier (J-R 1233).

370
 These groups demonstrate both the characteristics of Falconet's produc-
tion at Sevres and the longevity of Boucher's models there. They are based
not on subjects newly drawn by Boucher but rather on an engraving of
1740, Foire de Campagne, by Charles-Nicolas Cochin fils after Boucher
(J-R 519). The engraving itself shares many similarities with the cartoon
for the tapestry entitled L'operateur or La curiosite which was part of the
Fetes Italiennes series and was first woven at Beauvais in 1736 (see cat. 86).
The liberties taken by Falconet to adapt the groups to his purpose are
both evident and revealing: in order to simplify his own task and that of
the assemblers, he left out figures which, because of their profusion,
would have created production problems. Above all he turned the figures
into children. He thus obtained a composition more in keeping with the
idea of the peep show and the tourniquet and preserved the spirit of the
Enfants Boucher which had proven to be so popular. Indeed their success
was confirmed by their imitations in other European porcelain factories
such as Berlin (F.H. Hofmann, Das Porzellan der europdischen Manufak-
turen, Frankfurt am Main, 1980, fig. 200b) or Derby, even as late as 1820
(F. A. Barrett and A. L. Thorpe, Derby Porcelain, 1750-1848, London,
1971, fig. 121).

370b
 These groups demonstrate both the characteristics of Falconet's produc-
tion at Sevres and the longevity of Boucher's models there. They are based
not on subjects newly drawn by Boucher but rather on an engraving of
1740, Foire de Campagne, by Charles-Nicolas Cochin fils after Boucher
(J-R 519). The engraving itself shares many similarities with the cartoon
for the tapestry entitled Voperateur or La cunosite which was part of the
Fetes Italiennes'series and was first woven at Beauvais in 1736 (see cat. 86).

The liberties taken by Falconet to adapt the groups to his purpose are
both evident and revealing: in order to simplify his own task and that of
the assemblers, he left out figures which, because of their profusion,
would have created production problems. Above all he turned the figures
into children. He thus obtained a composition more in keeping with the
idea of the peep show and the tourniquet and preserved the spirit of the
Fnfants Boucher which had proven to be so popular. Indeed their success
was confirmed by their imitations in other European porcelain factories
such as Berlin (F.H. Hofmann, Das Porzellan der europdischen Manufak-
turen, Frankfurt am Main, 1980, fig. 200b) or Derby, even as late as 1820
(F. A. Barrett and A. L. Thorpe, Derby Porcelain, ij 5 0-1848, London,
1971, fig. 121).

370b
37i
 )>
ii4 Pair of pots-pourris "triangle

Soft-paste porcelain; light blue ground

with polychrome and gold decoration
H. 11/2 in. (29.2 cm); W. 7 in. (17.7 cm)
Marks: painted in blue on both, crossed
L's enclosing the letter I"[i76i]; lower-
case roman letter K [for Dodin]
Painted decoration by
Charles-Nicolas Dodin
(working 1754-1803)
Sevres, 1761
The Detroit Institute of Arts;
Gift of Mrs. Horace E. Dodge
in memory of her husband
(71-246 and 247)

REFERENCE
Dauterman, to be published. It is not possible to know if this pair of vases or a similarly shaped but
differently decorated pair at the Metropolitan Museum, New York
(58.75.118, 119), were the ones delivered to the king at Versailles in

December 1762, their color not being mentioned (see Brunet & Preaud,
1978, p. 72, pi. xxvi).
Although the primary function of these vases is to serve as pots-pourris,
the three other openings enable them also to be used as bulb vases. Both
are decorated with chinoiseries, one of them directly taken from the
engraving by Gabriel Huquier entitled Soldat et montreuse de curiosite

(J-R 113 1), the other after a sanguine drawing in the Louvre (see Guerin,
1911, pi. 69).

114

}7i
 mmm

"5 Pair of vases (vases canneles a bandeau)

Soft-paste porcelain; turquoise blue

ground with polychrome and gold
decoration
On the front, pastoral scenes; on the
back, trophies of love and music
H. cm) and
14 in. (35.6
14/8 in. (35.9 cm)
Mark incised on (58.75.116) :
CD
Decorators: pastoral scenes
attributed to Charles-Nicolas Dodin
(active 1754-1803); trophies in the
manner of Charles Buteux the Elder
(active 1756-82)
Sevres, about 1775
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York; Samuel H. Kress Collection
(58.75.n6ab,ii7ab)

REFERENCES
Dauterman, Parker & Standen, 1964, p. 230; Even after Boucher's death in 1770, the manufactory at Sevres continued
Brunet & Preaud, 1978, p. 180, no. 169.
to use his models for painted decorations on vases and plaques. Executed
about 1775, these fluted vases are already typical of the rising neoclassical
style, but their severe geometry is betrayed by the Rococo elegance of

Boucher's images.
The painter (evidently Charles-Nicolas Dodin) who decorated these
vases adapted two engravings after Boucher. One is Les amants surpris

373
 J-R 653) by Gilles Demarteau; the other UEcole de VAmide J-R <;$$ by
Jean-Mane Delatre, after the painting executed by Boucher in i~6c for the
Margravine of Baden (cat. ~z: A 6: 59- ia). W
:le the painters at Yineennes did not depart substantially from tr. .

engraved models, which they occasionally simplified but reproduced en

camaieu. thus truthfully respecting the spirit of the engravings, at Sevre
the artists carried out their works in polychrome, even when copyir. g

from engraving g _ :he illusion of copies of paintings on porcelain.

116 Pair of vases (vases flacons a cordes)

Soft-paste porcelain: apple _

ground with polychrome and gold

decoration
On the front, pastoral scenes; on the
back, troph ic Fgai aiing and k -

H. i} f.< _

Marks on both: interlaced L's mdosifi \

T [1772] above lower case roman K

^Dodin] in blue enamel; cc-P incised
Decorators: pastoral scenes by Chark
las Dodin .active 17 _

trophies attributed to Charles Buteux

the Elder factive 1-56-82)
Sevres. 1772
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Y -

Samuel H. Kress Collection ---:.

116

<&

74
reference Pierre Verlet believes that these two vases, formerly in the Hillingdon
Dauterman, Parker & Standen, i
964 , p. 227,
collection, are identical with those delivered to Mme Victoire, daughter of
Louis XV, in 1772 (Archives Nationales, Manufacture Nationale de Sevres,
Registres de Ventes, vol. 3, p. 43). The shape of these vases was particu-
larly suited to painted decoration, their relative simplicity enhancing it.

Dodin was thus copy detailed engravings published in 1766 by

able to
Jacques-Firmin Beauvarlet (J-R 291, 294) after two paintings by Francois
Boucher entitled Les amusements de la jeunesse au village: La chasse and
La peche (A & W
631, 632; whereabouts unknown). The painter at Sevres
only simplified certain motifs, deleting, for instance, the putti on the
pedestal which can be seen in La chasse. He also slightly shifted the
composition in order to center it better around the figures.

375
References Cited

Adhemar, Jean. "Sirette, Casanova, et Bataille. Marie-Louise, & Wildenstein, 1737-38. Facsimile reprint, Farnborough,
Boucher." La revue franqatse 90 (June 1957): Georges. Berthe Monsot: Catalogue des 1967.
37-4°- pemtures, pastels et aquarelles. Paris, 1961. L Architecture Franqoise, ou recueil de
Albert, Maurice. Les theatres de la Foire Beaulieu, ML "La aux nattes de Saly:
fillette plans, d'elevattons, coupes et profils. . . .

(1660-1/89). Paris, 1900. Note rectihcative." Bulletin de la Societe de 4 vols. Paris, 1752-56. Facsimile reprint,
Almanach Htstorique et Raisonne des Archt- VHistoire de I'Art franqats, 1955: 62-66. Paris, 1904-05.
tectes, Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs et "A Beauvais Tapestry by Boucher." Bulletin Blunt, Anthony. "Drawings at W'addesdon
Ctzeleurs . . . &c, [by J-B-P. Le Brun]. of the Minneapolis Institute of Art 2. 10 Manor." Master Drawings 11 (Winter 1973):
Paris, 1776; 1777. Facsimile edition of both (Mar. 6, 1943): [313-34. 359-64, plates 1-21.
vears published in Geneva, 1972. 1 vol., Becker, Wolfgang. Pans und die deutsche Boccara, Dario. Les Belles Heures de la

Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Katalog der Kgl. Malerei: 1750-1840. Munich. 1971. Tapisserie. Paris, 1971.
Alteren Pinakothek. nth ed. Munich, 1911. Belfort, Anne-Marie. "L'oeuvre de Yielliard Boffrand, Germain. Livre d'Architecture. Paris,
. K.i:.ilog. Vol. IV. Franzosische und d'apres Boucher." Cahiers de la ceramique, 1745. Facsimile reprint, Farnborough, 1969.
spamsche Malerei. Munich. 1972. du verre et des arts du feu 58 (1976): 6-35. Bordeaux, Jean-Luc. "The Epitome of the
Amiet, Henri. Catalogue des dessins, tableaux. Benisomch. Michel N. "A Bust of Ale- Pastoral Genre in Boucher's Oeuvre: The
miniatures, estampes &c, contenues . . . xandrine d'Etiolles bv Saly." Gazette des Fountain of Love and The Bird Catcher
Dans le Cabinet de S. E. Mr. le Comte Beaux-Arts 6th ser.. 2$ ij u >- 194s 31-42. 1 : from The Xoble Pastorale." The J. Paul
Vincent Potocki, Due de Zbaraz &c. . . . Bennett. Anna G. Five Centuries of Tapes;* % Gettj Museum Journal 3 (1976): 75-101.
Warsaw, 1780. from the Fine Arts Museums of San Fran- . Moyne and His Genera-
Francois Le
Ananoff, Alexandre. L'oeuvre desstne de cisco. San Francisco and Rutland. Yt.. 1976. tion, 1688-173 7. Paris, 1985.
Franqots Boucher (1703-1770): Catalogue Benois. Alexandre. "La Peinture Francais. Borsch-Supan, H. "Francois Boucher." In
raisonne. Vol. I. Paris, 1966. No more halienne et Anglaise aux XVIL et XYIIL China und Europa: Chinaverstandnis im 17.

published. siecles." In Les anaennes Ecoles de Peinture und 18. Jahrhundert: 282-92. (Exh. cat.
Ananoff, Alexandre, & Wildenstein. dans les Palais et Collections Privies Russes 1973, Berlin).
Daniel. Francois Boucher. 1 vols. Lausanne representees a l Exposition orgam>. Bottari. Giovanni. Raccolta di lettere sulla
and Pans, 1976. St.-Petersbourg en /909 p.: W d'art pittura, scultura et architettura. ... 6 vols.
L'opera completa
. di Boucher. Classici ancien "Starve Gody": [i05]-i9- Brussels. Rome, 1754-6S. See especially vol. II (1757).
dell'arte. vol. 100. Milan. 1980. 1910. Bottari. Giovanm, & Ticozzi. Stefano.
Argenson, Maure-Charles-Mane-Rene, mar- Berckenhagen. Ekhart. Die franzosische Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura. scultura et
quis d', ed. Autour d'un mimstre de Louis Zetchnungen der Kunstbibliothek Berlin. architettura. . . . pub. da Gio. Bottari e
XV: Lettres intimes inedites. Paris, 1925. Berlin, 1970. continuata f ino ai nostri giorni da Stefano
Argenson. Rene-Louis de Voyer. marquis d'. Bernard-Maitre, Henri. Tapisseries chinoises Ticozzi. 8 vols. Milan, 1822-25. See espe-
Journal et Memoires. Edited bv E.J. B. de F Boucher .;:. Palais Yuen-Min-Yuen de cially vol. II (1822).
Rathery. 9 vols. Paris, 1859-67. Pekin. N.p.. n.d. Bottiger, Johan Frednk. La Collection des
Avery, Charles, & Laing, Alastair. "Les tapisseries chinoises de Francois
. Tapisseries de VEtat suedois. Vol. IV. Stock-
Fingerprints of the Artist: European Terra- Boucher a Pekin." Bulletin de la Societe de holm. 1898.
Cotta Sculpture from the Arthur M. Sackler VHistoire de I'Art franqats. 195 1 9-10. : Bourgeois, Emile. Le biscuit de Sevres au
Collections. Washington. D.C.and Bernis, Francois-Joachim de Pierre, cardinal XVIII' siecle. 2 vols. Paris, 1909.
Cambridge. Mass.. 1981. de. Memoires. Edited by Ph. Bonnet. Paris. Le biscuit de Sevres, recueil des
.

Babault, [and others]. Annales Dramatiques, 198c. First published Paris, 1878. modeles de la manufacture de Sevres au
ou Dictionnaire General des Theatres. 9 Bernoulli. Johann Jakob. Reisen durch Bran- XVI IF Steele. Paris, [1913].
vols. Paris, 1S0S-12. denburg, Pommern und Pohlen in den Bourne, Jonathan. "Rothschild Furniture at

Babelon, Jean-Pierre. Histoire et description Jahren 1777 und 1778. Leipzig, 1780. Dalmenv." Apollo 119 (June 1984): 406-11.
des bdtiments des \.;:ionales. Pans. Birylkova. Nina. "Decoration and Diplo- [Boyer, marquis dArgens, Jean-Baptiste de].
1969. macy: Eighteenth-Century French Tapes- Reflexions critiques sur les differentes ecoles
Badin. Jules. La Manufacture de Tapisseries de Apollo 101 (June 1975): 458-65.
tries." de peinture. Paris, 1752. Published in a
Beauvais depuis ses origines jusqu'a nos Biver, Paul, le comte. Histoire du Chateau de revised version entitled Examen critique des
jours. Paris, 1909. Bellevue. Paris. 19;;. differentes ecoles de peinture. Berlin, 1768.
Baetjer, Katharine. European Paintings in the Bjurstrom, Per. Drawings in Swedish Public B[reck], J. "An Anonymous Gift."
^opolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Collections. Vol. IV, French Drawings: Eigh- Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 17,
in or before 1865: A Sum»:.;'% Catalogue. teenth Century. Stockholm: National- 3 Mar. 1922): 51-55.
3 vols. New York. 19J : museum, 1982. Bret. Antoine. "Eloge de M. Boucher." In Le
Baily, J.
T. Herbert. "The Dickens Centenarv Blanc, Charles. Histoire des Peintres: Ecole Xecrologe des Hommes Celebres de France,
Exhibition of Old Masters, New York." The Franqatse, Francois Boucher. Paris. 1S62. par une Societe de Gens de Lettres, vol. I\ :

Connoisseur 32 (Jan. -Apr. 1912): zir-_: Originally published in parts on 1 Aug. 47-70. Paris,
1 77 1.

Ballot de Sovot. Eloge de M. Lancret, 1851 as nos. 62-63 ot Histoire des Peintres, Brice, Germain. Description nouvelle de la

peintre du Roi. Paris, 1743. Reprinted in and nos. 29—30 of Ecole Franc.. ville de Paris. [5th ed.]. 2 vols. Paris. 1706.
.\ icolas Lancret, sa vie et son oeuvre. by Blazy, Guy. Musee de VHotel Sandelin: Cata- Briganti, Chiara. Curioso itinerario delle
J-J. Guiffrey. Paris, [1873]. logue des Peintures. Saint-Omer, 198 1. collezioni ducali parmensi. Parma, 1969.
Barrier, E.J.F. Journal historique et anecdo- Blondel. Jacques-Francois. De la distribution Bruhn. Thomas P. "The Loves of the Gods."
tique du regne de Louis XV. Edited bv des Maisons de Plaisance et de la Decoration The Bulletin of the Walters Art Galley 21,
A. de la Villegille. 4 vols. Paris, 1S47-56. des Edifices en general. 2 vols. Pans. 6 (Mar. 1969): [2H3].

j 76
Brunet, Marcelle, & Preaud, Tamara. Sevres: Chouquet, Gustave. Histoire de la Musiquc Saint-Aubin, 12: Catalogue de la vente Ver-

Des ongines a nos jours. Fribourg, 1978. Dramatique en France, depuis ses ongines rier (1776)." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser.,
Budzinska, Elzbieta. "Z wczesnej tworczosci jusqu'a nos jours. Paris, 1873. 41 (May-June 1953): 297-334.
Franciszka Smuglewicza. Projekty obrazow Clarac, Charles-Othon-Frederic-Jean- -. "Catalogues de ventes et livrets de
do Sali Rycerskiej Zamku Warszawskiego." Baptiste de, comte. Musee de Sculpture Salons illustres et annotes par Gabriel de
In Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 33, 2 (1971): antique et moderne. 6 text vols., 6 plate Saint-Aubin, 13: Catalogue de la vente du
152-61. vols. Paris, 1826-53. Marquis de Calviere (1779)-" Gazette des
Burollet, Therese. Musee Cognacq-Jay: Cochin, Charles-Nicolas. Memoires inedits. Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 44 (July-Aug. 1954):
Peintures et dessins. Paris, 1980. Edited by Ch. Henry. Paris, 1880. 5-46.
Cadres et Bordures de Tableaux de la fin du Cohen, David H. "Four tables gueridons by Dacier, Emile, & Vuaflart, Albert. Jean de
XVP siecle au Premier Empire. Paris, [1910]. Sevres." Antologia 13-16 (Dec. 1980): 1-11. Jullienne et les graveurs de Watteau au
Cailleux, Jean. "Who Was Boucher's Best Conisbee, Philip. Painting in Eighteenth- XVIIP siecle. 4 vols. Paris, 1921-29. See
Beloved?" The Burlington Magazine 108 Century France. Oxford, 1981. especially vol. I (1929), Notices et documents
(Feb. 1966), advertisement supplement Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, biographiques by Jacques Herold, & Albert
no. 15: i-vi. D.C. Illustrated Handbook of the W. A. Vuaflart; and vol. II (1922), Historique
Campardon, Emile. Madame de Pompadour Clark Collection. Washington, D.C, 1932. Dahl, Julius, & Lohmeyer, Karl. Das
et la cour de Louis XV au milieu du dix- Cordey, Jean. Inventaire des biens de barocke Zweibriicken und seine Meister.
huitieme siecle. Paris, 1867. madame de Pompadour, redige apres son Enlarged 2d ed. Waldfischbach, 1957.
. Un artiste oublie, J. B. Masse, peintre dices. Paris, 1939. Dandre-Bardon, Michel-Francois. Vie de
de Louis XV. . . . Paris, 1880. Correspondance des Directeurs de L'Aca- Carle Vanloo. Paris, 1765.
Casanova, Jacques [de Seingalt]. Histoire de dernie de France a Rome avec les Sunnten- Daniels, Jeffery. SebastianoRicci. Hove, i976[a].
ma vie. 12 vols, in 6. Wiesbaden and Paris, dants de Bailments, publiee d 'apres les . L'opera completa di Sebastiano Ricci.
1960-62. manuscrits des Archives nationales par Milan, 1976^].
Catalogue des sujets de theses formant le M. A. de Montaiglon & Jules Guiffrey. Darras, Eugene. "La famille Bergeret de
fonds general de feu M. Cars, graveur du 18 vols., including an index vol. by Paul l'Isle-Adam et de Frouville (Seine-et-Oise)."
Roi, acquis par Bab uty, Libraire. Paris, 1771. Cornu. Paris, 1887-1912. Memoires de la Societe historique et archeo-
Catalogue historique du Cabinet de Pein- Correspondance inedite du roi Stanislas- logique de I'arrondissement de Pontoise et du
ture et Sculpture Francaise de M. de Lalive. Auguste Poniatowski et de Madame Geoffrin Vexin, 1933: 65-92.
Paris, 1764. (1/64-1///). Edited by Charles de Mouy. Dauterman, Carl; Parker, J.; & Standen,
Cavallo, Adolph S. Tapestries of Europe and Paris, 1875. E. A. Decorative Art from the Samuel H.
of Colonial Peru in the Museum of Fine Arts, Correspondance Litteraire, philosophique Kress Collection at The Metropolitan Mu-
Boston. 2 vols. Boston, 1967. et critique, by Friedrich Grimm, Denis seum of Art. [London], 1964.
Caylus, Anne-Claude-Philippe de Tubieres de Diderot [and others]. 16 vols. Paris, 1877-82. Dauterman, Carl, [and others]. The Mr. and
Grimoard de Pestels de Levis, comte de. La Courajod, Louis. Livre-journal de Lazare Mrs. Horace E. Dodge Memorial Collection:
vie d'Antoine Watteau. [Paris], 1748. See Duvaux, marchand-bijoutier ordinaire du French and English Eighteenth -Century
Rosenberg, 1984^]. Roy 1/48-1/58, precede d'une etude sur le Decorative Arts, Paintings and Sculpture.
. Vies d'artistes du XVIIIe siecle. Publie gout et sur le commerce des objets d'art au Detroit, [to be published].
avec une introd. et des notes par Andre milieu du i8 e siecle. ... 2 vols. Paris, 1873. Delesalle, H. "Aunes de France et aunes de
Fontaine. Paris, 1910. Coural, J. "La Manufacture royale de Beau- Revue de Metrologie, March
Flandre." 1964.
Chamchine, B. Le Chateau de Choisy. Paris, vais." Monuments historiques de la France Dembowski, L. Moje wspomnienia. Vol. I.

1910. 6 (1977): 66-84. St. Petersburg, 1898.

Champeaux, Alfred de. "L'art decoratif dans Coypel, Charles-Antoine. "Dialogue de Deroy, Henri. Les Hotels du Credit Fonder.
le vieux Paris. 8 e article, VI: Le Marais M. Coypel, Premier peintre du Roi, sur Paris, 1952.
(fin)." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 3d sen, 6 l'exposition des Tableaux dans le Sallon du Desboulmiers [Jean-Augustin Jullien des
(Nov. 1891): 404-26. One of a series of Louvre, en 1747." Mercure de France, Boulmiers]. "Eloge de M. Boucher, premier
articles republished with revisions in book Nov. 1751: 59-73. peintre du Roi & directeur de l'Academie
form under the same title in 1898. Crequy, Renee Caroline [de Froulay], mar- royale de peinture & sculpture, mort le 30
Charavay, Etienne. Inventaire des Auto- quise de. Souvenirs de la marquise de Mai 1770." Mercure de France, Sept. 1770:
grapheset Documents Historiques reunis par Crequy, by P-M-J. Cousin de Courchamps. 181-89.
M. Benjamin Fillon. Vol. II. Paris, 1879. 10 vols. 4th ed., n.d. First published Paris, D[ezallier d'Argenville, Antoine- Nicolas].
. Lettres autographes composant la Col- !834-35- Voyage Pittoresque de Pans. 1st ed., 1749; 2d
lection de M. Alfred Bovet. Paris, 1887. Crick-Kuntziger, Marthe. Catalogue des ed., 1752; 3d ed., 1757; 4th ed., 1765;
Chateauneuf-Sur-Loire. Tableaux de la Tapisseries. Brussels, 1966. 5th ed., 1770; 6th ed., 1778. Paris.
galerie du Chateau de Chateauneuf-Sur- Croy, Emmanuel, due de. Journal inedit du . Voyage Pittoresque des Environs de
Loire. Paris, 1786. due de Croy, 1/18—1/84. Edited by le Paris. 1st ed., 1755; 2d ed., 1762; 3d ed.,
Chennevieres, Philippe de. "Chardin." vicomte de Grouchy and Paul Coffin. 1768; 4th ed., 1779. Paris.
Portraits inedits d'artistes francais y 4 vols. Paris, 1906-07. Vies des fameux architectes. 2 vols.
livraison (April 1856): 56-57. Dacier, Emile. Catalogues de Ventes et Paris, 1788.
. "Une lettre de M. de Tournehem Livrets de Salons illustres et annotes par Diderot, Denis. Oeuvres completes. Edited
(1746)." Nouvelles Archives de VArt francais Gabriel de Saint-Aubin. 6 vols. Paris, by J. Assezat and Maurice Tourneux.
3d ser., 3 (1887): 361-62. 1909-21. Vol. I (1909), nos. 1 & 2; vol. II 20 vols. Paris, 1875-77.
Chierici, Umberto. Torino, il Palazzo Reale. (1910), nos. 3 & 4; vol. Ill (1911), nos. 5 & . Salons. Vol. I, 1/59. 1/61. i/6j. 2d ed.
Turin, 1969. 6; vol. IV (1913), nos. 7 & 8; vol. V (1919), Edited by Jean Seznec and Jean Adhemar.
"The Chinese Fair." The Bulletin of the nos. 9 & 10; vol. VI (1921), no. 11. See also Oxford, 1975. Vol. II, 1/65. 2d ed. Edited
Minneapolis Institute of Arts 35 (May 4, Dacier 1953 and 1954. by Jean Seznec. Oxford, 1979. Vol. Ill,
1946): 85-92. — "Le Sedaine du Musee Conde." La
. 1/6/. 2d ed. Edited by Jean Seznec. Oxford,
Chomer, Gilles. "Le peintre Pierre-Charles revue de l'art ancien et moderne 38 (1920): 1983. Vol. IV, 7769. 1//1. i//S- 1/81. Edited
Le Mettay (1726-1759)." Bulletin de la 5-18, 104. by Jean Seznec. Oxford, 1967.
Societe de I'Histoire de TArt francais, 1981: -. "Catalogues de ventes et livrets de Dilke, Lady. French Painters of the XVI 1 1th
81-102. Salons illustres et annotes par Gabriel de Century. London, 1899.

377
Discours sur I'origine, les progres, et I'etat d'Antin en iyj9 and Deuxieme partie, au Museum central." Archives de VArt fran-
actuel de la peinture, contenant des notices ij3j-ij94\ vol. VI (1923), Table. cais n.s. 6 (1912):
245-343.
sur les pnnapaux artistes de VAcademic; -. Francois Boucher. Paris, 1925. Galerie Francoise, ou Portraits des Hommes
pour servtr d 'introduction au Sallon. Paris, Feulner, Adolf. Die Zick: Deutsche Maler des et des Femmes Celebres qui ont paru en

1/85- 18. Jahrhunderts. Munich, 1920. France, graves en Taille- douce par les

Dobson, Austin. "The Story of Rosina: An Stiftung Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz.

. meilleurs Artistes, sous la conduite de
Incident in the Life of Franqois Boucher." In Vol. 3, Plastik und Kunsthandwerk M. Restout, Peintre ordinaire du Roi . . .

Rhyme. London, 1873.

Vignettes in Lugano-Castagnola, 1941. &c. Avec un Abrcge de leur Vie par une
Downs, Joseph. "A Beauvais Tapestry." Fiorillo, J. D. Geschichte der zeichnenden Societe de Gens de Lettres. No. 5,
Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin 24 (Mar. Kiinste von ihrer Wiedcrauflebung bis auf Boucher. [Edited by J-B. Collet de Mes-
1929): 3-5. die neuesten Zeiten. 5 vols. Gottingen, sine]. Paris, 1771.

Duclaux, Lise. Inventaire general des Dessins 1798-1808. Especially vol. Ill (1805), Die Gallet, Michel. Paris Domestic Architecture
du Music du Louvre: Ecole francais. Vol. Geschichte der Mahlerey in Frankreich of the 18th Century. London, 1972.
XII, Nadar-Ozanne. Paris, 1975. enthaltend. "Louis-Frangois Trouard et l'architec-
.

Duclos, [Charles Pinot, sieur]. Oeuvres com- Fitzwilliam Museum, Friends of the. Forty- ture rehgieuse dans la region de Versailles au
pletes. Edited by L. S. Auger. 10 vols. Paris, First Annual Report. Cambridge, 1949. temps de Louis XVI." Gazette des Beaux-
1806. Fizeliere, Albert de la. "Les portraits de Arts 6th ser., 88 (Dec. 1976): 201-18.
Dufort de Cheverny. Memoires du comte Madame de Pompadour." Gazette des Gallet, Michel, & Bottineau, Yves, eds. Les
Dufort de Cheverny. 2d ed. 2 vols. Edited Beaux-Arts 8 (i860): 295-302. Gabriel. Paris, 1982.
by Robert de Crevecoeur. Pans, 1909. Fleury, Maurice, le comte. Louis XV intime Gautier, Theophile. "Le Musee du Louvre."
Dulaure, J-A. Nouvelle Description des En- 2d ed. Paris, 1899.
et les petites maitresses. In the Paris Guide, par les principaux
virons de Paris. 2 vols. Paris, 1786. Fohr, Robert. Tours, Musee des Beaux-Arts; ecnvains et artistes de la France. Pans, 1867.
Dupre, M. A. "Recherches Historiques sur le Richelieu, Musee Municipal; Azay-lc- Gautier [Dagoty, Jacques]. "Observation IV
chateau, les seigneurs, et la paroisse de Ferron, Chateau: Tableaux francais et Sur l'Organe de Vue par rapport au
la

Menars-les-Blois." Memoires de la Societe du XVII siecle. Paris, 1982.

italicns 1'
sentiment de Monsieur de Buffon, & Re-
des Sciences et Lettres de la ville de Blois 6 Fontaine, Andre. Les Collections de VAca- flexions a ce sujet sur les Tableaux exposes
(i860): 99-177- demic Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. cette annee 1753, dans le Salon du Louvre."
Dussieux, Louis Etienne. Les artistes francais Paris, 1910. Observations sur I'Histoirc Naturclle, sur la

a I'etranger. 3d ed. Paris and Lyon, 1876. Fontaine de Resbecq, [Pierre], comte de. Physique et sur la Peinture 8'' partie (1753):
Duvaux, Lazare. Livrc-Journal de Lazarc Du- Louis-J ean-Ange Poisson de la Cha- 77-84.
vaux. Edited by Louis Courajod. 2 vols. beaussiere. Limoges, 1906. Gersaint, Edme-Franqois. Catalogue Rai-
Paris, 1873. Facsimile edition, Paris, 1965. Fontaine-Malherbe. "Eloge de Monsieur sonne des diverses Cunosites du Cabinet de
Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Carle Vanloo." In Le Necrologe des Homrnes feu M. Quentin de Lorangere. Paris, 1744.
Kress Collection: European Schools excluding Celebres de France. Paris, 1768. (Sale cat. of 2 March ff. ).

Italian. Oxford, 1977. Fontenai, [Louis- Abel de Bonafons], l'abbe Gillet, L. "Institut de France, Musee
Engerand, Fernand. Inventaire des Tableaux de. Dictionnaire des Artistes. Paris, 1776. Jacquemart-Andre, Abbaye de Chaalis." Les
commandes et achetes par la Direction des Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de. Discours Arts 151 (July 1914): 1-32.
Bailments du Roi (1/09-1/92). Paris, sur la Nature de I'Eglogue. Paris, 1688. 4th Ginet, A. "Une residence royale au XVIIE
1900. ed., Amsterdam, 1716. siecle, le chateau de la Muette." Bulletin de
Eriksen, Svend. Waddesdon Manor: The Frankl, Paul. "Boucher's Girl on the Couch." la Societe d'Etudes Historiques, Geogra-

James A. de Rothschild Bequest to the In Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky: phiques, et Scicntifiques de la Region
National [Aylesbury, Eng.], 1965.
Trust. 138-52. New York, 1961. Parisienne 6, 23 (Oct. -Dec. 1932): 12-18.
. Sevres Porcelain. The James A. de French & Co., New York. Royal Beauvais Girouard, Mark. The Victorian Country
Rothschild Collection, 2. Fribourg, 1968. Tapestry, The Chinese Fair: One of a Series House. Revised and enlarged edition. New
Eriksen, Svend, & Watson, Francis. "The of Six Presented by Louis XV to the Emperor Haven and London, 1979.
Athenienne and the Revival of the Classical Kien-Lung. New York, [1945?]. Gobel, Heinrich. Wandteppiche. Part I, Die
Tripod." The Burlington Magazine 105 (Mar. The Frick Collection. Vol. II, Paintings: Niederlande. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1923. Part II,

1963): 108-12. French, Italian and Spanish, by B. F David- Die romamschen Lander. 2 vols. Leipzig,
Ermitazh, Leningrad. Musee de VErmitage. son [and others]. New York, 1968. 1928.
Peinture de ['Europe Occidentale, Catalogue The Frick Collection. Vol. VII, Porcelains: Gombrich, Ernst. Symbolic Images. London,
I: Italic, Espagne, France, Suisse. Leningrad, Oriental and French, by J. A. Pope and 1972.
1976. Marcelle Brunet. New York, 1974. Goncourt, Edmond de. La maison d'un
Fantin-Desodoards, A.E.N. Louis Quinze. Frothingham, Alice Wilson. Capodimonte artiste. 2 vols. Paris, 1881.

4 vols. Paris, [1796]. and Buen Retiro Porcelains: Period of Goncourt, Edmond, & Jules de. Boucher:
Favart, Charles-Simon. Theatre de M. Favart. Charles III. New York: Hispanic Society of Etude contenant quatre dessins graves a I'eau
8 vols. Paris, 1763. America, 1955. forte. Paris, 1862. An amplified edition first

. Memoires et correspondances lit- Furcy-Raynaud, Marc. "Correspondance de appeared in L'art du XVIII siecle, in 4°,

teraires, dramatiques et anecdotiques de M. de Marigny avec Coypel, Lepicie et 1880, and in 8° (unillustrated) in 1881.
C. S. Favart. Edited by A. PC. Favart. 3 Cochin." Nouvelles Archives de TArt fran- . Madame de Pompadour. Revised edi-
vols. Paris, 1808. cais 3d (1903); 20 (1904).
ser., 19 tion. Paris, 1878.
Feinblatt, Ebria. "Boucher and Van Loo: . "Correspondance de M. d'Angiviller -. L'art du XVIII siecle. Vol. I, part 3,
Two Drawings." Los Angeles County Mu- avec . . . Pierre." Nouvelles Archives de Boucher. 3d ed. Paris, 1880.
seum. Bulletin of the Art Division 11, 1 VArt francais 3d ser., 22 (i9o6[a]): 1-320. -. L'art du XVIII siecle. 3 vols. Paris,
_
(*959) 3 9> cover illus.
: -. "Correspondance de Lenormant de 1881. Selected English translation, with
Fenaille, Maurice. Etat General des Tapis- Tournehem avec Charles Coypel
. . . et . . . by Robin Ironside, as French
plates added,
series de la Manufacture des Gobelins. 6 N-B. Lepicie. ." Nouvelles Archives de
. . XVIII Century Painters, London, 1958.
vols. Paris, 1903-23. Especially vols. Ill I'Art franqais 3d ser., 22, Appendix Gordon, Katherine K. "Madame de Pom-
(1904) & IV (1907), Periode du Dix- (i906[b]): 321-59. padour, Pigalle, and the Iconography of
Huitieme Siecle: Depuis la reouverture des -. "Les tableaux et objets d'art saisis" Friendship." The Art Bulletin 50, 3
ateliers en 1690 jusqu'a la mort du due chez les emigres et condamnes, et envoyes (Sept. 1968): 249-62.

3/8
Gougenot, Louis, l'abbe. Lettre sur la Pein- Historische Erki.aeruncen der Gemalde And, "Rectification d'attribution d'une toile
ture, Sculpture, et Architecture, a M ::::: ~.
uelche Herr Gottfried Winkler in Leipzig presume de E Boucher." BSHAF, 1952:
[Paris], 1748. gesammlet. Leipzig, 1768. 94-95-
. "Vie de Monsieur Oudry" (1761). In Honey, William Bowver. Dresden China: An Jekyll, Joseph. Correspondence of Mr. Joseph
Memoires inedits sur la vie et les ouvrages Introduction to the Study of Meissen Por- Jekyll. Edited by Hon. Algernon
. . .

des membres de VAcademie Royale de Pein- celain. London, 1934. Bourke. London, 1894.
ture et de Sculpture, edited by L. Dussieux Honour, Hugh. Chinoiserie: The Vision of Jombert, Charles- Antoine. Catalogue de
[and others]. Vol. II: 365-403. Paris, 1854. Cathay. London, 1961. I'Oeuvre de Cochin fils. Paris, 1770.
Granberg, Olof. Inventaire General des Houssaye, Arsene. Galerie de Portraits: Le Jones, A. M. A Handbook of the Decorative
Tresors d'Art, Peintures & Sculptures, pnn- Dix-Huitieme Siecle. Paris, 1845. Previous Arts in the J. Paul Getty Museum. [Malibu],
cipalement des maitres etrangers (non scan- partial publication as Le Dix-Huitieme 1965.
dinaves) en Suede. 3 vols. Stockholm, Steele: Poetes, peintres, musiciens. Pans, Jouin, Henry. "Charles Natoire et la peinture
1911-13. See especially vol. Ill (1913). 1843. historique." Nouvelles Archives de I'Art
. Svenska Konstsamlingarnas Historia. Howe, Thomas C. "Vertumnus and Pomona franqais 3d ser., 5 (1889): 139-49.
3 Stockholm, 1911—31. See especially
vols. by Francois Boucher." California Palace of Journal Encyclopedique ou Universel.
vol. II (1930), Karl X Gustav- Adolf Fredrik. ' the Legion of Honor Bulletin n.s. 1, 5 [Early vols, have Journal Encyclopedi-
title

Gronuoldt, R. "Wandbehang: Bacchus und (Mar.- Apr. 1968). que.] 302 vols. Liege, 1756-59; and Bouil-
Ariadne und Huldigung der Ariadne'' Humbert, Chantal. "L'exotisme dans les arts: lon, 1760-93. See especially vol. 7, pt. 1
Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen La societe franchise deguisee a la chinoise." (Oct. 1, 1757): 100-01, for review of 1757
in Baden-Wurttemberg 12 (1975): 379-81. Gazette de I'Hbtel Drouot 91 annee, no. 44 Salon.
Guerin, Jacques. La chinoiserie en Europe au (Dec. 17, 1982): 28-30. Kalnein, Wend, Graf, & Levey, Michael. Art
XVIII' siecle: Tapisseries, meubles, bronzes Hunter, G. L. The Practical Book of Tapes- and Architecture of the Eighteenth Century
d'ameublement, ceramiques, peintures et tries. Philadelphia and London, 1925. in France. Harmondsworth, 1972.
dessins exposes au Musee des Arts Decor atifs. . "America's Beauvais-Boucher Tapes- Kamenskaya, T. D. Pasteli Khudozhmkov
Paris, 1911. tries." International Studio 85 (Oct. Zapadnoevropeiskikh Sh^ol XVI-XIX
Guerreiro, Gloria Nunes Riso. "Some Euro- I926[a]): 20-28. Vekov. Leningrad, i960.
pean Tapestries in the Calouste Gulbenkian "Beauvais-Boucher Tapestries." Good Kettering, Alison McNeil. The Dutch Ar-
Collection in Lisbon." The Connoisseur 173 Furniture 26 (i926[b]): 82-89. cadia: Pastoral Art and Its Audience in the
(April 1970): 229-37. Hurtaut, Pierre-Thomas-Nicolas, & Magny. Golden Age. Montclair and Woodbridge,
Guiffrey, Jean, & Marcel, Pierre. Dictionnaire historique de la ville de Paris et 1983.
Inventaire general des Dessins du Musee du de ses environs. 4 vols. Paris, 1779. Kettlevell, J. K. The Hyde Collection Cata-
Louvre et du Musee de Versailles: Ecole Hussman, Geraldine C. "Boucher's Psyche at logue. Glens Falls, 1981.
franqaise. Vols. II & III. Paris, 1908-09. the Basketmakers: A Closer Look." The Klesse, Brigitte. "Studien zu italienischen und
Guiffrey, Jules. "Les modeles des Gobelins J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 4 (1977): franzosischen Gemalden des Wallraf-
devant le Jury des Arts en Septembre 1794." 45~5°- Richartz-Museums." Wallraf-Richartz-
Nouvelles Archives de I'Art franqais 3d sen, Ingrams, Rosalind. "Bachaumont: A Parisian Jahrbuch 34 (1972): 175-262. See especially
13 (1897): 349-89- Connoisseur of the Eighteenth Century." pp. 242-50 for Boucher.
Hallopeau, Marie-Laure. Musee Bargoin: Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 75 Katalog der italienischen, franzos-
.

Beaux-Arts, Guide. Clermont-Ferrand, (Jan. 1970): 11-28. ischen, und spanischen Gemalde bis 1800
[c. 1980]. Isographie des Hommes Celebres, ou Collec- im Wallraf- Rich artz- Museum. Cologne,
Haskell, Francis. Patrons and Painters: A Study tion de Fac-Simile de Lettres Autographes et 1973-
in the Relations between Italian Art and So -
de Signatures. Edited by S. Berard [and Kopplin, Monika. Das Fdcherblatt von Manet
ciety in the Age of Baroque. New York, 1971. others]. Vol. I. Paris, 1828-30. bis Kokoschka. Saulgau, 1981.
Hausset. Madame du. Memoires de Madame Jacoby, Beverly Schreiber. "A Landscape Krohn, Mario. Frankrigs og Danmarks
du Hausset, Femme de Chambre de Drawing by Francois Boucher after kunstnenske forbindelse det 18 1

Madame de Pompadour. Paris, 1824. Domenico Campagnola." Master Drawings Aarhundrede. Copenhagen, 1922.
Hazlehurst, F. Hamilton. "The Wild Beasts 17, 3 (Autumn 1979): 261-72, plate 34. Krol, Aleksander. Zamek Kroleivski w
Pursued: The Petite Galerie of Louis XV at Jal, A. Dictionnaire critique de Biographie et Warszauie. Cracow, 1926.
Versailles." The Art Bulletin 66, 2 (June d'Histoire. Paris, 1867. L.C.D.N. [PNeufville de Brunaubois-
1984): 224-36. Jarry, Madeleine. World Tapestry. New York, Montador]. Description raisonnee des
Hebert. Dictionnaire Pittoresque et Histo- 1969. tableaux exposes au Louvre. Lettre a Mme.
rique. 2 vols. Paris, 1766. Facsimile edition "The Wealth of Boucher Tapestries in
. la marquise de SPR. . . . Paris, 1738.
in 1 vol., Geneva, 1972. American Museums." Antiques 102 (1972): Lacordaire, K. L. Notice historique sur les
Hercenberg, Bernard. Nicolas Vleughels. 222-31. Manufactures Imperiale de Tapisseries des
Paris, 1975. . Chinoiseries: Le rayonnement du gout Gobelins. Paris, 1855.
Herluison, H. Actes d'etat-avil d'artistes chinois sur les arts decoratifs des XVI e
et de La Curne de Sainte Palaye. Catalogue
francais . . . extraits des registres de I'Hotel- XVIII' siecles. Fribourg, 1981. English des Tableaux du Cabinet de M. Crozat,
de-Ville de Paris, detruits dans I'incendie du translation, Chinoiserie: Chinese Influence Baron de Thiers. Paris, 1755.
24 mai i8ji. Orleans, 1873. on European Decorative Art, ijth and 18th [La Font de Saint- Yenne]. Reflexions sur
Hermitage State Museum, Leningrad. See Centuries, New York and London, 1981. quelques causes de I'etat present de la pein-
Ermitazh, Leningrad. Jarry, Paul. Les vieux hotels de Paris: Le ture en France. The Hague, 1747.
Herold, Jacques, & Vuaflart, Albert, 1929. Temple et le Marais. Vol. III. Paris, 1930. . Sentiments sur quelques ouvrages de
See Dacier & Vuaflart, vol. I (1929). Jean-Richard, Pierrette. Musee du Louvre, peinture, sculpture, et gravure, ecnts a un
Hiesinger, Kathryn B. "The Sources of Fran- Cabinet des Dessins . . . Ecole francaise. Vol. particulier en province. N.p., 1754.
cois Boucher's Psyche Tapestries." Bulletin I, L'oeuvre grave de Franqois Boucher dans Lami, Stanislas. Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de
of the Philadelphia Museum of Art 72 la Collection Edmond de Rothschild. Paris, I'Ecole franqaise. Vol. II, Sous le regne de
(Nov. 1976): 7-23. 1978. Louis XIV. Paris, 1906.
Hillairet, Jacques [Col. Auguste Andre Jeannerat, Carlo. "L' Adoration des Bergers . Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de I'Ecole
Coussillan]. Dictionnaire Historique des rues de F. Boucher." Bulletin de la Soaete de franqaise au dix-huitieme siecle. 2 vols.
de Paris. 2 vols. Paris, 1963; 7th ed., 1979. I'Histoire de VArt francais, 1932: 75-83. Paris, 1910-11.

379
L.vpauze. Henry. Histoire de VAcademie de Lorck, Carl von. "Genius der Kunstlehre: Mariette, Pierre-Jean. Abecedario. . . .

Rome.
:ce a 2 vols. Paris, 1924. Zwei Handzeichnungen von Benedetto Cas- Edited by Ph. de Chennevieres & A. de
Laszlo. E., &: Kiado, C. Flemish and French tiglione und Francois Boucher." In Yom Montaiglon. 6 vols. Paris, 1851-60. See
Tapestries in Hungary. Budapest, 1981. Geist des deutschen Ostens: 94-ici, figs. 41 especially vol. I (1851-53); and vol. II

Lalgier. Marc-Antoine, le pere]. Jugement and 42. Berlin, 1967. (1853-5-

d'un amateur sur I'Exposition des tableaux. Lorentz, S. "Projets pour la Pologne de Marmontel, (J-F.J. Memoires de Marmontel.
Lettre a M. le marquis de V***. Paris, 1753. J. A. Meissonnier." Biuletyn Historii Sztuki Edited by John Renwick. 2 vols. Clermont-
Laujon, Pierre. Oeuvres choisies. 4 vols. Paris, K 1 (1958): 186-98. Ferrand, 1972.
1811. . "Projekty J._
A. Meissonniers dla Matthaesius, Friedrich. Rokoko und Revolu-
Lauts. Jan. Karoline Luise von Baden. Karls- Pulaw." Pulauy. Teka konserwatorska 5 tion: Lebensennnerungen des Johann Chns-
ruhe, 1980. (1962 : 4---*6. tian von Mannlich. Stuttgart, 1946.
Le Blanc, Jean-Bernard, l'abbe. Lettre sur Lorin, F Rambouillet: La mile, le chateau, ses Mestsiore. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1884.
I' Exposition des Outrages de Peinture, botes, 768-1906. Paris, 19=7. Mercier, L. Sebastien. Tableau de Pans.
Sculpture, & de I'Annee 1747 a Monsieur . . . Lossky, Boris. Tours, Musee des Beaux-Arts: 12 vols. Amsterdam, 1782-88.

R.D.R. Pans, 1747. Peintures du XYIII' Steele. Paris, 1962. Mere, Elisabeth Guenard, Mme. Brossin de.
Observations sur les Outrages de Lugt, Frits. Les marques de collections de Le Palais-Royal, ou Memoires Secrets de la
MM. de I' Academie de Peinture et de dessms & d'estampes. Amsterdam, 1921. . . . Duchesse d' Orleans, Mere de Philippe, by
Sculpture, exposes au Sallon du Louvre, en Supplement. The Hague, 1956. M. D. F : :
[Monsieur de Faverolles].
'

I'Annee 175 J, et sur quelques Fcnts qui ont . Repertoire des catalogues de ventes 2 vols. Hamburg, an. XIV [1806].
rapport a la Peinture. A Monsieur le Presi- publtques interessant l'art ou la curiosite. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
dent de B***_ [Paris], 1753. Vol. Premiere penode: Yers 1600-1825
I, The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection. New
Lechevallier-Chevignard, Georges. La (1938); Vol. II 1955 Deuxieme penode: • York, 1984.
Manufacture de porcelaine de Sevres. 2 vols. 1826-1860; Vol. Ill (1964,1, Troisieme Michalovski, Janusz M. "Deux toiles incon-
Paris, 1908. penode: 1861-1900. The Hague. nues de J. P. Norblin de la Gourdaine a
Leijonhufvud, Sigrid. Carl Gustaf Tessin och Lundberg, Gunnar W. "Boucher och Carl l'Ecole des Chevaliers dans la collection du
bans Akerokrets. 2 vols.Stockholm, Gustaf Tessin." In S'.enskt och Franskt salon d'antiquites Cailleux a Paris." Biuletyn
I93I-33- 1700— tab. 126-32. Malmo, 1972. Histoni Sztuki 1 (1972): 74-80.
Lemesle, Gaston. L'eglise Saint-Sulpice. Paris, McCall. George Henry. The Joseph Widener Michel, Andre. Francois Boucher. Les artistes

1931. Collection: Tapestries at Lynneuood Hall, celebres, vol. 24. Paris, 1889.
Lemonmer, Henry. "A propos des Pastorales Elkms Park, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, . Francois Boucher. Revised and en-
de Boucher." In L'art moderne (1500—1800): 1932. larged edition with a catalogue raisonne
Essais et esquisses: 215-31. Paris. 1912. Macon, Gustave. Les Arts dans la maison de added by Soullie & Masson. Pans, [1906].
Leroy, Paul. "Notes sur les relations artis- Conde. Paris, 1903. Originally published as Michel. Marianne Roland. "Observations on
tiques entre la France et la Chine aux XVI p a series of articles in the Revue de l'art Madame Lancret's sale." The Burlington
et XVIII s
Reunion des Soaetes des
siecles." 1900-02. Magazine in (Oct. 1969), advertisement
Beaux-Arts des Departements en 1900, 24th Magnier. Charles. Madame de Pompadour et supplement no. 23: i-vi.
session: 413— ; La Tour. Saint-Quentin. : Mirimonde, A-P de. "Un carton de tapisserie
Lespinasse, Pierre. "Les voyages d'Harleman Magnin, Jeanne. La peinture et le dessin au de Boucher." La revue des arts 5, 1 (1955):
et de Tessin en France." Bulletin de la Soaete Musee de Besancon. Dijon, 1919. 124-27.
de I 'Histoire de I'Art francais 191c: 276-98. Ln cabinet d'amateur pansien en
. Mondain-Monval, Jean. Correspondance de
. Le portraitiste Roslin et les artistes 1922, Collection Maurice Magnin, II: Pein- Soufflot avec les Directeurs des Bailments
suedois en France pendant la seconde moitie tures et dessms de I'ecole francaise. Di)on, 1922. concernant la Manufacture des Gobelins
du XYIII' Steele. Paris, 1929. Originally Majevska-Maszkovska, B. Mecenat '1756-1780). Paris, 1918.
published in BSHAF, 1927: 234-97. artystyczny lzabelli z Cv :ch Monnet, Jean. Supplement au roman
"Lettre a l'auteur. Sur les Tableaux actuelle- Lubomirskiej, 17J6-1816. Warsaw, 1976. comique, ou Memoires pour servir a la vie de
ment exposes au Louvre." Observations Malbois, Emile. "Les anciens tableaux de Jean Monnet. 2 vols. "Londres" [Paris],
Penodiques, sur la Physique, L 'Histoire l'eglise Saint Sulpice." Bulletin de la Societe 1772.
\aturelle, et les Beaux-Arts 3 (1757): de I'Histoire de VArt francais, 1926: 113-33. Memoires de Jean Monnet, Directeur
.

161-79. M.ANKCnrSKi, Tadeusz. Galerja Stamslaua Au- du Theatre de la Foire. Paris, [1909].
Levey, Michael. "A New Identity for Saly's gusta. Lvov, 1932. Monnter, Genevieve. Musee du Louvre,
Bust of a Young Girl." The Burlington Mannlich, Johann Christian von. Cabinet des Dessms: Pastels, XYIIeme et
Magazine 107 (Feb. 1965): 91. Bescbreibung der Cburpfalzbaierschen XYIIIeme siecles. Pans, 1972.
'A Boucher Mythological Painting
.
Gemdlde-Sammlung zu Munchen und zu Montaiglon. A. de. "Francois Boucher."
Interpreted." The Burlington Magazine 124 Schleissheim. Munich, 1805-1:.
3 vols. Archives de I'Art francais 6 (1858-60):
(July 1982): 442-46. . Stollreither 1913.
1913. See 62-63.
. See also Kalnein & Levey Memoires du chevalier Chnstian de
. Mouy, Charles de. Correspondance inedite du
[Lieude de Sepma.vville". Reflexions Mannlich. Edited by Joseph Delage. Paris, Roi Stanislas Auguste Poniatouski et de
nouvelles d'un amateur des beaux arts, 1948. This complete edition of the early
is a Madame Geoffnn (1764-1777). Paris, 1875.
adr esses a Mme. de ***, pour servir de and Paris years; for abridged editions of the Musee Jacquemart-Andre. Paris. Catalogue
supplement a la Lettre sur L' Exposition . . . entire memoirs see Stollreither. and itineraire. Paris, n.d.
de I'annee 1747. [Paris, 1747]. Matthaesius. Musee Magnin: Peintures et dessins de l'Ecole
"Living wtth Antiques: Hillwood, the Home Mantz, Paul. "Charles Natoire: Correspon- francaise. Dijon, 1938.
'r. and Mrs. Herbert A. May." Antiques dance avec Antoine Duchesne." Archives de Musee Xissim de Camondo. Paris: Union
82, 3 (Sept. 1962;: 262-69. I' An francais 246-30.
2 (1852-53): Centrale des Arts Decoratifs. 1983.
Loche, Renee, & Roethlisberger, Marcel. Masvscrit trouve a la Bastille concemant les National Gallery, London. Illustrated Gen-
L'opera completa di Liotard. Milan, 1978. lettres de cachet lancees contre Mademoiselle eral Catalogue. London, 1973.
LocQuiN, Jean. La Peinture d'Histoire en de Chantilly et M. Favan par le Marechal de Niclausse, Juliette. Le Musee des Gobelins.
France de 1747 a 1785. Paris, 1912. Reprinted i^xe. Brussels, 1868. Paris, 1939.
with many additional illustrations, Paris, Marandel, J. Patrice. French Oil Sketc . Tapissenes et Tapis de la Yille de Pans.
1978. from an English Collection. Houston, 1975. Paris, 1948.
Nolhac, Pierre de. Franqois Boucher, premier Pilon, Edmond. Scenes galantes et libertines Rosenberg, Pierre. "Une esquisse de Carle
peintre du Roi. Paris, 1907. Includes a des artistes du XVIII" siecle. Paris, 1909. Van Loo au musee de Hambourg." Jahrbuch
"Catalogue des oeuvres peintes de Francois Piron, Alexis. Oeuvres complettes. Edited by der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 14-15
Boucher, qui ont passe en vente publique M. Rigoley de Juvigny. 9 vols. Paris, 1776. (1970): 133-38.
depuis 1770 jusqu'en 1906," dresse par Planchenault, Rene. "La du mar- collection . "A propos de Lemoyne." The Min-
Georges Pannier. quis de Livois." Gazette des Beaux-Arts neapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin 1971-73:
Boucher, premier peintre du Roi.
. 6th ser., 10 (July 1933): 14-30. 53-59-
Revised ed. Paris, 1925. Lacks "Cata- Pompadour, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, mar- 'Le Concours de 1727." Revue de
logue . .
."; different illustrations. quise de. Lettres de Madame la Marquise de Tart 37(i977): *9~4*-
Obser, Karl. "Zur Geschichte der Karlsruher Pompadour. ["Une production de jeunesse -. [Catalog entries in] Musee du Louvre.
Gemaldegalerie: Francois Boucher und d'un magistrat."] London, 1772. Enlarged Nouvelles acquisitions du Departement des
Markgrafin Karoline Luise." Zeitschrift fur edition, 1776. Peintures (1980-1982). Paris, 1983^].
Oberrheins n.s. 17 (1902):
die Geschichte des . Correspondance de Madame de Pom- Tout Toeuvre peint de Chardin. Paris,
33J-39- padour . . . &c. Edited by A-P Malassis. i
9 8 3 [b].
Observations Periodiques, sur la Physique, Paris, 1878. . Musee du Louvre: Catalogue de la

VHistoire Naturelle, et les Arts. Edited by Popham, Arthur E., & Fenwick, K. M. donation Othon Kaufmann et Franqois
Francois Toussaint; illustrated by J.B.A. European Drawings (and Two Asian Draw- Schlageter au Departement des peintures.
Gautier [Dagoty]. 3 vols. Paris, 1756-57. of the National
ings) in the Collection Paris, 1984^].
See especially vol. Ill (second half of 1757): Gallery of Canada. Toronto, 1965. "Une correspondance de Julien de
161-79, for review of 1757 Salon [by An- Les Porcelainiers du XV I IP siecle franqais. Parme (1736-1799)." Archives de TArt fran-
toine Renou?]. Preface by Serge Gauthier; edited by Claude qais 26 (i98 4 [b]): 197-245.
Oesterreich, Matthias. Description et expli- Fregnac. Paris, 1964. .Vie ancienne de Watteau. Paris,
cation des groupes, statues, bustes et demi- Portalis, Roger, baron. Fionore Fragonard i
9 8 4 [c.].
bustes, bas-reliefs, urnes et vases de marbre, Paris, 1889. Rosenblum, Robert. Transformations in Late
de bronze et de plomb, antiques, aussi bien Proces-verbaux de TAcademie Royale de Eighteenth Century Art. 3d ed. Princeton,
que des ouvrages modernes qui forment la Peinture et de Sculpture 1648-1793, publies 1970.
collection de S. M. le Roi de Prusse. Berlin, . . . par M. Anatole de Montaiglon. Vol. IV, Rothschild, Nathaniel, baron de. Notizen
1774- 1/05-1/25, and vol. V, 7726-/744. Paris, uber emige meiner Kunstgegenstande.
Opperman, Hal. "Observations on the Tapes- 1881-83. Vienna, 1903.
try Designs of J-B. Oudry for Beauvais Proschwitz, Gunnar von. Tableaux de Paris Rubinstein-Bloch, Stella. Catalogue of the
(1726-1736)." Allen Memorial Art Museum et de la cour de France 1/39-1/42: Lettres Collection of George and Tlorence Blu-
Bulletin 26 (1969): 49-71. inedites de Carl Gustaf comte de Tessin. menthal, New York. 6 vols. Paris, 1926-30.
. Jean-Baptiste Oudry. 2 vols. New Goteborg and Paris, 1983. See especially vol. VI (1930), Furniture and
York and London, 1977. See also exhib. cat. Racinais, Henri. Les Petits Appartements des Works of Art, XVIII Century.
1982-83, Paris. Roys Louis XV et Louis XVI au Chateau de Ruch, John "An Album of Early Drawings
E.
Paignon Dijonval. Cabinet de M. Paignon Versailles. Paris, 1950. by Francois Boucher." The Burlington Mag-
Dijonval. Redige par M. Benard. Paris, 1810. Reath, Nancy Andrews. "The Stotesbury azine 106 (Nov. 1964): 496-500, figs. 16-24.
P[apillon] d[e] L[a] F[erte], [Denis-Pierre]. Collection: Tapestries and Carpets." [Saint- Yves, Charles Leoffroy de]. Obser-
Extrait des differens ouvrages publies sur la Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin 28 vations sur les Arts, et sur quelques morceaux
vie des peintres. 2 vols. Paris, 1776. (Dec. 1932): 29-31. de Peinture & de Sculpture, exposes au
[Parfaict, Francois & Claude]. Dictionnaire Reau, Louis. "Les artistes allemands en France Louvre en 1/48. Ou il est parle de Tutilite
des Theatres de Paris. 7 vols. Paris, 1756. au XVIIIeme siecle." Archives alsaciennes des embellissemens dans les Villes. Leyden,
Parker, James. "Eighteenth-Century France d'histoire de I'art y
ann. (1924^]) 113-46. :

,
!74»-
Recreated in the 'Cold, Barbarous Coun- . Histoire de ('expansion de I'art fran- Sainte-Marie, Jean-Pierre. "La Chapelle
try': The Tapestry Room from the qais moderne: Le monde slave et VOrient. Godefroy: Orry et Natoire." La Vie en
Bernstorff Palace, Copenhagen." The Paris, i924[b]. Champagne 263 (Feb. 1977), numero special.
Burlington Magazine 115 (June 1973): Histoire de ['expansion de Tart fran- Samaran, Charles. Jacques Casanova,
3 6 7-73- qais: Pays scandinaves, Angleterre . Paris, 1931 venitien. Paris, 1914.
Parker, Karl. "A Drawing by Liotard." Old -. "Catalogue des oeuvres d'art francais Sammlung Thyssen-Bornemisza. 2 vols.
Master Drawings 5, 18 (1930): 36-37, plate de la collection du Roi de Pologne Stanislas- Castagnola: Villa Favorita, 1969-71.
16. August." In "L'art francais dans les pays du Sander, Frederik. Nationalmuseum. Bidrag
Le Pausanias Francais: Etat des Arts du Nord et de l'Est de l'Europe (XVIII-XIX till Taflegalleriets Historia I: Riksradet
Dessin en France a I'ouverture du XIX" siecles)." Archives de TArt franqais n.s. 17 Grefve Carl Gustaf Tessins, Konung Adolf
siecle, publie par Un Observateur Impartial (1932): 225-48. Tredriks och Drottning Lovisa Ulrikas
[Publicola Chaussard]. Paris, 1806. Reynolds, Sir Joshua. Discourses on Art. Taflesamlingar. Stockholm, 1872.
Perrot, J. FA. Lettres sur Nismes et le Midi. Edited by Robert R. Wark. San Marino, 1959. Sandoz, Marc. Jean-Baptiste Deshays,
2 vols. Nimes, 1840. Rieder, William. "Eighteenth-Century Chairs 1/29-1/65. Paris, 1977.
Phillips, John Goldsmith. "A Tapestry after in the Untermyer Collection." Apollo 107 Saurin, Bernard-Joseph. Oeuvres complettes.
Boucher." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bul- (Mar. 1978): 181-85. 2 vols. Paris, 1783.
letin n.s. 1 (Feb. 1943): 204-5. Rogers, Meyric Reynold. "An Eighteenth- Savill, Rosalind. "Francois Boucher and the
Piganiol de la Force. Description Histori- Century Masterpiece: Beauvais Tapestry of Porcelains of Vincennes and Sevres." Apollo
que de la Ville de Paris et de ses environs. 2d The Bird Snarers." Bulletin of the Art 115 (Mar. 1982): 162-70.
ed. 10 vols. Paris, 1765. First edition, 1742. Chicago 38 Qan. 1944): 2-5.
Institute of Scheffer, Carl Fredrik. Lettres particulieres a
Pigler, Andor. Barockthemen. 1st ed. 2 vols. Roland, Berthold. Die Malergruppe von Carl Gustaf Tessin 1/44-1/52. Edited by Jan
Budapest, 1956. 2d ed. 3 vols. Budapest, Pfalz-Zweibrucken, Maler und Malerei eines Heidner. Stockholm, 1982.
1974- kleinen Furstenhofes im i8en. Jahrhundert. Schonbrunner, Joseph, & Meder, Joseph.
Piles, Fortia de, & Kerdu, Boisgelin de. Baden-Baden, 1959. Handzeichnungen alter Master aus der AT
Voyage de deux Francais en Allemagne Rosenberg, J.; Slive, S.; & ter Kuile, E. H. bertina und anderen Sammlungen 12 vols. .

Danemark, Suede, Russie et Pologne Dutch Art and Architecture 1600-1800. Rev. Vienna, 1896-1908. See especially vol. II

(1/90-1/92). Vol. V, Pologne. Paris, 1796. ed. Harmondsworth and New York, 1977. (i897)-

381
Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris. Illustrated Cata- Stollreither, E., ed. Ein deutscher Maler . "Furniture and Objets d'Art." In The
logue of joo Pictures by Old Masters Which und Hofmann: Lebenserrinerungen des Joys of Collecting, by J.
Paul Getty: 139-67.
Have, at Various Times, Formed Part of the Johann Christian von Mannlich 1/41-1822. New York, 1965.
Sedelmeyer Gallery. Paris, 1898. Berlin, 1910. -. The Eighteenth Century in France.
Slatkin, Regina Shoolman. Review of • Rokoko und Revolution. Berlin, 1913.
. Rutland, Vt. 1967.
L'oeuvre dessine de Boucher, by Second edition of Em deutscher Maler. . . . Viatte, Franchise. Review of Caricatures
A. Ananoff. Master Drawings 5 (1967): Stuffmann, Margaret. "Les tableaux de la d 'Anton Maria Zanetti, by A. Bettagno.
54-66, plates 44-49. collection de Pierre Crozat." Gazette des [Exh. cat. 1969, Venice.] Revue de I'art 9

"Portraits of Francois Boucher."

. Beaux-Arts 6th sen, 72 (July-Sept. 1968): (1970): 92-93.
Apollo 94 (Oct. i97i[a]): 280-91. 11— 144. Especially the annex, "Tableaux ac- Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
-. "Two Early Drawings by Francois quis par Crozat de Thiers: Notices extraites Department of Ceramics. Catalogue of En-
Boucher." Master Drawings 9 (i97i[b]): de 1'inventaire etabh par Francois Tronchin glish Porcelain, Earthenware, Enamels and

398-403, plates 41 and 42. en 1771, en vue de l'acquisition de l'ensem- Glass collected by Charles Schreiber Esq.
-. "Some Boucher Drawings and Related ble de la collection par Catherine II," M. P. and the Lady Charlotte Elizabeth
Prints." Master Drawings 10 (1972): 264-83, 115—35- Schreiber and presented to the Museum in
plates 30-41. Tadgell, Christopher. Ange-Jacques Gabriel. 1884,by Bernard Rackham. Vol. Ill,
-. St. John the Bap-
"Francois Boucher: London, 1978. Enamels and Glass. London, 1924.
tist, A
Study in Religious Imagery." The Tenner, Helmut. Mannheimer Kunstsammler Vilain, Jacques. "Une esquisse de Jean-
Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin 62 und Kunsthandler bis zur Mitte des i<)en. Francois de Troy au musee de Lille." La
(i975): 4-27- Jahrhunderts. Heidelberg, 1966. Revue du Louvre 1971, no. 6: 353-56.
. . .

"Abraham Bloemaert and Francois Theatre des Petits Appartemens [a Ver- Virch, Claus. Master Drawings in the Collec-
Boucher: Affinity and Relationship." Master sailles]. Vol. I, Recueil des Comedies et tion of Walter C. Baker. [New York], 1962.
Drawings 14 (1976): 247-60, plates 1-15. Ballets representes sur le Theatre des petits Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts, Rich-
"The Fetes Italiennes: Their Place in
.
Appartemens pendant I'Hiver de 1747 a mond. European Art in the Virginia Mu-
Boucher's Oeuvre." Metropolitan Museum 1748; vols. II & III, Diverttssemens du seum of Fine Arts. Richmond, 1966.
Journal 12 (1977): 130-39. Theatre des petits Appartemens pendant Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de. Oeuvres
"The New Boucher Catalogue." The THiver de 1J48 a 1749; vol. IV, pendant . . . completes. Vol XXXIX (June 1757). Paris, 1880.
Burlington Magazine 121 (Feb. 1979): I'Hiver de 1749 a 1750. Voss, Hermann. "Francois Boucher's Early
117-23, figs. 76-77, 80-88. Thibaudeau, A. W. Catalogue of the Collec- Development." The Burlington Magazine 95
Soulavie, J.
Memoires Histonques
L., l'aine. tion of Autograph Letters and Historical (Mar. 1953): 81-93.
et Anecdotes de la Cour de France pendant Documents Formed between 1865 and 1882 "Francois Boucher's Early Develop-
.

la faveur de la Marquise de Pompadour . . ., by Alfred Morrison. Compiled and anno- ment — Addenda." The Burlington Magazine
ouvrage conserve dans les porte-feuilles de tated by A.W.T. Vol. I. N.p., 1883. 96 (J u 'y 1954): 206-10.
Madame la Marechale D'fEstrees?]. Paris, Thiery, [Luc-Vincent]. Guide des Amateurs et 'Repliken 1m Oeuvre von Francois
1802. des Etrangers Voyageurs a Paris. ... 2 vols. Boucher." In Studies in the History of Art
Soullie, L., & Masson, Ch. "Catalogue Paris, 1787. Dedicated to William E. Suida: 353-60.
raisonne de I'oeuvre peint et dessine de . Guide des Amateurs et des Etrangers New York, 1959.
Francois Boucher." In Francois Boucher, by Voyageurs . aux Environs de Paris. 2 vols.
. . Wallace Collection Catalogues: Pictures
Andre Michel. Paris, 1906. Paris, 1788. and Drawings. 16th ed. London, 1968.
Soyer, L. C. "Francois Boucher." In Thirion, H. La vie privee des financiers au Wallace Collection Catalogues: Cata-
Encyclopedie des Gens du Monde, vol. Ill: XVIII' siecle. Paris, 1895. logue of Miniatures, bv Graham Reynolds.
762. Paris, 1834. Thore, Theophile. "Collection de M. de London, 1980.
Standen, Edith A. "The Croome Court Cypierre." Le Constitutional [Paris], 1 Oct. Ward, Roger. "A Drawing for Boucher's
Tapestries." In Decorative Art from the 1844: 1-3. Jupiter and Callisto at Kansas City." The
Samuel H. Kress Collection, by Dauterman, Toledo Museum of Art. European Paintings. Burlington Magazine 125 (Dec. 1983): 753.
Parker & Standen: 7-21, 45-52. [London], Toledo, Ohio, 1976. Wark, Robert Rodger. Decorative Art in the
1964. Tornezy, M-A. Bergeret en Italie 1773- Huntington Collection. San Marino, Calif.,
. "The Story of the Emperor of China: 1774. Paris, 1895. 1961.
A Beauvais Tapestry Series." Metropolitan Tourneux, Maurice. "Boucher, peintre de la Watelet, [Claude-Henri], & Levesque,
Museum Journal 11 (1976): 103-17. vie intime." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 3d ser., [Pierre-Charles]. Encyclopedie Methodique:
. "Some Notes on Used
the Cartoons 18 (Nov. 1897): 390-92. Beaux Arts. Vol. I: Paris and Liege, 1788;
at the Gobelins and Beauvais Tapestry Man- Tovnsend, Gertrude. "A Pastoral by Francois vol. II: Paris, 1791; plate vol.: Paris, 1805.
ufactories in the Eighteenth Century." The Boucher." Bulletin of the Boston Museum of Subsequently republished in reduced format
J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 4 (1977^]): Fine Arts: 38 (Dec. 1940): 81-86. and without plates, as Dictionnaire des Arts
25-28. Les Tresors d'Art en Russie (in Russian). de Peinture, Sculpture et Gravure, 5 vols.,
-. "Fetes Italiennes: Beauvais Tapestries 1901-07. Published annuallv by the So- Paris, 1792.
after Boucher in The Metropolitan Museum ciete Imperiale d'Encouragement des Beaux- Watson, Francis. The Wnghtsman Collection.
of Art." Metropolitan Museum Journal 12 Arts. Vol. I, Furniture. New York: Metropolitan
(i977[t>]): 107-30. Trevor-Roper, Patrick. The World through Museum of Art, 1966. See also Eriksen.
-. "Three Ladies in Tapestry." In Studies Blunted Sight. London, 1970. Weber, Wilhelm. Johann Christian von
in Textile History, edited by Veronika Ger- Underhill, Gertrude, & Mailey, Jean. "Be- Mannlich. Zweibriicken, 1970.
vers: 335-37. Toronto: Royal Ontario Mu- quest of John L. Severance, 1936: Tapes- Weigert, Roger-Armand. "La manufacture
seum, i977[c]. tries." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of royale de tapisseries de Beauvais en 1754."
. "The Amours des Dieux: A Series of Art 29 (Nov. 1942): 148-50. Bulletin de la Societe de I'Histoire de I' Art
Beauvais Tapestries after Boucher." Metro- Vaucaire, M. "Les tapisseries de Beauvais sur franqais, 1933: 226-42.
politanMuseum Journal 19/20 (1984-85): les cartons de F Boucher." Les Arts 7 Wildenstein, Daniel. Documents inedits sur
63-84. To be published 1986. (Aug. 1902): 10-15. les artistes franqais du XVIII' Steele. Paris, 1966.

Stavenow, Ake. Carl Hdrleman. Uppsala, 1927. Verlet, Pierre. "Un mobilier Delanois con- . Inventaires apr'es decks d'artistes et de
Sternberg, V., & C. Exhibition of Important vert en tapisserie de Beauvais." Bulletin des collectionneurs franqais du XVI IF Steele.

Tapestries. London, 1965. Musees de France 11 (1946): 13-14. Paris, 1967.

382
 . "Les tableaux italiens dans les cata- 1901, Paris, Palais des Beaux-Arts de la Ville 1964, Beauvais, Hotel de Ville. Trots Siecles de
logues de ventes parisiennes du XVIIP de Paris [Petit Palais]. Exposition de I'En- Tapisseries de Beauvais.
siecle." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., ioo fance. 1964, Paris, Galerie Cailleux. Franqois
(July-Aug. 1982): 1-48. 1902, London, Art Gallery of the Corpora- Boucher, Premier Peintre du Roi 1703 -1770.
Wildenstein, Daniel, & Ananoff, Ale- tion of London [Guildhall]. Catalogue of 1964, Paris, Institut Neerlandais; Amsterdam,
xandre. See Ananoff & Wildenstein. the Exhibition of a Selection of Works by Rijksprentenkabinett. Le dessin franqais de
Wildenstein, Daniel, & Mandel, Gabriele. French and English Painters of the Eigh- Claude a Cezanne dans les collections hol-
L'opera completa di Fragonard. Milan, 1972. teenth Century, by A. G. Temple. landaises, complete d'un choix d'autographes
Wildenstein, Daniel, & Guy. Documents 1910, Berlin, Konigliche Akademie der des artistes exposes.
complementaires au Catalogue de Voeuvre Kunste. Ausstellung von Werken fran- 1965-66, Paris, Ministere d'Etat Affaires
de Louis David. Paris, 1973. zosischer Kunst des XVIII Jahrhunderts. Culturelles. Chefs-d'oeuvre de la Peinture
Wildenstein, Georges. Lancret. Paris, 1924. 1912, New York, The New Allom Galleries franqaise dans les Musees de Leningrad et de
. Melanges. Paris, 1926. [New Burlington Galleries]. Dickens Cente- Moscou.
Chardin. Paris, 1933.
. nary Exhibition of Old Masters: Catalogue 1968,London, Royal Academy of Arts.
"L'abbe de Saint-Non: Artiste et
.
of Paintings. Winter Exhibition. France in the Eighteenth
mecene." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 1921,London, Victoria and Albert Museum. Century.
54 (Nov. 1959): 225-44. The Franco-British Exhibition of Textiles, 1921. 1968, New York, H. Shickman Gallery.
The Paintings of Fragonard.
. London, 1926, New York, Wildenstein Galleries. Exhibition of Old Master Drawings.
i960. Paintings and Drawings of the French Eigh- 1969, Hamburg, Kunsthalle. Franzosische
-. "Un amateur de Boucher et de Fra- teenth Century. Zeichnungen aus dem Museum Besanqon.
gonard: Jacques-Onesyme Bergeret 1928, Paris, Galerie d'Art Sambon. Exposition 1969, Paris, Musee du Louvre. Hommage a
(171 5-178 5)." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th des Paysagistes Venitiens et Franqais des Louis La Caze.
ser., 58 (July-Aug. 1961): 39-84. XVII' et XVIII' Siecles. 1969, Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini.
Wille, J[ohann] G[eorg]. Memoires et jour- 1929,Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum, Caricature di Anton Maria Zanetti, by
nal. Edited by Georges Duplessis. 2 vols. Morgan Memorial. Loan Exhibition of Alessandro Bettagno.
Paris, 1857. French Art of the XVIII Century. 1970, Leningrad, Ermitazh. Franqois Boucher
Wilson, Gillian. "New Information on 1932, Paris, Fondation Foch, Hotel de (1703-1770) (in Russian).
French Furniture at the Henry E. Hunt- M. Jean Charpentier. Exposition Franqois 1970, Rouen, Musee des Beaux-Arts. Jean
ington Library and Art Gallery." The ]. Paul Boucher. Restout (1692-1768).
Getty Museum Journal 4 (i977[a]): 29-31. 1935, London, Frank T Sabin. A Descriptive 1972, Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of
Decorative Arts in the J. Paul Getty
. Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings by Arts. The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Museum. [Malibu], 1977^]. French and Venetian XVIIIth Century 1973, Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg. China
Wingfield Digby, G. F. "The Tapestries at Masters. und Europa: Chinaverstandnis und
Burlington House." The Burlington Maga- 1936, Dallas, Museum of Fine Arts. The Chmamode im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert.
zine 92 (Feb. 1950): 46-50. Centennial Exposition, Department of Fine 1973, Cholet, Musee. Pierre-Charles
Zahle, E. "Francois Boucher's dobbelte Arts: Catalogue of The Exhibition of Paint- Tremolteres (Cholet, 1703 -Paris, 1739).
billedvaevning." Det Danske Kunstindustri- ings, Sculptures, Graphic Arts. 1973,New York, William H. Schab Gallery;
museum Virksomhed, 1959-64: 58-69. 1939, New York, World's Fair. Masterpieces of Los Angeles County Museum of Art; In-
Zava Boccazzi, Franca. Pittoni. Venice, 1977. Art: Catalogue of European Paintings and dianapolis, Museum of Art. Woodner Col-
Zick, Gisela. "D'apres Boucher: Die Vallee de Sculpture from 1300-1800. lection II: Old Master Drawings from the
Montmorency und die europaische Por- 1942,New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries. XV to the XVIII Century.
zellanplastik." Keramos 29 (July 1965): 3-47. French and English Art Treasures of the 1973, Poznan, Muzeum Narodowe. Sztuka
. "Les Oies de Frere Philippe." XVIII Century. francuska w zbiorach polskich 1230-1830.
Keramos 72 (May 1976): 17-28. 1945, Buenos Aires, Wildenstein & Co. Catalogue by K. Secomska.
Obras maestras de la pintura francesa des 1973-74, Washington, D.C., National Gal-
XVIII.
stglo The Art Institute.
lery of Art; Chicago,
London, Royal Academy. Landscape Franqois Boucher in North American Collec-
EXHIBITION CATALOGUES 1949,
French Art.
in

tions: 100 Drawings.

i860, Paris, 26 boulevard des Italiens [Mar- 1951, Geneva, Musee d'Art et d'Histoire. De 1974, Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinett.
tinet]. Catalogue de Tableaux et Dessins de Watteau a Cezanne. Franse tekenkunst van de i8de eeuw uit
I'Ecole Franqaise, principalement du XVII I e 1951, Oberlin, Allen Memorial Art Museum. Nederlandse verzamelingen
Siecle, tires des Collections d 'Amateurs et "Exhibition of Master Drawings of the 18th 1974, Paris, Hotel de la Monnaie. Louis XV:
exposes au profit de la Caisse de secours des Century in France and Italy." Allen Memo- Un moment de perfection de Vart franqais.
Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Architectes et rial Art Museum Bulletin 8, 2 (Winter, 1974-75, London, Heim Gallery;
Dessinateurs, redige par M. Ph. Burty. 2d 1951): 50-79. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum;
ed. 1952, London, Frank T Sabin. Spring Exhibi- Birmingham, City Museum and Art Gal-
1874, Paris, Palais de la Presidence du Corps tion . lery; Glasgow, Art Gallery and Museum.
Legislatif. Explication des Ouvrages de Pein- 1954, Geneva, Musee Rath. Tresors des Collec- From Poussin to Puvis de Chavannes: A
ture exposes au profit de la Colonisation de tions romandes (Ecoles etrangeres). Loan Exhibition of French Drawings from
I'Algene par les Alsaciens- Lor rains. 23 avril 1956, New Haven, Yale University Art Gal- the Collections of the Musee des Beaux-Arts
ff. Catalogue supplementaire des Ouvrages lery. Pictures Collected by Yale Alumni. at Lille.
de Peinture. 22 juin ff. 1957, Paris,Musee des Arts Decoratifs. 1975, Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts. De
1888, Paris, [Hotel de Chimay]. Catalogue de Besanqon: Le plus ancien Musee de France. Watteau a David: Peintures et Dessins des
I'Exposition de I'Art Franqais sous Louis XIV 1958, Bordeaux, Bibliotheque Municipal. musees de province franqais.
et sous Louis XV au profit de I'Oeuvre de Victor Louis et Varsovie. 1975, Paris, Galerie Cailleux. Eloge del'Ovale:
I'Hospitalite de Nuit. 1958,Munich, Residenz. The Age of the Peintures et pastels du XVI IP siecle franqais.
1898, London, Art Gallery of the Corpora- Rococo: Art and Culture of the Eighteenth 1975-76, Toledo, Museum of Art; Chicago,
tion of London [Guildhall]. Catalogue of Century. The Art Institute; Ottawa, National Gallery
the Loan Collection of Pictures by Painters of 1959, Rome, [Palazzo delle Esposizioni]. // of Canada. The Age of Louis XV: French
the French School, by A. G. Temple. Settecento a Roma. Painting 17 10-1774.

383
1976, Chicago, The Art Institute. Selected 1980, Munich, Residenz. Wittelsbach und 1983-84, Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van
Works of 1 8th Century French Art in the Bayern. II/2, Um
Glauben und Reich: Beuningen; Braunschweig, Herzog- Anton-
Collections of The Art Institute of Chicago. Kurfurst Maximilian I. Ulrich-Museum. Schilderkunst mit de eerste
1976, Paris, Louvre. Les dossiers du departe- 1980, New York, Wildenstein & Co. Francois hand: Olieverfschetsen von Tintoretto tot
ment des pemtures 12: Technique de la ' Boucher: A Loan Exhibition for the Benefit Goyal Malerei aus erster Hand: Olskizzen
peinture —V atelier. of the New York Botanical Garden. von Tintoretto bis Goya.
1977, Nice, Musee Cheret; Clermont-Ferrand, 1980, Nord, Musees du Nord. La Peinture 1984,Langres, Musee du Breuil de Saint-
Musee Bargoin; Nancy, Musee des Beaux- Arts. francaise au XVIF et XVIIT siecles. Tresors Germain. Diderot et la Critique de Salon,
Carle Vanloo, by Marie- Catherine Sahut. des Musees du Nord de la France, vol. IV. 1759-1781.
1977, Troyes, Musee des Beaux- Arts; Nimes, 1980, Paris, Galerie de la Seita. La rue de 1984, London, Kate Ganz Limited. Old
Musee des Beaux-Arts; Rome, Villa Crenelle. Master Drawings: Catalogue Number 4.
Medici. Charles-Joseph Natoire. 1981, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz- Museum. 1984, Manchester, City Art Gallery. Franqois
1977-78, London, Heim Gallery; Liverpool, Johann Anton de Peters. Boucher: Paintings, Drawings and Prints
Walker Art Gallery; Dublin, National Gal- 1981, Paris, Musee Cernuschi. Grandes et from the Nation aim useum Stockholm.
lery of Ireland; Birmingham, City Museum petites heures du pare Monceau. 1984, New York, Didier Aaron, Inc. French
& Art Gallery. The Finest Drawings from 1981-82, Paris, Ecole Nationale Superieure Master Drawings.
the Museums of Angers. French edition: des Beaux-Arts; [Malibu], The J. Paul Getty 1984, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library.
Angers, Musee d'Angers. Cent Dessins des Museum; Hamburg, Kunsthalle. De MicheT French Drawings, 1550—1825.
Musees d'Angers. Ange a Gericault: Dessins de la donation 1984, Paris, Hotel de la Monnaie. Diderot &
1977-78, Paris, Grand Palais. Porcelaines de Armand-Valton. I'Art de Boucher a David. Les Salons:
Vincennes, les origines de Sevres. 1982,New York, Maurice Segoura Gallery. 1759-1781.
1977-78, Paris, Orangerie des Tuileries. From Watteau to David: A Century of 1984, Paris, Musee du Louvre, Cabinet des
XIV.
Collections de Louis French Art. Dessins. Acquisitions du Cabinet des Dessins
1978, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton-Ulrich- 1982,Tokyo, Metropolitan Art Museum; 1973-1983.
Museum. Die Sprache der Bilder. Kumamoto, Prefectural Museum of Art. Musee Rodin. La rue Saint-
1984, Paris,
1978, London, Artemis/David Carritt Ltd. Francois Boucher. Domimque: Hotels et Amateurs.
18th Century French Paintings, Drawings 1982-83, Dijon, Musee des Beaux-Arts. La 1984, Stuttgart, Staatsgalene, Graphische
and Sculpture. peinture dans la peinture. Sammlung; Zurich, Museum Bellerive.
1979, Paris, Grand Palais; Cleveland, Museum 1982-83, Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Kompositionen im Halbrund: Facher-blatter
of Art; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Palais. J-B. Oudry. Modified version ex- aus vier Jahrhunderten. Catalogue by
Char din. hibited Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, Monika Kopplin.
1979-81, Washington, D.C., National Gal- and Kansas City, The Nelson-Atkins Mu- 1984-85, Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of
lery of Art [and eight other institutions in seum of Art, 1983. Art. Regency to Empire: French Printmak-
the U.S.A.]. Old Master Paintings from the 1983, Atlanta, High Museum of Art. The ing, 1715-1814.

Collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza. Rococo Age. Catalogue by Eric M. Zafran. 1984-85, Washington, National Gallery of
Catalogue by Allen Rosenbaum. 1983, Karlsruhe, Schloss, Badisches Landes- Grand
Art; Paris, Galeries Nationales du
1980,Albuquerque, University of New museum. Caroline Luise: Markgrafin von Palais; Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg.
Mexico Art Museum. "French Eighteenth- Baden, 1723-1783. Watteau, 1684-1721.
Centurv Oil Sketches from an English 1983, Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle, 1985, New York, Stair Sainty Matthiesen. The
Collection: Catalogue to an Exhibi- Kupferstichkabinett. Die franzbsischen of the King: French Royal Taste
First Painters

tion . . .," by Peter Walch. New Mexico Zeichnungen 1570-1930. from Louis XIV to the Revolution.
Studies in the Fine Arts 5 (1980). 1983,Los Angeles, Los Angeles Count) 1985, Paris, Galerie Cailleux. Oeuvres de
1980, London, Agnew's. Old Master Paintings Museum of Art. An Elegant Art. jeunesse: De Watteau a Ingres.
& Drawings. 1983, Paris, Musee du Louvre, Cabinet des
1980, London, Heim Gallery, too of the Dessins. Les collections du comte d'Orsay:
Finest Drawings from Polish Collections. Dessins du Musee du Louvre.

384
I

i
 (Continued from front flap)

Musee Nationale Adrien-Dubouch

Limoges. Preliminary essays by Alastair
Laing, Pierre Rosenberg, Conservateur-
en-chef,Departement des peintures, Musee
du Louvre, and J. Patrice Marandel, Cura-
tor, European Paintings, The Detroit In-
stitute of Arts, provide the necessary
foundation for a complete appreciation of
the artist's work.

Augmented by a detailed chronology and

bibliography, this volume comprehensively
defines a painter of extraordinary produc-
tivity, diversity, and influence. It gives the
reader a chance to examine with fresh eyes
the range of styles and subject matter of an
artist who epitomizes the splendid taste of
his time-Francois Boucher.

324 illustrations; 36 in full color

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Publishers, New York
 ._

-
f< '-<-*

......

J ^1 .
* -» *«

ISBN O-8109-O743-7