FRANCOIS BOUCHER
1703 – Paris – 1770
Reclining nude with outstretched arm
Black, red and white chalk on buff paper
14 ¼ x 10 ¾ ins. (36.0 x 27.0 cm.)
Provenance
Private Collection, France.
We are grateful to Alastair Laing for confirming the attribution to Francois Boucher upon first hand inspection of the drawing.
This beautifully sensuous and dynamic drawing, dated by Alastair Laing to c. 1738 – 1744, is an outstanding example of the refined and delicate manner of Boucher’s early maturity. Executed aux trios crayons, Boucher brilliantly elucidates the nude’s form through a combination of finely wrought contours in black chalk, and a broad, wash like stumping to create the shadows around her face and neck. Boucher has further enlivened these lines with subtle strokes of sanguine around the face, hands and limbs, and finally heightened the sheet with white chalk to enhance the sense of form and volume.
In its subject matter, the dynamism of the pose, and the refined treatment of accentuated outline, the present work compares closely with Boucher’s superb drawing, A Seated Female Nude (sold by Christies New York, 24 January 2008)(i), which Boucher used for his painting, Venus Consoling Love of 1751 (National Gallery of Art, Washington). Both drawings also compare in their use of a buff paper support with white heightening, and in the way Boucher has used the full extent of the sheet in his depiction of each pose.
Boucher’s art, with its sensuous charm and glamour, was perfectly attuned to the times; expressing all the beauty and none of the harshness of eighteenth century life, it was perfectly suited to the demands of his aristocratic clientele. Indeed his art was so quintessentially of the age that he soon became synonymous with the French Rococo style, leading Edmond and Jules de Goncourt famously to observe: "Boucher is one of those men who represent the taste of a century, who express, personify and embody it." (ii)
While the present work was not used directly as a study for any of Boucher’s surviving oil paintings, he may have used the pose as inspiration for the reclining nude in his painting of A Bacchante and a Satyr, signed and dated 1760 (Private collection, London), where the Bacchante adopts a similar pose but in mirror image, and without the outstretched arm.
Boucher’s work is represented in many of the great museums of the world, including the Frick Collection, the Hermitage, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum (New York), the National Gallery (London), the Prado, the Rijksmuseum and the Wallace Collection.
BIOGRAPHY OF FRANCOIS BOUCHER
Born in Paris in 1703, the son of a lace designer, François Boucher was the most celebrated decorative artist of the 18th century. At the age of 17, Boucher was apprenticed by his father to François Lemoyne, however after only three months he went to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars. Aged just 20, Boucher won the elite Grand Prix de Rome, however he did not take up the consequential opportunity to study in Italy until four years later, in 1726. On his return in 1731, he was admitted to the Académie de peinture et de sculpture as a historical painter, and became a faculty member in 1734.
Boucher’s career continued to flourish as he advanced from professor to Rector of the Academy, later becoming head of the Royal Gobelins Manufactory in 1755, and finally Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter of the King) in 1765. Boucher was also the favourite painter of the Marquise de Pompadour (1721-1764), mistress of King Louis XV.
Following his return from Italy, and having absorbed the influence of the Venetian school, and also of Watteau and Rubens, Boucher’s style rapidly matured, becoming essentially fully formed by around 1736. His subject matter was primarily mythological, which he treated in an overtly sensuous and highly decorative manner.
Boucher mastered every branch of decorative and illustrative painting, from colossal schemes of decoration for the royal châteaux of Versailles, Fontainebleau, Marly, and Bellevue, to designs for fans and slippers. In his most well known paintings he turned the traditional mythological themes into wittily indecorous scènes galantes, and he depicted the female form with delightful sensuality. Towards the end of his career, as French taste shifted towards Neoclassicism, Boucher was attacked, notably by Diderot, for the shameless sensuality of his subjects and the artifice of his palette.
Boucher’s genius was fertile and prolific, and his output included numerous decorative paintings, tapestry cartoons for the Royal Beauvais and Gobelins factories (where he eventually succeeded Carle van Loo as art director of the Gobelins tapestry factory), designs for Sèvres and Vincennes porcelain, theatre sets, portraits and even costumes for the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique and the Théâtre de la Foire. His pupils included Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732 – 1806), and Jacques-Louis David (1748 – 1825).
(i) Lot 82 (sold for $361,000). The measurements of that drawing (36.3 x 29.2 cms) are also almost identical to the present drawing.
(ii) Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-70), French Eighteenth Century Painters, 1859-1875.