François Boucher

The Dream of Saint Joseph

VAT reduced rate

Lot Closed

December 5, 03:20 PM GMT

Estimate

40,000 - 60,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Private Collection, Japan

François Boucher

Paris 1703 - 1770

The Dream of Saint Joseph

oil on canvas

unframed: 73.5 x 92.4 cm.; 28 7/8 x 36 3/8 in.

framed: 100.2 x 117.2 cm.; 39 1/2 x 46 1/8 in.

Private collection, Paris;
By inheritance to Bernard Chesnais, Paris, by 1984;
Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Gentleman'), London, Christie's, 21 April 1989, lot 68;
Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 15 October 1998, lot 40.

J.-L. Bordeaux, François Le Moyne (1688-1737) and his generation, Paris 1984, p. 31, reproduced fig. 367;
A. Laing, in François Boucher 1703-1770, exh. cat., New York 1986 ed., p. 91, under cat. no. 1, reproduced fig. 70 (erroneously described as on the Paris art market); and Paris 1986-87 ed., p. 96, reproduced p. 97, fig. 70 (as in a private collection).

Identified by Alastair Laing as one of Boucher's earliest surviving works, dating to circa 1721-24, painted while the artist was working in the studio of his first master, François Le Moyne. Dr. Jean-Luc Bordeaux points out that the angel appears strongly indebted to that in Le Moyne's Adoration of the Shepherds, of 1721,¹ a preparatory drawing for which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 61.130.5).²

¹ See Bordeaux 1984, p. 85, cat. no. 29, reproduced fig. 25.

² https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/337674