Old Master Drawings
Old Master Drawings
François Boucher
Head of a young woman
Auction Closed
January 27, 05:29 PM GMT
Estimate
12,000 - 18,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
François Boucher
Paris 1703 - 1770
Head of a young woman
Black chalk heightened with white;
bears attribution in black chalk on the mount, lower centre: F. Boucher and bears numbering lower right, in pen and brown ink: 111, also bears inscriptions in pen and brown ink, on the reverse of the mount: Fr. Boucher. Kopf eines jungen Mädchens. Profilansicht. fol. / Kreide, Weiss gehöht auf grau. Pap... / 1865 3. Apr. aus L. Döll's Nachlasse (inscription taken from the Ludwig Döll Sale catalogue - see Provenance)
349 by 249 mm; 13 ⅞ by 9 ⅞ in
his sale, Leipzig, C.G. Boerner, 3 April 1865, lot 101;
Karl Ernst Henrici, (1854-1915), Berlin,
his posthumous sale, Heidelberg, 21-23 June 1917, lot 222, reproduced;
Sale, Heidelberg, 29-30 May 1918, lot 74, reproduced;
Private collection, Germany
This attractive head study of a young woman seen in profile is a fine example of one of François Boucher’s elegantly rendered Têtes de Femmes that were most probably executed as independent works of art. Similar graceful faces populate his painted compositions and a closely comparable female head appears in the painting Cupid a Captive in the Wallace Collection, dated circa 1754.1Another comparable head study with similarly coiffed hair and expressive large eyes was in the collection of Monsieur Bergeret when it was engraved by Demarteau.2
Ludwig Friedrich Doll, the first recorded owner, was an artist known for historical subjects and especially portraits of the Saxe-Cobourg court. His father, Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Doll (1750-1816) was a sculptor who studied with Houdon in Paris and settled in Gotha. His collecting activity is unknown but it is interesting to note that he was in Paris at the time of Boucher's posthumous sale in 1771.
We are grateful to Alastair Laing for endorsing the attribution to Boucher, upon seeing an image of the drawing.
1. A. Ananoff, François Boucher, Lausanne/Paris 1976, vol. 2, pp. 119-122, cat. no. 429
2. P. Jean-Richard, L'oeuvre gravé de François Boucher: François Boucher dans la collection Edmond de Rothschild, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins Collection Edmond de Rothschild, Inventaire général des gravures: École française, I, Paris 1978, p. 191, no. 689, reproduced