News has arrived that the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours have recently conserved four works by François Boucher (1703-1770) for their upcoming exhibition Love on Stage: François Boucher, from Theatre to Opera. The four paintings, which have been obscured for decades by a yellowed oxidised varnish, include canvases created for Madame de Pompadour and to celebrate the baroque opera Issé and Silvie. Another sketch depicting Apollo Crowning the Arts is believed to have been a project for a stage curtain for a court opera.
The exhibition, which will contain sixty works in total, will run from 4 November 2022 until 31 January 2023.
This musical painting by Boucher, depicting a Flute Player in an suitably pastoral setting, was sold recently by Sotheby’s Paris in June 2022.
