François Boucher

Comte de Lauraguais;
His sale, Paris, 12 March 1772, lot 10, for 900 fr.;
Sophie Arnould de l'Opera;
Her sale, Paris, 30-31 December 1778 (added to the Natoire sale on 14 December as a supplement), lot 16;
There purchased by the Marquis de Changran;
His sale, Paris, 21-24 February 1780, lot 12;
M. Meffre;
His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 9-10 March 1863, lot 6;
Demidoff;
S.E. Khalil-Bey;
His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 16-18 January 1868, lot 73;
Anonymous sale ("Collection de C...et S..."), Paris, 16 May 1872, lot 3;
Eugène Kraemer;
His sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 28-29 April 1913, lot 4, to Meyer;
Private collection, France;
With Newhouse Galleries, New York;
Where purchased by the Helis family circa 1960;
By whom sold ("Property of the Succession of William G. Helis, Jr."), New York, Sotheby's, 11 January 1990, lot 139, for $385,000.

A. Michel, François Boucher, 1906, cat. nos. 1716, 1787;
P. de Nolhac, François Boucher, 1907, p. 159;
A. Ananoff, François Boucher, 1976, vol., p. 368, cat. no. 252, reproduced fig. 758 (as painted in 1743).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been restored. It looks well as a result and should be hung as is. The canvas has a fairly recent glue lining. No retouches of any note are visible under ultraviolet light except along the bottom edge, in a few random spots in the landscape and foliage and in a few spots in the sky in the upper right. Under examination with the naked eye, it is fairly likely that there are other retouches which are not visible under ultraviolet light which address some overall thinness. But the restoration has been very delicately carried out and the painting looks well as a result.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Alastair Laing has examined this painting firsthand and dates it to circa 1760.

Les Baigneuses depicts three young women bathing in a stream before a landscape backdrop of lush beauty.  Typical of Boucher, the scene is imbued with a sense of playfulness and, at far left, a young boy can be seen stealing a peek while his little dog looks out knowingly at the viewer.  Until the rococo period, scenes of voyeurism were usually couched in mythological themes such as Actaeon surprising Diana at her bath, or in biblical themes such as Susannah and the Elders.  Boucher would certainly have been aware of these precedents, but this work carries no moral content and is simply a charming and decorative depiction of a young boy's adventure.

Boucher's facility with both flesh tones and landscape are apparent in this picture.  The feathery foliage, changing to autumn hues at left, takes up most of the canvas.  Boucher was a key figure in the revitalization of French landscape painting in the 18^th century, a genre that had been largely neglected in favor of history painting in France in the first three decades of the 18^th century.  He began producing landscapes after his return from Italy circa 1731 and he may have been encouraged further by his association with Jean-Baptiste Oudry, with whom he worked as a designer at the Beauvais tapestry manufactory in the mid-1730s.  Oudry was known to organize sketching parties in the countryside of Arcueil and the environs of Beauvais.  However, Boucher's landscapes were always more about artifice than the precise rendering of nature, leading to the observation by the critics Edmond and Jules de Goncourt in 1881 that "...Paysagiste, Boucher ne semble avoir d'autre préoccupation que celle de sauver à son temps l'ennui de la nature" (As a landscapist, Boucher's sole preoccupation seems to have been to relieve his age from the boredom of nature).¹

Ananoff (see Literature) notes that a drawing in the British Museum may be a study for this work.  He also mentions and reproduces a small sketch that the artist Gabriel de Saint-Aubin drew of this picture in the margin of the Natoire and Arnould sale catalogue (see Provenance) which is now in the Cabinet des Estampes de la Bibliotèque National.

 

 

1.  See A. Laing, J.P. Marandel and P. Rosenberg, François Boucher, exhibition catalogue, New York 1986, p. 312.