François Boucher

This classic Boucher image of a young woman reclining on her stomach in the guise of Venus, is one of many variations on the same theme that Boucher executed throughout his career. Perhaps the best known versions are the oil paintings of 1751 and 1752, in Munich and Cologne¹, and the magnificent trois crayons drawing, formerly in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and now in the collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, in Boston.² Many of these paintings and drawings have been described as representations of Mademoiselle Louise O'Murphy, the young mistress of King Louis XV, an identification that Alastair Laing has worked tirelessly to debunk, but irrespective of the actual identity of the sitter, these are images of immense beauty and sensuality that encapsulate a central aspect of Boucher's art. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the numbers of works by Boucher with similar subjects, Ananoff and Wildenstein (see Literature) included the present drawing twice in their comprehensive catalogue of the artist's paintings, the first time as dated 1762, and the second time with the date misread as 1752. The latter reference does, however, correctly point out the close compositional relationship with the crayon-manner print by Demarteau, executed in 1761.³ Even at this relatively late moment in his career, Boucher worked tirelessly for the market, producing multiple versions of his most appreciated images, and it is entirely plausible that the positive reception of the print would have provoked the production of a further drawn version of the composition, executed and signed by Boucher, though perhaps with some participation from the studio. 

We are grateful to Alastair Laing, who has examined the drawing in the original, and Françoise Joulie, both of whom have confirmed the attribution.  

1. Ananoff and Wildenstein, op. cit., nos. 379 and 411 

2. A. Laing, The Drawings of François Boucher, exh. cat., New York, The Frick Collection, and Fort Worth, The Kimbell Art Museum, 2003-4, pp. 98-99, no. 29

3. P. Jean-Richard, L'Œuvre gravé de François Boucher dans la Collection Edmond de Rothschild, Paris, 1978, p. 176, no. 615