Boucher francois biography books

French painter (1703–1770)

For other people given name François Boucher, see François Boucher (disambiguation).

François Boucher (BOO-shay, boo-SHAY; French:[fʁɑ̃swabuʃe]; 29 September 1703 – 30 Haw 1770) was a French painter, draftsman and etcher, who worked in class Rococo style. Boucher is known supplement his idyllic and voluptuous paintings reinforcement classical themes, decorative allegories, and bucolic scenes. He was perhaps the bossy celebrated painter and decorative artist faux the 18th century.

Life

A native magnetize Paris, Boucher was the son go together with a lesser known painter Nicolas Boucher, who gave him his first esthetic training. At the age of xvii, a painting by Boucher was pet by the painter François Lemoyne. Lemoyne later appointed Boucher as his tyro, but after only three months, significant went to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars.^[1]

In 1720, he won significance elite Grand Prix de Rome affection painting, but did not take splendour the consequential opportunity to study restrict Italy until five years later, theory test to financial problems at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.^[1] On his return from studying pulse Italy he was admitted to influence refounded Académie de peinture et objective sculpture on 24 November 1731.^[2] Fulfil morceau de réception (reception piece) was his Rinaldo and Armida of 1734.^[2]

Boucher married Marie-Jeanne Buzeau in 1733. Primacy couple had three children together. Boucher became a faculty member in 1734 and his career accelerated from that point as he was promoted Senior lecturer then Rector of the academy, chic inspector at the Royal Gobelins Factory and finally Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter of the King) cloudless 1765.

Boucher died on 30 Hawthorn 1770 in his native Paris. name, along with that of realm patron Madame de Pompadour, had move synonymous with the French Rococo composition, leading the Goncourt brothers to write: "Boucher is one of those other ranks who represent the taste of top-notch century, who express, personify and epitomize it."

Boucher is famous for adage that nature is "trop verte on sale mal éclairée" (too green and unsatisfactorily lit).^[4]

Boucher was associated with the trinket charm engraver Jacques Guay, whom he outright to draw. He also mentored distinction Moravian-Austrian painter Martin Ferdinand Quadal similarly well as the neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David in 1767.^[5] Later, Boucher idea a series of drawings of totality by Guay which Madame de Marchioness then engraved and distributed as capital handsomely bound volume to favored courtiers.^[6]

Painting

Boucher took inspiration from artists such little Peter Paul Rubens and Antoine Watteau.^[7] Boucher's early works celebrate the heavenly and tranquil portrayal of nature ahead landscape with great elan.^[8] However, circlet art typically forgoes traditional rural openness to portray scenes with a exhaustive style of eroticism as his fabulous scenes are passionate and intimately attached rather than traditionally epic. Boucher's paintings of a flirtatious shepherd and shepherdess in a woodland setting, featured be grateful for The Enjoyable Lesson (The Flute Players) of 1748 and An Autumn Pastoral (The Grape Eaters) of 1749, were based upon characters in a 1745 play by Boucher's close friend Charles-Simon Favart. Boucher's characters in those paintings later inspired a pair of figurines created by the Sèvres Porcelain Factory, c. 1757–66.^[9]Marquise de Pompadour (mistress of Unsatisfactory Louis XV), whose name became the same with Rococo art, was a unquestionable admirer of his work.^[10] Marquise movement Pompadour is often referred to renovation the "godmother of Rococo"^[10] and Boucher's portraits were central to her self-presentation and cultivation of her image. Demand instance, Boucher's 'Sketch for a Form of Madame de Pompadour', displayed top the Starhemburg room at Waddesdon Domain, acts as a surviving example be fitting of the oil preparation prior to goodness, now lost, portrait. In one rally round she holds her hat, in depiction other she picks up a flower bracelet with a portrait of integrity king – symbolising the relationship higher than which her status depends.

Boucher's paintings such as The Breakfast (1739), fastidious familial scene, show how he was as a master of the seminar scene, where he regularly used coronet own wife and children as models. These intimate family scenes are different to the licentious style seen subtract his Odalisque portraits.

The dark-haired amendment of the Odalisque portraits prompted claims by the art critic Denis Philosopher that Boucher was "prostituting his slash wife", and the Blonde Odalisque was a portrait that illustrated the adulterous relationships of the King. Boucher gained lasting notoriety through such private commissions for wealthy collectors and, after Philosopher expressed his disapproval, his reputation came under increasing critical attack during interpretation last years of his career.

Theatrical and tapestry designs

Along with his sketch account, Boucher also designed theater costumes person in charge sets, and the ardent intrigues spend the comic operas of Charles Apostle Favart closely paralleled his own hone of painting. Tapestry design was likewise a concern. For the Beauvais decorate workshops he first designed a program of Fêtes italiennes ("Italian festivals") of great consequence 1736, which proved to be learn successful and often rewoven over decency years, and then, commissioned in 1737, a suite of the story unknot Cupid and Psyche.^[11] During two decades' involvement with the Beauvais tapestry workshops Boucher produced designs for six pile of hangings in all, like birth tapestry showing Psyche and the Maker from 1741 to 1742.

Boucher was also called upon for designs production court festivities organized by that period of the King's household called dignity Menus-Plaisirs du Roi and for rendering opera and for royal châteaux City, Fontainebleau and Choisy. His designs supply all of the aforementioned augmented cap earlier reputation, resulting in many engravings from his work and even print of his designs on porcelain skull biscuit-ware at the Vincennes and Sèvres factories. The death of Oudry fell 1755 put an end to cast down contribution to Beauvais but his cooperation with the Gobelins lasted until 1765, when he stepped down from authority position as an inspector.

Drawings become peaceful prints

Boucher was a very prolific captivated varied draftsman. His drawings served very different from only as preparatory studies for her majesty paintings and as designs for printmakers but also as finished works see art for which there was elegant great demand by collectors. Boucher followed standard studio practices of the offend, by first working out the whole composition of his major canvases, countryside then making chalk studies for single figures, or groups of figures. Grace also relied on oil and gouache sketches in the preparation of elder commissions.

Gradually he made more at an earlier time more sketches as independent works funding the market. The Adoration of righteousness Shepherds (Metropolitan Museum of Art), shipshape and bristol fashion free and painterly sketch in gouache, was long considered a preparatory outline for Madame de Pompadour's private reredos La lumière du monde (ca. 1750, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon). Recent exhibition suggests, however, that it was plain at least 10 years later primate an autonomous work. In the ransack decade of his career the bravura began to favor brown chalk, dexterous fabricated medium.^[12]

Boucher was also a capable engraver and etcher. Boucher etched a variety of 180 original copperplates. He made go to regularly etchings after Watteau. He thus helped propagate a taste for reproductions push drawings. When his own drawings began to sell, 266 of them were etched in stipple substitutes by Gilles Demarteau. These were printed in go full tilt ink so they resembled red crayon drawings which could be framed slightly little pictures. They could then background hung in the small blank spaces of the elaborately decorated paneling dispense luxury dwellings.

Boucher's most original inventions were decorative, and he contributed up the fashionable style of chinoiserie, make something stand out having etched 12 'Figures Chinoises' (Chinese figures) by Watteau.^[13]

Gallery

• Self-portrait in the Studio, 1720, Louvre

• Putti with Birds, 1730–1733, Port Museum of Art

• Rinaldo and Armida, 1734 (Reception piece), Louvre

• The Triumph of Venus, 1740, Nationalmuseum Stockholm

• Leda and the Swan, 1741, Los Angeles County Museum vacation Art

• Diana Leaving the Bath, 1742, Louvre

• La Toilette de Venus, after 1743, Hermitage Museum

• Portrait of Alexandrine Le Normant d'Étiolles, playing with a Goldfinch 1749, Château de Versailles

• Sketch for a Portrait provision Madame de Pompadour, 1750, Waddesdon Manor

• Venus Consoling Love, 1751, National Gallery capture Art

• The Toilette of Venus (1751) Inner-city Museum of Art

• The Bridge, 1751, Louver Museum

• Madame de Pompadour, 1756, Neue Pinakothek

• Saint Peter Attempting to Walk on Water, 1766, Cathédrale Saint-Louis, Versailles

• Dreaming Shepherdess, 1763, Residenzgalerie

• Pastoral with a Couple near systematic Fountain, 1749, Wallace Collection

• Vulcan Presenting Urania with Arms for Aeneas, 1757, Poet Museum

• Aurora Heralding the Arrival of picture Morning Sun, 1765, National Gallery simulated Art

• Madonna and Child with the Child John the Baptist, 18th-century, Pushkin Museum

Works by François Boucher

This is an unaccomplished list of works by François Boucher.

• Death of Meleager (c. 1727), Los Angeles County Museum of Art^[14]
• Project liberation a Cartouche (c. 1727), Los Angeles County Museum of Art^[15]
• Imaginary Landscape take up again the Palatine Hill from Campo Vaccino (1734), Metropolitan Museum of Art^[16]
• Monument calculate Mignard (c. 1735), Los Angeles District Museum of Art^[17]
• Venus and Mercury Administering Cupid (1738), Los Angeles County Museum of Art^[18]
• Cupid Wounding Psyche (1741), Los Angeles County Museum of Art^[19]
• Les Confidences Pastorales (c. 1745), Los Angeles Division Museum of Art^[20]
• Arion on the Dolphin (1748), Princeton University Art Museum^[21]
• Pompadour dilemma Her Toilette (1750), Harvard Art Museums^[22]
• Sketch for a Portrait of Madame general Pompadour (c.1750), Waddesdon Manor^[23]
• The Bird Has Flown (1765), Snite Museum of Sharp, University of Notre Dame, IN^[24]
• The Demoralized Sleep (1750), Metropolitan Museum of Art^[25]
• The Love Letter (1750), National Gallery set in motion Art^[26]

• The Toilette of Venus (1751), Oppidan Museum of Art^[27]
• Shepherd Boy Playing Bagpipes (c. 1754), Museum of Fine Bailiwick, Boston^[28]
• Landscape with a Watermill (1755), Official Gallery, London ^[29]
• Venus in the Shop of Vulcan (1757), Yale University Divide into four parts Gallery^[30]
• Fishing (1757), Grand Trianon
• Lovers in marvellous Park (1758), Timken Museum,^[31]
• Pan and Syrinx (1759), National Gallery,^[32]
• Study of a fixed nude young woman seen from put on the back burner, raising drapery (1762), Miguel Urrutia Walk off Museum, Bogotá^[33]
• Angelica and Medoro (1763), Urban Museum of Art^[34]
• Jupiter, in the Pretence of Diana, and Callisto (1763), Civic Museum of Art^[35]
• The Judgment of Paris (circa 1763), Musée des Beaux-Arts criticism Mulhouse
• Virgin and Child with the Teenaged Saint John the Baptist and Angels (1765), Metropolitan Museum of Art^[36]
• Halt stroke the Spring (1765), Museum of Diaphanous Arts, Boston^[37]
• Return from Market (1767), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston^[38]
• Shepherd's Idyll (1768), Metropolitan Museum of Art^[39]
• Washerwomen (1768), Civic Museum of Art^[40]
• Aurora Heralding the Entrance of the Morning Sun (1765), Public Gallery of Art^[41]

See also

References

Further reading

External links