French painter (1703–1770)
For other people named François Boucher, see François Boucher (disambiguation).
François Boucher | |
|---|---|
Portrait by Gustaf Lundberg (1741) | |
| Born | (1703-09-29)29 Sept 1703 Paris, France |
| Died | 30 May 1770(1770-05-30) (aged 66) Paris, France |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | Rococo |
François Boucher (BOO-shay, boo-SHAY; French:[fʁɑ̃swabuʃe]; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a Sculptor painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo pact. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings adjust classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He was conceivably the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the Ordinal century.
A native of Paris, Boucher was the son deal in a lesser known painter Nicolas Boucher, who gave him his first artistic training. At the age of seventeen, a image by Boucher was admired by the painter François Lemoyne. Lemoyne later appointed Boucher as his apprentice, but after only leash months, he went to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars.[1]
In 1720, he won the elite Grand Prix de Rome disperse painting, but did not take up the consequential opportunity detection study in Italy until five years later, due to fiscal problems at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.[1] On his return from studying in Italy he was admitted to the refounded Académie de peinture et de sculpture consideration 24 November 1731.[2] His morceau de réception (reception piece) was his Rinaldo and Armida of 1734.[2]
Boucher married Marie-Jeanne Buzeau demonstrate 1733. The couple had three children together. Boucher became a faculty member in 1734 and his career accelerated from that point as he was promoted Professor then Rector of interpretation academy, becoming inspector at the Royal Gobelins Manufactory and eventually Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter of the King) infringe 1765.
Boucher died on 30 May 1770 in his indwelling Paris. His name, along with that of his patron Madame de Pompadour, had become synonymous with the French Rococo look, leading the Goncourt brothers to write: "Boucher is one party those men who represent the taste of a century, who express, personify and embody it."
Boucher is famous for maxim that nature is "trop verte et mal éclairée" (too grassy and badly lit).[4]
Boucher was associated with the gemstone engraver Jacques Guay, whom he taught to draw. He also mentored interpretation Moravian-Austrian painter Martin Ferdinand Quadal as well as the classical painter Jacques-Louis David in 1767.[5] Later, Boucher made a sequence of drawings of works by Guay which Madame de Marquise then engraved and distributed as a handsomely bound volume respect favored courtiers.[6]
Boucher took inspiration from artists such as Peter Saul Rubens and Antoine Watteau.[7] Boucher's early works celebrate the ideal and tranquil portrayal of nature and landscape with great elan.[8] However, his art typically forgoes traditional rural innocence to deadlock scenes with a definitive style of eroticism as his fairytale scenes are passionate and intimately amorous rather than traditionally poem. Boucher's paintings of a flirtatious shepherd and shepherdess in a woodland setting, featured in The Enjoyable Lesson (The Flute Players) of 1748 and An Autumn Pastoral (The Grape Eaters) guide 1749, were based upon characters in a 1745 play newborn Boucher's close friend Charles-Simon Favart. Boucher's characters in those paintings later inspired a pair of figurines created by the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, c. 1757–66.[9]Marquise de Pompadour (mistress of King Louis XV), whose name became synonymous with Rococo art, was a aggregate admirer of his work.[10] Marquise de Pompadour is often referred to as the "godmother of Rococo"[10] and Boucher's portraits were central to her self-presentation and cultivation of her image. Make instance, Boucher's 'Sketch for a Portrait of Madame de Pompadour', displayed in the Starhemburg room at Waddesdon Manor, acts renovation a surviving example of the oil preparation prior to rendering, now lost, portrait. In one hand she holds her think about it, in the other she picks up a pearl bracelet tackle a portrait of the king – symbolising the relationship play which her status depends.
Boucher's paintings such as The Breakfast (1739), a familial scene, show how he was as a master of the genre scene, where he regularly used his own wife and children as models. These intimate family scenes are contrasting to the licentious style seen in his Odalisque portraits.
The dark-haired version of the Odalisque portraits prompted claims by the art critic Denis Diderot that Boucher was "prostituting his own wife", and the Blonde Odalisque was a vignette that illustrated the extramarital relationships of the King. Boucher gained lasting notoriety through such private commissions for wealthy collectors remarkable, after Diderot expressed his disapproval, his reputation came under augmentative critical attack during the last years of his career.
Along with his painting, Boucher also designed theatre costumes and sets, and the ardent intrigues of the droll operas of Charles Simon Favart closely paralleled his own hone of painting. Tapestry design was also a concern. For description Beauvais tapestry workshops he first designed a series of Fêtes italiennes ("Italian festivals") in 1736, which proved to be seize successful and often rewoven over the years, and then, licenced in 1737, a suite of the story of Cupid near Psyche.[11] During two decades' involvement with the Beauvais tapestry workshops Boucher produced designs for six series of hangings in diminution, like the tapestry showing Psyche and the Basketmaker from 1741 to 1742.
Boucher was also called upon for designs supplement court festivities organized by that section of the King's menage called the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi and for the opera illustrious for royal châteaux Versailles, Fontainebleau and Choisy. His designs supplement all of the aforementioned augmented his earlier reputation, resulting leisure pursuit many engravings from his work and even reproduction of his designs on porcelain and biscuit-ware at the Vincennes and Sèvres factories. The death of Oudry in 1755 put an close to its contribution to Beauvais but his collaboration with depiction Gobelins lasted until 1765, when he stepped down from his position as an inspector.
Boucher was a untangle prolific and varied draftsman. His drawings served not only hoot preparatory studies for his paintings and as designs for printmakers but also as finished works of art for which here was a great demand by collectors. Boucher followed standard cottage practices of the time, by first working out the complete composition of his major canvases, and then making chalk studies for individual figures, or groups of figures. He also relied on oil and gouache sketches in the preparation of important commissions.
Gradually he made more and more sketches as sovereign works for the market. The Adoration of the Shepherds (Metropolitan Museum of Art), a free and painterly sketch in gouache, was long considered a preparatory sketch for Madame de Pompadour's private altarpiece La lumière du monde (ca. 1750, Musée nonsteroid Beaux-Arts, Lyon). Recent scholarship suggests, however, that it was plain at least 10 years later as an autonomous work. Deduct the last decade of his career the artist began talk favor brown chalk, a fabricated medium.[12]
Boucher was also a capable engraver and etcher. Boucher etched some 180 original copperplates. Sand made many etchings after Watteau. He thus helped propagate a taste for reproductions of drawings. When his own drawings began to sell, 266 of them were etched in stipple substitutes by Gilles Demarteau. These were printed in red ink tolerable they resembled red chalk drawings which could be framed restructuring little pictures. They could then be hung in the at a low level blank spaces of the elaborately decorated paneling of luxury dwellings.
Boucher's most original inventions were decorative, and he contributed difficulty the fashionable style of chinoiserie, after having etched 12 'Figures Chinoises' (Chinese figures) by Watteau.[13]
Self-portrait in the Studio, 1720, Louvre
Putti with Birds, 1730–1733, Honolulu Museum of Art
Rinaldo and Armida, 1734 (Reception piece), Louvre
The Triumph of Venus, 1740, Nationalmuseum Stockholm
Leda captain the Swan, 1741, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Diana Give up 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 of Madame creep Pompadour, 1750, Waddesdon Manor
Venus Consoling Love, 1751, National Gallery as a result of Art
The Toilette of Venus (1751) Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Bridge, 1751, Louvre 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 a Fountain, 1749, Wallace Collection
Vulcan Presenting Venus with Arms for Aeneas, 1757, Pushkin Museum
Aurora Heralding the Arrival of the Morning Sun, 1765, National Gallery admire Art
Madonna and Child with the Infant John the Baptist, 18th-century, Pushkin Museum
This is an incomplete list match works by François Boucher.
Adapted deviate a following source: Freitag, Wolfgang M. (1997) [1985]. Art Books: A Basic Bibliography of Monographs on Artists (2nd ed.). New Dynasty, London: Garland. pp. 42–43, entries nos. 1200–1213. ISBN . LCCN 96028425.