1 / 3
Premium Le Floc'h Maison de ventes
4
-
François BOUCHER (1703–1770).
See original version (French)
4
-
François BOUCHER (1703–1770).
See original version (French)
Estimate €5,000 - €7,000
Voluntary lot
Description
François BOUCHER (1703–1770).
A young boy holding a basket of flowers.
Black chalk, red chalk, white chalk, with highlights in blue and green pastel on buff paper (slightly sun-faded). Mounted flush, with a black ink border added.
Height: 31 cm – Width: 20 cm
Accompanied by an expert’s report by Françoise Joulie
dated 21 January 2020.
Note: Children dressed like little adults are a distinctive feature of François Boucher’s work and a new concept he introduced to art lovers after 1745; in 1748, the Vincennes porcelain works produced its first children in soft-paste porcelain, and after relocating to Sèvres, it chose to produce ‘Enfants Boucher’ to launch the new, now royal, porcelain works. A second series of children’s figures was later devised for Sèvres by Falconet, given the success of the first. In Beauvais and, above all, at the Gobelins, during the same period of the 1750s, this trend for childhood was accompanied by designs for chairs and screens, all inspired by Boucher. These children, dressed like little adults and engaged in everyday activities, were also the subjects of paintings; the decorative panels in the Frick Collection in New York are the most famous, but Boucher was also commissioned to produce individual paintings or pairs of works on these childhood themes, either in oil or in pastel. Such was his success that in the 1760s Boucher produced finished drawings for art lovers, always in similar dimensions (around 30 by 20 cm), using techniques involving two or three pencils, sometimes enhanced with pastel, intended to be framed; these include ‘The Little Peasant’, ‘The Young Treasure Hunter’, ‘Child Playing with a Dog’, ‘The Little Gardener’, and here, ‘Young Boy Holding a Basket of Flowers’…. This drawing corresponds exactly, in terms of its subject, dimensions (11.6 inches by 7.3 inches) and technique, to one of those described in the 1777 sale of the collector Randon de Boisset, under lot no. 364, acquired by Desmarets. In the Randon de Boisset collection, this drawing had a companion piece depicting a little girl seen from behind, holding a bouquet and a basket of flowers, which is no longer accounted for. Our drawing also featured in the collection of Jean-Claude Gaspard de Sireul; his sale, Paris, Boileau, 3 December 1781 & seq., lot 52, 120 livres (Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastel Artists before 1800, online edition: http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Boucher.pdf#search="J.173.7135" , our drawing illustrated on p. 19, J.173.7135).
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
You may also like