Francois Boucher abounds in the Wallace Collection. This superlative display of his art combines balmy pastorals inhabited by shepherds and shepherdesses, mythological subjects gleaming with gods and goddesses, and a portrait of his great patron Madame de Pompadour. The sensuous ease and loveliness of these distant worlds seduce us into believing life was perhaps once like this, in stark contrast to our own world in 2004. But all too often his pictures are tossed aside as mere froth from a decadent and decorative age, rather than being celebrated as sparkling narratives revealing Boucher’s affection for humanity and his quintessential painterliness.

Francois Boucher abounds in the Wallace Collection. This superlative display of his art combines balmy pastorals inhabited by shepherds and shepherdesses, mythological subjects gleaming with gods and goddesses, and a portrait of his great patron Madame de Pompadour. The sensuous ease and loveliness of these distant worlds seduce us into believing life was perhaps once like this, in stark contrast to our own world in 2004. But all too often his pictures are tossed aside as mere froth from a decadent and decorative age, rather than being celebrated as sparkling narratives revealing Boucher’s affection for humanity and his quintessential painterliness. In the Wallace Collection, where his works hang on silk-covered wails in rooms furnished with the Sevres porcelain and goldsmiths’ work which embraced and absorbed his style, he can be seen perfectly as the very essence of the French Rococo.

As the Wallace Collection’s Curator of Paintings pre-18oo and as a French specialist, Jo Hedley is perfectly placed to address Boucher’s art. In this delectable book, she re-assesses him as an eighteenthcentury man, imbued with history and tradition, not only in his art but in his life, a man of learning and culture, whose interests, tastes and instincts confirm him as an artist of the Enlightenment. Yet this monograph serves and enhances our understanding of more than just Boucher the painter, it also sets him in his historical context and offers a refreshing view of his sources of ideas and inspiration.

This book owes so much to the sponsorship of British Land PLC, whose Chairman John Ritblat, is also about to become Chairman of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection. In thanking him and his company for their great generosity, I also want to welcome him in his new role here, where he too will be an enlightened man of his time in the future fortunes of the Wallace Collection.

Acknowledgements

Director’s Preface

Maps of Eighteenth-Century Paris and Environs

I Boucher’s Beginnings:1703-1731

II The Rising Star of the Rococo:1731-40

III Goddesses, Princesses, Odalisques and Shepherdesses: Boucher in the 1740s

IV Pompadour’s Painter: 1750s

V Copyists and Critics: Boucher mid-1750s to1770

VI Reputation and Reaction: Boucher’s Legacy to the Present Day

Appendix

Boucher: The Muse for Sevres Porcelain and Gold Boxes in the Wallace Collection by Rosalind Savill

Notes

Further Reading

Index

Photographic Credits