Boucher, François (1703–1770)

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BOUCHER, FRANÇOIS (1703–1770)

BOUCHER, FRANÇOIS (1703–1770), French painter, draftsman, and etcher. Boucher was born and died in Paris, where he lived out his illustrious career as one of the preeminent figures of the European art world during the eighteenth century. His father, Nicolas Bouché, was an artisan-painter with connections to the Académie de Saint Luc—a vestige of the old guild system that was eventually suppressed and superseded by the more prestigious Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Boucher was celebrated for his gallant rococo mythologies and picturesque pastorals. Over the course of his career he would rise to the highest ranks of the academy: five years before his death he was named its director and first painter to the King. It is probable that Boucher's father was his first teacher; however, the historical sources being regrettably laconic on the subject, little is known about his beginnings as an artist. In his youth he supported himself by working as an etcher and draftsman. He studied for a short time with the great colorist painter François Lemoyne and made the requisite trip to Italy to study after winning the Prix de Rome in 1723 (though without the official funding usually accorded to prizewinners). During his time in Italy, he seems to have attended most closely to the work of such baroque artists as Luca Giordano and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and learned particularly important lessons from the latter in terms of his subject matter and bravura brushwork. On Boucher's return to Paris about 1731, he set about the ambitious task of winning admission to the academy as a history painter, a goal he attained in 1734 with his reception piece Rinaldo and Armida (Musée du Louvre, Paris). By that time he had also made a name for himself as a virtuoso painter of lusciously rendered mythological subjects, such as Venus Asking Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas (1732, Louvre), Cephalus and Aurora (1733, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy) and The Rape of Europa (1732–1734, Wallace Collection, London).

Soon after his admission to the academy, Boucher began to receive official commissions from the crown and enjoyed unwavering support from the court and the academy until the end of his life. Though he had many prominent patrons, his name would become identified with that of the marquise de Pompadour, the longtime favorite of Louis XV, for whom he performed numerous functions, from painter of decorative ensembles, to portraitist, to drawing instructor. It was for the marquise that he produced some of his most spectacular canvases, including The Rising and Setting of the Sun (1753, Wallace Collection, London), and portraits such as the 1756 Portrait of Pompadour, now in Munich (Alte Pinakothek).

Boucher's association with Pompadour was one factor that fueled the increasingly hostile attitudes toward his work that began to be voiced by salon critics at midcentury, when he was at the height of his artistic powers and setting the example for many young painters of the French school. His connection to the marquise similarly affected the subsequent critical fortunes of this artist who, until recently, has been dismissed as little more than the favorite painter of frivolous and decadent aristocrats—especially of aristocratic women. Among other things, this has meant that Boucher's place in (rather than in opposition to) the culture of the Enlightenment has only recently begun to receive consideration.

The critical reaction against Boucher (and rococo art more generally) acquired its most definitive and eloquent expressions in the salons of the philosophe Denis Diderot (1713–1784), though these texts were not widely disseminated until the nineteenth century. Like earlier critics, Diderot objected to Boucher's unapologetically artificial colors, which were very often likened to women's cosmetics, and his tendency to use brilliant painterly effects and sensual subjects over substantive, edifying narrative. The painter's failure to heed the orthodoxies of aesthetic doctrines such as the hierarchy of genres and convenance (agreement) between subject matter and mode of rendering also occasioned critical commentary. The critical reaction against Boucher, the emblematic rococo artist, was not purely an artistic matter, however, but was connected to a broader context of Enlightenment ideologies concerning class and gender.

In addition to his stunning prolixity (Boucher is supposed to have produced some ten thousand drawings), what is striking about this artist is his versatility. Sought-after as much for his talents as a "decorative" painter as for his cabinet pictures, Boucher produced designs for tapestries, sculptures, theatrical sets and costumes, and porcelain. An etcher and book illustrator, he sometimes tried his hand at pastel and fan painting and is even said to have once decorated Easter eggs for Louis XV. As a teacher he was well liked, respected, and influential—his most famous pupil was Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806).

See also Academies of Art ; Diderot, Denis ; Fragonard, Jean-Honoré ; France, Art in ; Pompadour, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson ; Rococo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brunel, Georges. François Boucher. Paris, 1986.

Desboulmiers, J.-A. "Eloge de M. Boucher, premier peintre du roi et directeur de l'Académie royale de peinture & sculpture, mort le 30 mai 1770." Mercure de France (September 1770): 181–189.