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Artist

François Boucher

Year
Paris 1703 - 1770
Price range
250,000 – 3,000,000 USD
François Boucher is perhaps the one artist who put his stamp most emphatically on the arts in eighteenth-century France.

Boucher’s influence was at its peak between 1740 and 1760 and during that time his vision shaped all the decorative elements of the French rococo interior: paintings, tapestries, chair coverings and porcelain. He is best known for his mythological and pastoral scenes, large and small, peopled by voluptuous nymphs and suggestable shepherdesses. Boucher’s father was a painter, but Boucher was clearly a precocious talent. His potential was spotted by the reigning Premier Peintre du Roi, François Lemoyne (1688-1737) who encouraged him to enter the Prix de Rome which he duly won in 1723. Boucher’s all-important trip to Italy was delayed until 1728 but when he eventually did go, he did not, as was expected, study Raphael and Michelangelo. Instead he turned to baroque examples, notably Castiglione, whose rustic subject-matter and self-consciously painterly manner exerted an enduring influence on the young French artist.

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Selected artworks
Market

Top 3 auction prices

2,084,507 $
2005
2,098,500 $
2013
2,405,000 $
2014

Details

The sales are: Christie’s London – 6 Jul 2005 lot 45 (1,184,000 GBP), Sotheby’s New York – 31 Jan 2013 lot 91, Sotheby’s New York – 30 Jan 2014 lot 125.
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Books on François Boucher

Colin Bailey, ed., Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David, exh. cat., New York and Fort Worth, 1992.

Alastair Laing, J. Patrice Marandel and Pierre Rosenberg, François Boucher, 1703-1770, exh. cat., New York, 1986.

Alexandre Ananoff and Daniel Wildenstein, François Boucher, Paris, 1976.

Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, French Eighteenth-Century Painters: Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, La Tour, Greuze, Fragonard, 1880-2, trans. Robin Ironside, Ithaca, 1981.

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