François Boucher

Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. (1723-1792), London (L.2364);

Elizabeth Parke Firestone (1897-1990), Ohio and Rhode Island,

her estate sale, New York, Christie's, The Elizabeth Parke Firestone Collection: Part II: Important French Furniture, Works of Art, Old Master Paintings, Drawings and Chinese Porcelain and Jade, 22 March 1991, lot 606

As indicated at the time of the Elizabeth Parke Firestone collection sale (see Provenance) this highly finished and finely preserved sheet relates closely in pose, albeit in reverse, to that of the young woman found in the centre of the Beauvais woven tapestry Bacchus and Ariadne.¹ This tapestry belongs to a series known as the Amours des Dieux which was first manufactured in 1749, following designs by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, co-director of Beauvais, in collaboration with François Boucher.

Another drawn version of the subject, though regrettably in very compromised condition, is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.² At the time of the 1991 auction it was suggested that the present work was a preparatory study for the head of Ariadne in the aforementioned tapestry, however Alastair Laing has subsequently proposed that it was probably done in its own right, for a collector or to be engraved, and then put to use by Boucher for his Ariadne. Laing dates the drawing to the late 1740s and notes that Sir Joshua Reynolds’ ownership of the sheet further supports the premise that the present work is Boucher’s prime version of the subject. Reynolds visited Paris on three occasions, in 1752, 1768 and 1771 and it is likely that on his second visit Sir Joshua met Boucher, later recording his visit to the artist's lodgings in the Louvre.³ Assuming that Reynolds acquired the drawing as a gift from Boucher, as Laing hypothesizes, it seems improbable that the Frenchman would have given his English counterpart a drawing of anything less than excellent quality.

We are grateful to Alastair Laing for endorsing the attribution to Boucher and for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.

1. See E. Standen, The 'Amours des Dieux': A Series of Beauvais Tapestries after Boucher, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 19/20, 1986, pp. 65-6, fig. 1
2. A. Ananoff, François Boucher, Lausanne 1976, vol. II, no. 344/6, fig. 998
3. Sir J. Reynolds, Discourses, London 1784, pp. 224-5