* François Boucher and Studio Paris 1703 - 1770

One of the more remarkable aspects of Boucher's artistic career is the number of finished drawings that he made during the course of his life.  Some were produced specifically for collectors and the extremely lively market in France in the 18th century, and many others were made as designs for prints.  This characteristic and indeed iconic image is clearly related to a chalk manner engraving of Le Repos de Venus made by Louis-Marin Bonnet and published in 1774, four years after Boucher's death.  According to the inscription below, it is based on a drawing in the collection of "Madame la Marquise de G...."

However, the relationship between print and drawing is complicated by the fact that there are two other drawn versions of the same subject, both now in private collections in New York City.  They were included in an insightful article by Regina Shoolman Slatkin, "Some Boucher Drawings and Related Prints" in Master Drawings, vol. 10 (1972) , no. 3, p. 276, where they were illustrated as plates 34 and 35.  In this article, Slatkin suggested that the drawing reproduced as plate 34, which was from the collections of the Comte de Bryas and Benjamin Stern and subsequently sold in London at Christie's, November 27, 1973, lot 353 (as Boucher), was the work of Bonnet or his studio.  She accepted the drawing reproduced as plate 35, formerly in E. M. Hodgkins' collection, as an autograph Boucher, though she felt that the Bryas drawing may have in fact been the model for the print.  The present drawing appears to be closer to the Hodgkins drawing in the delicacy of the handling and in the treatment of the drapery at the left  and the lower right.  

Alastair Laing is, however, doubtful that any of the known versions of Le Repos de Venus is the one that belonged to the Marquis de G...  He believes that all of them, including the present one, are probably copies of that, produced by the kind of collaboration between Boucher and his pupils described in Mannlich's Memoirs.

We are grateful to Alastair Laing for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.