François Boucher

Collection of Jean de Jullienne, 1761;
M. Delestre, senior;
his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 14 December 1936, lot 36 (BI);
with Stoppenbach & Delestre, London,1988;
private collection, Paris;
with Galerie Terrades, Paris

B. Lossky, 'Les Boucher de Chanteloup au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours', in Bulletin de la Société d'Histoire de l'Art Français, 1951, p. 78, reproduced p. 80;
B. Lossky, 'L'Apollon et Issé dans l'oeuvre de François Boucher', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, November 1954, pp. 237-242, reproduced p. 239;
B. Lossky, Tours: Musée des Beaux-Arts: Peintures du XVIII^e siècle, Paris 1962, under cat. no.5;
A. Ananoff and D. Wildenstein, François Boucher, Catalogue des Peintures, Geneva 1976, vol. II, pp. 57-58, no. 355, reproduced fig. 1046;
A. Laing, P. Rosenberg et al, François Boucher: 1703-1770, exhibition catalogue, New York 1986, p. 250;
A. Laing, The Drawings of François Boucher, exhibition catalogue, New York 2003, p. 132 under cat. no. 45

This study relates to the principal figure in Boucher's highly important Apollo revealing his divinity to Issé the shepherdess, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours (fig. 1). Boucher completed the painting in 1750, one year after King Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, played the leading role in a revival of Destouches' opera Apollo and Issé performed at the Palace of Versailles. In light of Louis XV's personification as the 'Sun King', the opera was clearly an allegory of his mistress's affection, and although the circumstances of the painting's comission are somewhat unclear, it was surely ordered either by Madame de Pompadour to commemorate her homage to the king, or by the monarch in her honour. The figure of Issé has long been thought to be a portrait, but the sitter has been much debated. However, a record in the inventory made in 1794 of the paintings being removed from the Château of Châteauneuf-sur-Loire entitles the picture Apollon visitant Eglé sous la figure de feu[e] la dame Pompadour (Apollo visiting Eglé [who is] in the guise of the late lady Pompadour), makes a strong case for the King's mistress.¹

Five other drawings also to relate to the painting: a lost drawing of Apollo's head which was later engraved by Gilles Demarteau,² A Naiad embraced by the arms of another, in the Art Institute, Chicago, Two putti on the ground, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, A putto with a lyre (location unknown), and A putto holding a tambourine and an arrow aloft, in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.³ 

Alastair Laing has suggested that these drawings, and the present sheet in particular, were not necessarily preparatory for the painting, but instead were worked up from the painting, as objects to be sold to collectors in their own right.⁴ The finished nature of this sheet, and delicate use of trois crayons underlines this idea, when seen in contrast to Boucher's vigorous academy studies in black chalk and (more rarely) stumping. Mr Laing noted the careful placing of Apollo on the page, and lack of relation of the drawing's black chalk shading to that of the painting, both of which give the impression of the sheet as an autonomous work.

1. A. Laing, P. Rosenberg et al, op. cit., 1986, pp. 249-52

2. See P. Jean-Richard, L'oeuvre gravé de François Boucher dans la collection Edmond de Rothschild, Paris 1978, pp. 226-7, cat. no. 862

3. A. Laing, op. cit., 2003, p. 132

4. Ibid.