The Collection of Ambassador and Mrs. Felix Rohatyn

The Collection of Ambassador and Mrs. Felix Rohatyn

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 20. FRANÇOIS BOUCHER | HEAD-AND-SHOULDERS STUDY OF A YOUNG WOMAN WITH A BIRD ON HER RIGHT WRIST.

FRANÇOIS BOUCHER | HEAD-AND-SHOULDERS STUDY OF A YOUNG WOMAN WITH A BIRD ON HER RIGHT WRIST

Auction Closed

October 14, 09:49 PM GMT

Estimate

30,000 - 40,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

FRANÇOIS BOUCHER

Paris 1703 - 1770

HEAD-AND-SHOULDERS STUDY OF A YOUNG WOMAN WITH A BIRD ON HER RIGHT WRIST


Black and red chalk and pastel;

signed and dated, lower left: f. Boucher 1768

12⅛ by 9¼ in.; 312 by 240 mm.

Jacques Doucet, Paris;

His sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 5 June 1912, lot 3;

Where acquired by Sultan Bey;

With Arhold, Inc., Monte Carlo

M. Tourneux, "La collection Doucet: pastels et dessins", Les Arts, December 1904, p. 26, reproduced;

P. de Nolhac, Boucher premier peintre du roi, Paris 1907, p. 168;

A. Ananoff, L'Oeuvre Dessiné de François Boucher (1703-1770), Paris 1966, vol. I, pp. 115-116, cat. no. 377, reproduced fig. 78

This delightful sheet, full of Rococo sensibility and beautifully executed in a combination of black and red chalk and abundant pastel, is a highly characteristic example of one of Boucher’s preferred subjects – that of a coquettish young woman gazing at a songbird, in this instance perched on her wrist.


The drawing, which is signed and dated 1768, depicts a beautiful young woman in profile, with her hair intricately braided and adorned with a pink posy. A songbird perches on her wrist, and she stares wistfully down towards it, listening to its song. Her clearly defined, yet delicate profile can be compared, both in appearance and stylistically to a similar sheet depicting the Head of a Young Woman, in the collection of the Harvard University Art Museums.1


The song bird, as seen in the Rohatyn sheet, was clearly a motif of which Boucher was particularly fond. Indeed, there are at least three engravings, by Jean Daullé (L'oiseau chéri),2 Gilles Demarteau (Tête de Diane à la colombe)3 and Jean Jacques Flipart (L'Oiseau privé)4 after designs by Boucher, that similarly feature this particularly attractive combination of subject matter. The present work does not correspond precisely to any of these engravings and the manner in which it is drawn, a combination of energetic draughtsmanship coupled with highly finished passages, suggests that this drawing may have been intended as a finished work of art in its own right.


We are grateful to Alastair Laing for endorsing the attribution to Boucher upon first hand inspection of the drawing, and for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.


1. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Art Museums, Inv. no. 1978.29

2. P. Jean-Richard, L'oeuvre gravé de François Boucher: François Boucher dans la collection Edmond de Rothschild, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins Collection Edmond de Rothschild, Inventaire général des gravures: École français, I, Paris 1978, p. 169, no. 580, reproduced

3. Ibid., no. 836, reproduced

4. Ibid., no. 1011, reproduced