FRANÇOIS BOUCHER | RECTO: YOUNG MAN MESMERIZED BY A NYMPH PLAYING THE FLUTE, VERSO: FRAGMENT OF A MALE ACADEMY NUDE

With Kate de Rothschild, London, by 1989

Drawn in a refined combination of black and red chalk with abundant stumping and given a wonderful sense of luminosity through the skillful application of white heightening, the present drawing is a fine example of Boucher’s treatment of a quintessentially Rococo subject matter, that of a rustic flirtation between a seemingly besotted young man and his female companion, who plays the flute. This subject matter derives from Antoine Watteau’s L’Indiscret,¹ and was employed by Boucher himself with great finesse, in two crayon-manner engravings titled Les plaisirs innocens² as well as his Ismene et Daphnis.³

The composition of the present work is also known through an inferior version in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York,⁴ which though still regarded there as an autograph work by the artist, is notably weaker in its execution than the Rohatyn drawing.

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. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. no. 2588

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, pp. 200-201, nos. 741 and 742, reproduced

3. Ibid., no. 949

4. The Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York, inv. no. 1938-57-250