Executed with the freedom and gusto that made Boucher the preeminent force in French art during the 18^th century, and his drawings so keenly sought after by collectors from his lifetime through to the present day, this fine sheet, drawn in a combination of black and white chalk, on blue paper, is a captivating and highly characteristic example of the Frenchman’s work as a draughtsman.

Here the artist has depicted a full length female figure, lying on her front, her left arm outstretched. While the pose is highly reminiscent of some of Boucher’s most iconic drawings from earlier in his career, such as Study of a young girl lying on her front,¹ which relates to Boucher’s erotically charged L’Odalisque,² the voluminous silk dress, heaped around the body of his model in the present work, adds a degree of restraint that is so clearly absent in these other two nudes.

Though previously linked on stylistic grounds to two drawings,³ both of which are connected with Boucher’s painting La Pipée aux Oiseaux,⁴ Alastair Laing, who has recently reexamined the drawing in the original and reaffirmed the attribution to Boucher, has proposed a revised dating of circa 1760-65. Though no connection to any other painting by the artist has so far been identified, Laing believes that the Loyd drawing was probably done for, or derived from, one of the main figures in a pastoral scene, or possibly a landscape.

^1. See sale, London, Sotheby’s, 5 July 2000, lot 57 (£223,500)
^2. A. Ananoff, François Boucher, Lausanne and Paris 1976, vol. I, p. 379, no. 264, fig. 789, reproduced
^3. Ibid., vol. II, p. 22, no. 324/1, fig. 939, reproduced and no. 324/11
^4. Ibid., p. 21, no. 324/a, fig. 935, reproduced