old master drawings - Museum of Fine Arts - Florida State University

Francois Boucher(1703-1770)FrenchMore than any other artist, François Boucher(1703–1770) is associated with the formulation of themature Rococo style and its dissemination throughoutEurope. He worked in every medium and every genreand found wide reproduction in print form. He was alsohighly adept at marketing his work, providing designsfor all manner of decorative arts, from porcelain totapestry.For Boucher, drawings played a multitude ofroles. They were important in the preparation ofpaintings and as designs for printmakers. They alsobecame finished works of art for the growing market of1collectors. For his major canvases, Boucher followedstandard studio practices of the time, working out theoverall composition and then making chalk studies for individual figures, orgroups of figures. Two Winged Putti, for example, is a study for a pair ofBoucher's trademark dimpled putti in theforeground of Apollo Revealing His Divinity toIssé (1750). Oil and gouache sketches werecommon components of Boucher's workingprocess in the preparation of majorcommissions, although he increasingly madesketches as independent works.Boucher's delicate, lighthearteddepictions of classical divinities and welldressedFrench shepherdesses delighted thepublic. He was considered the mostFrancois Boucher, Boucherd’apres Lundberg, 174 ,oil on canvas, Louvre.fashionable painter of his day. Boucher'ssentimental, facile style was too widely imitatedand fell out of favor during the rise ofneoclassicism.Francois Boucher, Two Winged Putti, 1748-50, Black chalk, brush and gray wash,heightened with white chalk, on beige paper,The Metropolitan Museum of Art.Artist Biographies Page 13