Catalogue-2014-Jean-Luc-Baroni

and Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, has been firmly dismissed by both Alastair Laing and Nicolas Lesur
(co-author of Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre 1714-1789 Premier peintre du roi, Paris, 2009), who separately
explained that Ananoff’s mistake was based on a misunderstanding of the catalogue of the Lemoyne sales
in which two paintings were placed in the same lot as Tableaux éxécutés par M. Pierre & M. François
Boucher. Ananoff illustrated a poor quality reproduction of the work and it may be that he never saw
the original, suggesting instead that the small blank space in the legend on the 1752 engraving of the
composition: Peint par Boucher de l’Acad. R le de Peinture should have been filled with the name Pierre
and an et, rather than the more logical François. As Alastair Laing also pointed out, by placing Le peintre
de paysage in the year 1732, Ananoff was in any case ruling out the possibility of Pierre (1714-1789)
being a co-author. A drawing of the little boy holding the portfolio was published as connected to the
painting by Ananoff, provenance given as formerly in the J.P. Heseltine collection (where it was attributed
to Watteau) 2 (fig.1).
In a somewhat smaller painting on panel, now in the Musée du Louvre, again entitled The Landscape
Painter 3 , Boucher depicts a younger and even more bohemian artist, painting alone in a garret. A drawing
in the Los Angeles County Museum studies the composition of the Louvre painting but the artist is older
than the one in that painting and the model is clearly the same as the young man in the present picture,
though seated in reverse 4 (fig.2). These works all appear to belong to the early 1730s and show Boucher
exploring the theme of the painter at work, using a playful but at the same time virtuoso manner. Boucher
was also perhaps wishing to highlight the deprivations suffered by young artists, thereby prefiguring a
theme which became much more common in the 19 th century. The Louvre panel, though small in scale,
has the conceit of using the composition of an actual capriccio landscape by Boucher 5 , depicted in
remarkable detail, for the canvas on the easel. The present work, again with its exceptional detail shows
another clearly realised painting within a painting but also the wonderful elements of still-life which are
gathered in the disorder of the studio: paints, jugs, baskets, onions hanging from the ceiling, candles and
books; the studio is in fact, surely, a kitchen.
2. François Boucher, The Artist in his Studio, Los Angeles
County Museum.
Anecdotal and picturesque, if not exactly realistic,
this picture belongs with a small number of genre
scenes all seemingly painted prior to 1735; these
include La belle cuisinière in the Musée Cognacq-
Jay, and the lost La belle villageoise known from a
1738 engraving by Pierre Soubeyran. As the 1986
catalogue to the François Boucher exhibition writes
of these aforementioned compositions, “It is in the
teeming detail of the setting and the prominence
accorded to the still life that these pictures appear
most Dutch” and yet whereas Dutch genre scenes
tend to show the protagonists as “exemplifications of
a social type, in Boucher the purely human interest
of the scene comes first.” Pointing out the mastery
of these scenes the catalogue also remarks upon
the puzzling fact that Boucher abandoned genre
so rapidly even though it gave him the chance to
display his virtuosity. Two chief reasons for this are
proposed: that Boucher was unwilling to compete
against Chardin in such a field and also that the
quality of his artistry and technique would not be
appreciated by the habitual collectors of Dutch
art and genre subjects. Meanwhile, he made this
exceptional example, which for its subject matter
and for the level of attention he gave to it must surely
have been close to his heart.
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