Oeuvres sur Papier - Works on Paper - Jean-Luc Baroni & Marty de Cambiaire - 2022

François Boucher
Paris 1703 – 1770
23
Étude de crocodile entre les roseaux
Sanguine, craie blanche.
398 x 475 mm (15 5 /8 x 18 ¾ in.)
Cette spectaculaire représentation d’un crocodile
par François Boucher est une étude préparatoire
pour La Chasse du crocodile (Fig. 1), tableau appartenant
à une suite de peintures décoratives <strong>sur</strong>
le thème de la chasse aux animaux exotiques destinée
à orner la petite galerie des appartements de
Louis xv à Versailles et aujourd’hui conservée au
musée de Picardie à Amiens. Pour la réalisation de
cette suite décorative, une première série d’œuvres
fut commandée en 1735-36 : Jean-François de Troy
fut chargé des lions, Charles Parrocel des éléphants,
Nicolas Lancret des tigres, et Carle Van Loo des
ours. Jean-Baptiste Pater devait peindre, quant à lui,
une chasse chinoise. En 1736, on fit appel à Boucher
pour exécuter La Chasse du léopard ; il s’agissait
de sa deuxième commande royale, la première
ayant consisté en la réalisation de quatre Vertus en
grisaille pour le plafond de la chambre de la reine
1. F. Boucher, La Chasse du crocodile, Amiens, musée
de Picardie
This spectacular representation of a crocodile by
François Boucher is a preparatory study for The
Crocodile Hunt (Fig. 1), a painting belonging to
a series of decorative paintings on the theme of
hunting exotic animals intended to adorn the
small gallery of Louis xv’s apartments in Versailles
and today preserved in the museum of Picardy
in Amiens. For the realisation of this decorative
series, an initial group of works was commissioned
in 1735-36 with Jean-François de Troy to paint
the lions, Charles Parrocel the elephants, Nicolas
Lancret the tigers and Carle Van Loo the bears.
Jean-Baptiste Pater was commissioned to paint a
Chinese hunt. In 1736, Boucher was called upon
to produce The Leopard Hunt. This was his second
royal commission – the first comprised the creation
of four Virtues painted in grisaille for the ceiling of
Queen Marie Leczinska’s bedroom. The epic spirit
of his first hunt scene was so well received that
in 1738-39 Boucher was entrusted with the task
of creating a crocodile hunt to replace La Chasse
Chinoise that Pater had not had time to complete.
Van Loo and Parrocel were respectively entrusted
with the ostrich and wild bull hunts.
It is possible that Louis xv, with his great love
of hunting, was inspired in his desire to realise
a decor on the theme of exotic hunts by the
existence of the Rubenian suite made between
1615 and 1616 for his great-grandfather, the
Prince Elector Maximilian i of Bavaria – images of
which were widely disseminated through Pieter
Soutman, Jonas Suyderhoef and Willem van der
Leeuw’s engravings. To create The Leopard Hunt
and The Crocodile Hunt, Boucher naturally
turned to Rubens’ famous models through their
engraved reproductions, borrowing from The Lion
and Leopard hunt, Dresden (Gemäldegalerie Alte
Meister) and The Tiger and Leopard Hunt (Rennes,
Musée des Beaux-arts) and reinterpreting the motif
of the unseated man on a rearing horse that we
see appearing in his own Leopard Hunt. Similarly,
the position of Boucher’s leopard, lying at the feet
of the rearing horse, recalls that of the little fox
caught in the horse’s hooves in The Wolf and Fox
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