Franois Boucher (1703-1770)

Design for a Fountain

Details

Franois Boucher (1703-1770)
Boucher, F.
Design for a Fountain
black and white chalk on blue-green paper
14 x 11 in. (356 x 299 mm.)

Provenance

Albert Meyer.
Winslow and Anne Ames, Rhode Island (their stamp, not in Lugt).

Literature

S. de Ricci, Dessins du dix-huitime sicle, Collection Albert Meyer, Paris, 1935, no. 14, illustrated.
A. Ananoff, L'oeuvre dessin de Franois Boucher, Paris, 1966, no. 969, fig. 161.

Exhibited

Providence, Rhode Island, Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Winslow Ames, 1965, no. 11.
Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum and elsewhere, One hundred Master Drawings from New England Private Collections, 1973, no. 32.

Lot Essay

Alastair Laing has kindly confirmed the attribution of the present drawing to Boucher, and proposed a date late in the artist's career, recalling the earlier fountain designs published by Gabriel Huquier (for whom see lot 119) and Pierre Aveline in 1736.
The thick chalk lines are close to that of another fountain design, in the St Louis Art Museum, R. Shoolman Slatkin, Franois Boucher in North American Collections: 100 Drawings, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1973, no. 30, illustrated.