.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The present painting belongs to the period of Boucher's trip to Italy, as J. P. Marandel has observed: he dates it to 1730-31 (op. cit.), though he notes that it could also have been made in Paris just prior to Boucher's departure; in any event, it is among the artist's earliest surviving paintings. As Marandel notes, it bears a striking similarity in its energetic brushwork to Joseph presenting his Father and Brothers to Pharaoh (The Columbia Museum, South Carolina; Ananoff no. 9), a painting dated by Alastair Laing (in François Boucher 1703-1770, New York, Detroit, Paris, 1986-7, no. 5, pp. 99-101) to 1723-6. It might also be compared to other related subjects by Boucher from the same early period in his career that depicts shepherds leading their flocks to the fountains, including the charming La Fontaine in the J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville (Ananoff, no. 46).
Marandel notes that the oval composition of Les Bergers à la Fontaine is remarkably similar to an allegorical wash drawing by Boucher depicting The Genius of the Artist torn between Nature and the Antique (location unknown; illustrated in Laing, op. cit., p. 59, fig. 40) that Laing observed was itself inspired by an etching by the seventeenth-century Genoese master Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. Certainly the works of Castiglione, who was a gifted animal painter and was celebrated for depicting herds of animals in complex 'caravan' scenes, influenced the subject matter and style of this and other early pastoral scenes by Boucher.
Until the 1970s, the present painting was known only through an engraving by Etienne Fessard that was published in 1756. We are grateful to Alastair Laing for noting that another version of this painting was sold at Sotheby's, Monaco, 8 February 1981, lot 82 and that the Monaco picture could in fact relate to the engraving, rather than the present lot.
Marandel notes that the oval composition of Les Bergers à la Fontaine is remarkably similar to an allegorical wash drawing by Boucher depicting The Genius of the Artist torn between Nature and the Antique (location unknown; illustrated in Laing, op. cit., p. 59, fig. 40) that Laing observed was itself inspired by an etching by the seventeenth-century Genoese master Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. Certainly the works of Castiglione, who was a gifted animal painter and was celebrated for depicting herds of animals in complex 'caravan' scenes, influenced the subject matter and style of this and other early pastoral scenes by Boucher.
Until the 1970s, the present painting was known only through an engraving by Etienne Fessard that was published in 1756. We are grateful to Alastair Laing for noting that another version of this painting was sold at Sotheby's, Monaco, 8 February 1981, lot 82 and that the Monaco picture could in fact relate to the engraving, rather than the present lot.