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Lot Essay
The Bird Nesters is one of several paintings of nearly identical size, format and genre that Boucher produced shortly after his return to Paris in 1731 from his sojourn in Rome. The Egg Seller in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford and De Trois Choses en Ferez-Vous Une? (an idiomatic title best translated as 'Of These Three Things, Which Will You Do?'; several versions, the best of which is in the Musée Ephrussi de Rothschild, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat) are, like the present canvas, upright ovals depicting life-sized, half-length, rustically attired couples engaged in subtly erotic, sexually suggestive interaction. The broad paint handling and the small-featured faces of their protagonists connect these paintings with Boucher's large mythologies, Venus Requesting Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Aurora and Cephalus (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy), which are signed and dated 1732 and 1733, respectively. The Bird Nesters depicts a pretty young bird seller putting chicks in a cage as an eager suitor chats her up. The boy's casual assertiveness -the confident manner in which he rests his arm on top of the girl's birdcage, strokes one of her birds suggestively with his finger, and gazes directly into her gently diffident eyes-underscores the flirtatious undercurrent of the painting, as does the girl's ambivalent gesture of offering one small bird with her left hand while withdrawing another with the right hand. The verdant overabundance of colorful flowers that surround and ornament the pink-cheeked, fresh-faced protagonists adds to the scene's mood of blossoming fecundity. A series of four engravings by Jean Daullé, published in 1748 and based on lost paintings by Boucher, includes a closely related composition, Le Marchand d'Oiseaux ('The Bird Seller'). The engraving is appended with a verse that elucidates its theme of youthful inconstancy: 'Never let escape from their cages, neither this Shepherd - frisky and inconstant - nor this Bird - young and flighty; You will lose them both in an instant.' With his sparkling, pastel palette, fluent paint handling, and witty rendering of budding amorousness, Boucher creates in The Bird Nesters one of his most charming early confections, a moralizing allegory that smiles indulgently on the erotic impulse that drives young love.
Several copies of the painting have appeared at auction over the years (see Palais Galliera, Paris, 7 March 1975, lot 12; Christie's East, New York, 23 March 1984, lot 136; and Sotheby's, New York, 22 May 1997, lot 72). A small canvas reproducing the head of the boy was published by Ananoff as an autograph oil study for the painting (Ananoff, no. 88, I, p. 222), but may be a copy instead. An exquisite pastel of the head of the girl is in a private collection, Paris, and is certainly by Boucher himself, though it is probably an independent replica of the figure rather than a study for the painting (see A. Laing, The Drawings of François Boucher, London & New York, 2003, no. 58, pp. 160-161).
Several copies of the painting have appeared at auction over the years (see Palais Galliera, Paris, 7 March 1975, lot 12; Christie's East, New York, 23 March 1984, lot 136; and Sotheby's, New York, 22 May 1997, lot 72). A small canvas reproducing the head of the boy was published by Ananoff as an autograph oil study for the painting (Ananoff, no. 88, I, p. 222), but may be a copy instead. An exquisite pastel of the head of the girl is in a private collection, Paris, and is certainly by Boucher himself, though it is probably an independent replica of the figure rather than a study for the painting (see A. Laing, The Drawings of François Boucher, London & New York, 2003, no. 58, pp. 160-161).