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Lot Essay
François Boucher’s numerous head studies of young women and elderly men, usually destined for the market as independent drawings, also attracted the attention of print publishers, who reproduced them in the crayon manner. Among these is one by Gilles Demarteau that is particularly close to the present sheet, for instance in the characteristic long eyelashes (P. Jean-Richard, L’Œuvre gravé de François Boucher dans la collection Edmond de Rothschild, Paris, 1978, no. 608, ill.).
Another version of the drawing with some differences was owned by Jean-Claude-Gaspard de Sireul, whose collection counted no less than fifty-one head and bust studies (posthumous sale, 3 December 1781), and later, at the end of the nineteenth century, by Gaston Le Breton (A. Ananoff, L’Œuvre dessiné de François Boucher (1703-1770), Paris, 1966, no. 301, fig. 59).
We are grateful to Françoise Joulie and Alastair Laing for confirming the attribution to François Boucher.
Another version of the drawing with some differences was owned by Jean-Claude-Gaspard de Sireul, whose collection counted no less than fifty-one head and bust studies (posthumous sale, 3 December 1781), and later, at the end of the nineteenth century, by Gaston Le Breton (A. Ananoff, L’Œuvre dessiné de François Boucher (1703-1770), Paris, 1966, no. 301, fig. 59).
We are grateful to Françoise Joulie and Alastair Laing for confirming the attribution to François Boucher.