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Lot Essay
This nude looking down at the putto by her feet has been compared to Venus in the lost painting The Judgment of Paris, known from a painted copy by Jacques Charlier, despite some differences in the body’s pose (Ananoff, op. cit., I, 1976, no. 270/3, fig. 804). She can also to be related to the figure of Venus in an engraving by Gilles-Edme Petit (1694-1760) after a painting made by Boucher for the cabinet of Jean-Baptiste de Montullé (Jean-Richard, op. cit., no. 1461, ill.).
Made at the end of his career in the 1760s, Boucher is here at the height of his so-called Flemish period – a reference made by the Goncourt brothers to the Rubensian treatment of the female body, both graceful and generous (A. Laing, Les Dessins de François Boucher, exhib. cat., New York, The Frick Collection, and Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 2003-2004, p. 111, under no. 35). Nudes from this period are often seen from behind and holding a drapery, and executed in the same technique and on similar dark brown paper. One example belongs to the Banco de La República in Bogotá, Colombia (inv. 3193; see Laing, op. cit., no. 35, ill.); another, from the collection of Pierre-Joseph Pigache, was sold Christie’s, Paris, 1 April 2016, lot 56.
Made at the end of his career in the 1760s, Boucher is here at the height of his so-called Flemish period – a reference made by the Goncourt brothers to the Rubensian treatment of the female body, both graceful and generous (A. Laing, Les Dessins de François Boucher, exhib. cat., New York, The Frick Collection, and Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 2003-2004, p. 111, under no. 35). Nudes from this period are often seen from behind and holding a drapery, and executed in the same technique and on similar dark brown paper. One example belongs to the Banco de La República in Bogotá, Colombia (inv. 3193; see Laing, op. cit., no. 35, ill.); another, from the collection of Pierre-Joseph Pigache, was sold Christie’s, Paris, 1 April 2016, lot 56.