This is a study, in reverse, for the blacksmith on the left of the oval picture, dated 1747, of Venus in Vulcan's Forge, A. Ananoff, François Boucher, Lausanne and Paris, 1976, no. 302, fig. 872. Boucher probably executed the present drawing before he had decided on the final composition of the picture, and eventually chose to use a counterproof of the present drawing for the composition.
Venus in Vulcan's Forge was originally commissioned in 1746 by the Directeur Général des Bâtiments Lenormant de Tournehem along with three other pictures for the apartments of the newly-wed dauphin at Versailles, J. Fack, The Apotheosis of Aeneas: a lost Royal Boucher rediscovered, Burlington Magazine, 1977, CXIX, pp. 829-30. Before the pictures were even finished the commission was reduced to two and re-directed to the King's bedroom at Marly. By 14 March 1747, they were not yet finished and Boucher recieved a letter from Tournehem: 'Je suis surpris, Monsieur, de n'avoir point entendu parler des tableaux dont vous aves été chargés pour l'apartement du Roy à Marly comme la Cour est sur le point d'y faire un voyage. Je désirerois fort qu'ils fussent placés pour ce temps..', Fack, op. cit., p. 830, note 1. The pendant of The Apotheosis of Aeneas is in a private collection in Massachusetts. The first picture was nonetheless ready to be exhibited at the Salon of the same year. The composition was re-used by Boucher for a cartoon of a tapestry woven in Beauvais, for which the sketch painted in grisaille is in the Louvre.
The drawing for the middle blacksmith, holding his hammer up, of the same technique as the present one, was with Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox in 1988, European Drawings, Recent Acquisitions, no. 63, illustrated.
Alastair Laing has kindly confirmed the attribution of the present drawing.