The death of Meleager

A study for the picture of the same subject datable around 1723 and illustrated in P. Rosenberg, 'The mysterious beginings of the young Boucher' in Franois Boucher 1703-1770, exhib. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986, p. 107, fig. 81. The death of Mlager was, along with its pendant of The birth of Mlager, in the collection of the painter Dandr-Bardon and was included in his sale on 23 June 1783, lot 5. The pair was described five years later in the Montesquiou sale as 'Deux belles esquisses reprsantant la naissance et la mort de Mlagre. Ces deux belles compositions sont richement ornes de figures et de la plus belle couleur' in A. Ananoff, Franois Boucher, Lausanne and Paris, 1976, nos. 7-8. Boucher painted at least another version of this subject, now in the Muse Bargoin, Clermont-Ferrand.
The drawing is comparable in style to a group of sheets engraved for Father Gabriel Daniel, Histoire de France published in 1729. Four lot) and another 27 are in the Louvre, J. Guiffrey and P. Marcel, Inventaire gnral des Dessins du Muse du Louvre et du Muse de Versailles, Ecole Franaise, Paris, 1909, nos. 2163-2189 (as Cazes).