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Lot Essay
In 1736 François Boucher embarked on what would be the one of the most successful episodes of his career. Jean-Baptiste Oudry, the new director of the tapestry manufactory at Beauvais, invited Boucher to design the tapestry cartoons for the Beauvais weavers. This move would diffuse Boucher's designs across Europe, and would provide great financial reward for both Boucher himself and the tapestry manufactory. The impact of Boucher's designs is perhaps best expressed by the directors of the rival manufactory of Gobelins, who wrote in 1754: '...for almost the last twenty years the Beauvais Manufactory has only been sustained by the appealing pictures made for it by Mr. Boucher... Leaving the merits and demerits of these works aside, private individuals without much connoisseurship will always go for novelty and be satisfied with the designs exhibiting the composition and manner of the said Mr. Boucher' (see A. Laing, in the catalogue of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, op. cit., 1986, p. 191).
La Bohémienne and La Pêcheuse (see the following lot) served as models for the tapestries in the series popularly known as Les Fêtes Italiennes, executed at Beauvais between 1736-62 (J. Badin, La Manufacture de Tapisseries de Beauvais, Paris, 1909, p. 60, nos. 2 and 4). The series of fourteen subjects outlined by Badin and subsequent writers has been reduced most recently to a series of eight pieces, in executed in two sets of four (see A. Laing, in The Grove Dictionary of Art, ed. J. Turner, 1996, IV, p. 514).
In her study on Les Fêtes Italiennes, Edith Standen hypothesizes on the procedures for translating the paintings into woven designs and suggests that Boucher's large models were not of the entire composition but of small groups of figures, rearranged in the course of production to form the multi-figured tapestries. Because the height of the present pair of paintings corresponds closely to the actual height of the tapestries, but the width exceeds that of the looms, Standen contends that it was from these canvases that the cartoons would have been made, cut into strips and placed under the warp of the looms. Alastair Lang, to whom we are grateful, has noted differences in the background between the present pictures and the tapestries, noting that it is likely that the present pictures were re-worked at various stages after the cartoons had been made.
Only two other models by Boucher for Les Fêtes Italiennes are known: Le Callant colporteur for La Curiosité (Musée Baron Martin, Gray, Houte Saône) and Seated Woman with two children for La Danse (Musée du Louvre, Paris).
La Bohémienne and La Pêcheuse (see the following lot) served as models for the tapestries in the series popularly known as Les Fêtes Italiennes, executed at Beauvais between 1736-62 (J. Badin, La Manufacture de Tapisseries de Beauvais, Paris, 1909, p. 60, nos. 2 and 4). The series of fourteen subjects outlined by Badin and subsequent writers has been reduced most recently to a series of eight pieces, in executed in two sets of four (see A. Laing, in The Grove Dictionary of Art, ed. J. Turner, 1996, IV, p. 514).
In her study on Les Fêtes Italiennes, Edith Standen hypothesizes on the procedures for translating the paintings into woven designs and suggests that Boucher's large models were not of the entire composition but of small groups of figures, rearranged in the course of production to form the multi-figured tapestries. Because the height of the present pair of paintings corresponds closely to the actual height of the tapestries, but the width exceeds that of the looms, Standen contends that it was from these canvases that the cartoons would have been made, cut into strips and placed under the warp of the looms. Alastair Lang, to whom we are grateful, has noted differences in the background between the present pictures and the tapestries, noting that it is likely that the present pictures were re-worked at various stages after the cartoons had been made.
Only two other models by Boucher for Les Fêtes Italiennes are known: Le Callant colporteur for La Curiosité (Musée Baron Martin, Gray, Houte Saône) and Seated Woman with two children for La Danse (Musée du Louvre, Paris).