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Lot Essay
A famous composition, this Venus is related to an engraving, in reverse, by Jean-Baptiste Michel dated 1783, where the young woman lying on drapery in a landscape looks at two doves at her feet (see P. Jean-Richard, op. cit., no. 1425, ill.).
The model is also featured in the painting The Bath of Venus or Venus consoling Love, signed and dated 1751, in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (fig. 1; inv. 739 ; A. Ananoff and D. Wildenstein, op. cit., no. 377, ill.). This canvas and its pendant, The Toilet of Venus, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (A. Laing, François Boucher, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986-1987, no. 60, ill.), were painted for the bathroom of Château Bellevue for Madame de Pompadour. There are two other drawings of the same composition, one dated 1748 (Paris, Galerie Didier Aaron, 1975), and another recently sold at Christie’s (Paris, 16-24 November 2021, lot 570).
The present study is one of the most graceful of all Boucher’s representations of the female nude. It was in the superb collection of John Postle Heseltine (1843-1929), a London stockbroker, and a printmaker in his spare time, who’s collection boasted around six hundred drawings including 32 by Rembrandt and 18 by Boucher, among which was a study (Christie’s, New York, 25 January 2007, lot 73) for the famous painting The Blonde Odalisque in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, sometimes identified as King Louis XV’s notorious mistress, Louise O’Murphy.
Fig. 1. François Boucher, The Bath of Venus. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
The model is also featured in the painting The Bath of Venus or Venus consoling Love, signed and dated 1751, in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (fig. 1; inv. 739 ; A. Ananoff and D. Wildenstein, op. cit., no. 377, ill.). This canvas and its pendant, The Toilet of Venus, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (A. Laing, François Boucher, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986-1987, no. 60, ill.), were painted for the bathroom of Château Bellevue for Madame de Pompadour. There are two other drawings of the same composition, one dated 1748 (Paris, Galerie Didier Aaron, 1975), and another recently sold at Christie’s (Paris, 16-24 November 2021, lot 570).
The present study is one of the most graceful of all Boucher’s representations of the female nude. It was in the superb collection of John Postle Heseltine (1843-1929), a London stockbroker, and a printmaker in his spare time, who’s collection boasted around six hundred drawings including 32 by Rembrandt and 18 by Boucher, among which was a study (Christie’s, New York, 25 January 2007, lot 73) for the famous painting The Blonde Odalisque in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, sometimes identified as King Louis XV’s notorious mistress, Louise O’Murphy.
Fig. 1. François Boucher, The Bath of Venus. National Gallery of Art, Washington.