.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This drawing illustrates François Boucher’s activity as an inventor of decorative models, creating cartouches, frames, fountains, vases, screens, designs for the theatre, etc. Many of his designs were published in print, notably by Gabriel Huquier. Boucher was close to the silversmith Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, who published his Livre d’ornemens with Huquier in 1734, containing decorative motifs very similar to the present drawing (see P. Fuhring in Emmanuelle Brugerolles, ed., Boucher, Watteau and the Origin of the Rococo. An Exhibition of 18th Century Drawings from the Collection of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, exhib. cat., Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 2003-2006, pp. 246-257). The general oval shape of the coat of arms and the crown with fleur-de-lys can be found in an engraving by Huquier entitled Developement de bordures pour une chasse du Roy, based on an original drawing by Meissonnier (P. Fuhring, Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier. Un Génie du rococo, 1695-1750, Turin and London, 1999, II, p. 335, no. 42, ill.).
Alastair Laing compares the sheet under discussion with two other designs of cartouches for a coat of arms surmounted by a fleur-de-lys wreath and supported by putti: one in 1976 with Agnews, London, the other in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, inv. PD. 52-1961 (Laing in Fuhring, op. cit., 1993, pp. 116-117, no. 65, fig. 11).
Alastair Laing compares the sheet under discussion with two other designs of cartouches for a coat of arms surmounted by a fleur-de-lys wreath and supported by putti: one in 1976 with Agnews, London, the other in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, inv. PD. 52-1961 (Laing in Fuhring, op. cit., 1993, pp. 116-117, no. 65, fig. 11).