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Lot Essay
Almost nothing is known of Boucher’s activities during his years in Rome (1728-1731). The young painter won the Prix de Rome in 1723, which should have guaranteed him a three-year scholarship to the French Academy, but funding for his trip and a space for him at the Academy were not immediately available, so he delayed his journey to Italy by five years, when he could pay for his own travel. Boucher later claimed to have been little impressed with the works of Michelangelo, Raphael or the classical antiquities of Rome, and he instead spent his days studying the baroque artists for whom he had greater sympathy, including Albani, Pietro da Cortona and Castiglione. He supported himself making paintings for the market, and collector Papillon de La Ferté specifically says that Boucher made ‘several exquisite little pictures in the Flemish manner’ (cited in Laing, op. cit., p. 113, no. 9, note 2), almost certainly bambochades and rural subjects, such as the present painting, which were then fashionable and associated by Italian collectors with the northern manner.
Pastorale à la fontaine (‘Pastoral Landscape with a Fountain’) is one of the finest and most beautifully preserved of these ‘exquisite little pictures’ that can be ascribed with near certainty to Boucher’s years in Rome, or immediately after his return to Paris. Like almost all of the pictures he made in this period, it is unsigned, and was at various times in the past attributed to Deshays and Fragonard – due, no doubt, to the freedom and spontaneity of its brushwork. Pastorale à la fontaine is, nonetheless, easily associated with the small group of works by Boucher that survive from the early 1730s. At its centre, a pretty young shepherdess holding a basket of flowers waters her thirsty horse at a rustic stone fountain; surrounding her are goats and sheep, a boy with cattle, and two young men, one of whom sits astride his own horse and may be accompanying her on her journey. The scene is set in a picturesque and verdant woodland and executed in a bright and richly saturated palette. The subject itself, a gathering at a public fountain, ‘is given a new physicality,’ according to Jo Hedley, ‘reflecting the lively Italian scenes Boucher probably observed while sketching fountains such as Bernini’s at the Palazzo Antamaro in Rome.’ (François Boucher, Seductive Visions, London, Wallace Collection, 2004, p. 34.)
Alastair Laing believes the present painting to be part of a group of canvases by Boucher completed immediately after his return to Paris from Rome, that also includes La famille de villageois (first recorded in the sale of Hubert Robert; Private collection; Ananoff, op. cit., no. 40), Le repos des fermiers (Massachusetts, Jeffrey Horvitz Collection), and Imaginary Landscape with the Palatine Hill from Campo Vaccino (fig. 1; dated 1734; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Ananoff, no. 101). He notes that compared to the handful of pictures convincingly ascribed to Boucher during his years in Rome, which are ‘on a small scale, painted with […] a carefully controlled brush, and visibly inspired by Dutch models’, the present painting and the group that Laing situates around it are ‘larger, looser and freer in handling, their groups of figures are more open and active, and their compositions less harmonious’ (see Laing, op. cit., p. 143). In these rustic pastorals inspired by northern European art, the outdoor peasant scenes of Jacopo Bassano, Castiglione’s caravan scenes, and, above all, Abraham Bloemaert’s farmyard scenes, as Colin Bailey observes, the fresh-faced and youthful protagonists manifest an ‘urgent gallantry’ suggestive of ‘fertility, fecundity, and burgeoning sexuality’ (‘“Details that surreptitiously explain”: Boucher as a Genre Painter,’ Rethinking Boucher, Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 2003, pp. 44-46).
Although no drawings are known that can be clearly connected to this picture, Boucher re-employed the central figure of the woman on horseback in two other paintings of the same moment: Bergère et son troupeau, formerly in the collection of Baron Henri de Rothschild (now Private collection; Ananoff, op. cit., no. 52), and the oblong version of Le pont de bois in the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg (ibid., no. 52/2).
We are grateful to Alastair Laing for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.
Pastorale à la fontaine (‘Pastoral Landscape with a Fountain’) is one of the finest and most beautifully preserved of these ‘exquisite little pictures’ that can be ascribed with near certainty to Boucher’s years in Rome, or immediately after his return to Paris. Like almost all of the pictures he made in this period, it is unsigned, and was at various times in the past attributed to Deshays and Fragonard – due, no doubt, to the freedom and spontaneity of its brushwork. Pastorale à la fontaine is, nonetheless, easily associated with the small group of works by Boucher that survive from the early 1730s. At its centre, a pretty young shepherdess holding a basket of flowers waters her thirsty horse at a rustic stone fountain; surrounding her are goats and sheep, a boy with cattle, and two young men, one of whom sits astride his own horse and may be accompanying her on her journey. The scene is set in a picturesque and verdant woodland and executed in a bright and richly saturated palette. The subject itself, a gathering at a public fountain, ‘is given a new physicality,’ according to Jo Hedley, ‘reflecting the lively Italian scenes Boucher probably observed while sketching fountains such as Bernini’s at the Palazzo Antamaro in Rome.’ (François Boucher, Seductive Visions, London, Wallace Collection, 2004, p. 34.)
Alastair Laing believes the present painting to be part of a group of canvases by Boucher completed immediately after his return to Paris from Rome, that also includes La famille de villageois (first recorded in the sale of Hubert Robert; Private collection; Ananoff, op. cit., no. 40), Le repos des fermiers (Massachusetts, Jeffrey Horvitz Collection), and Imaginary Landscape with the Palatine Hill from Campo Vaccino (fig. 1; dated 1734; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Ananoff, no. 101). He notes that compared to the handful of pictures convincingly ascribed to Boucher during his years in Rome, which are ‘on a small scale, painted with […] a carefully controlled brush, and visibly inspired by Dutch models’, the present painting and the group that Laing situates around it are ‘larger, looser and freer in handling, their groups of figures are more open and active, and their compositions less harmonious’ (see Laing, op. cit., p. 143). In these rustic pastorals inspired by northern European art, the outdoor peasant scenes of Jacopo Bassano, Castiglione’s caravan scenes, and, above all, Abraham Bloemaert’s farmyard scenes, as Colin Bailey observes, the fresh-faced and youthful protagonists manifest an ‘urgent gallantry’ suggestive of ‘fertility, fecundity, and burgeoning sexuality’ (‘“Details that surreptitiously explain”: Boucher as a Genre Painter,’ Rethinking Boucher, Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 2003, pp. 44-46).
Although no drawings are known that can be clearly connected to this picture, Boucher re-employed the central figure of the woman on horseback in two other paintings of the same moment: Bergère et son troupeau, formerly in the collection of Baron Henri de Rothschild (now Private collection; Ananoff, op. cit., no. 52), and the oblong version of Le pont de bois in the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg (ibid., no. 52/2).
We are grateful to Alastair Laing for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.