FRANgOIS BOUCHER
58 Landscape with Figures
Red chalk on vellum; H: 30.5 cm (12 in.); W: 49.3 cm
(i9^3 /s in.)
83.GB.200
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: At bottom right corner,
collection mark of Earl Spencer (L. 1530).
PROVENANCE: Earl Spencer, Althorp; art market, New
York.
EXHIBITIONS: None.BIBLIOGRAPHY: B. Schreiber Jacoby, Francois Boucher's
Early Development as a Draughtsman (New York, 1986),
p. 299, no. ni.E.6.
IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED BY JACOBY (1986) THAT THIS
drawing, which appears to be the only landscape draw-
ing by Boucher on vellum, may have been made as a
preparatory study for his tapestry Lesfilles aux raisins et
les chasseurs, part of the Fetes italiennes, his first series pro-
duced at Beauvais. She has noted that the cottage with
the chimney at the distant left, the curved masonry ram-
part at the right, and the double arched bridge at the cen-
ter left all reappear in the tapestry in reverse. The exis-
tence of a counterproof taken from the drawing
(formerly Jean Bloch collection) also argues for this the-
sis, since the artist logically would have wished to see the
forms facing in the same direction as they eventually
would in the tapestry. Jacoby also has pointed out that
several motifs in the drawing occur in other works by
Boucher of circa 1730, such as the winding road with rich
foliage, which recurs in his painting The Washerwomen
(Clermont-Ferrand, Musee Bargoin, inv. 67.I.I8).^1
Equally, the two small figures in the lower right corner
occur with variations in a number of other composi-
tions. The date of the drawing would clearly seem to fall
around 1730-1735, which "accords with the genre of the
rustic-capriccio which Boucher introduced around 1730
wherein Northern and Italianate landscape and staffage
elements are fused in a delightful, new way" (Jacoby
1986, p. 299).i. A. Ananoff, Francois Boucher (Paris, 1976), vol. i, no. 56, fig.
280.138 FRENCH SCHOOL • BOUCHER