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François Boucher (Paris 1703-1770)
- An Allegory

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François Boucher (Paris 1703-1770)
An Allegory
Estimate
(Set Currency)
    $200,000 - $300,000

Sale Information

Sale 2322
Old Masters & 19th Century Art Including Select Works From the Salander-O'Reilly Galleries
9 June 2010
New York, Rockefeller Plaza Buy Catalog





Lot Description

François Boucher (Paris 1703-1770)
An Allegory
bears initials 'FB.' (lower left)
oil on canvas, oval
14½ x 17¾ in. (35.6 x 45.1 cm.)

Lot Condition Report
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Pre-Lot Text

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

Provenance

(Possibly) Edmond (1822-1896) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-1870), Paris. Emile Wauters (1846-1933), Paris & Brussels.
Comte Philippe de La Rochefoucauld, Château de Beaumont, near Montmirail (Marne); Parke-Bernet, New York, 16-17 May 1952, lot 278.
with Bruno de Bayser, Paris.
with Agnew's, London, from whom acquired by present owner in 2007.

Exhibited

Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, on loan April 2009-March 2010.

Lot Notes

Although this vivid and masterfully executed sketch has been in several illustrious collections, it appears never to have been published and its very subject matter is elusive. It is clearly allegorical, but what is being allegorized?

When it was with the eminent London dealership Agnew's several years ago, it was described as an 'Allegory of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748', in which case it would commemorate the treaty signed in Aachen in October of that year which officially ended the War of the Austrian Succession. Certainly, the style of the sketch postdates 1748 - indeed, it is painted with a vigor and virtuosity characteristic of Boucher's work in the 1750s. However, Alastair Laing (in written correspondence, 1 April 2010) is unable to see why it should necessarily be interpreted as representing this subject and, indeed, there are few elements in the sketch that would obviously associate it to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. To Laing, it appears, more generically, to represent 'an allegory of a Hero being greeted as he comes to rescue Europe', although what Europe is being rescued from remains uncertain.

A label affixed to the reverse of the stretcher bears a hand-written description of the painting's purported subject, signed by its one-time owner, the Belgian Romantic painter and distinguished art collector Emile Wauters. His label identifies the sketch as 'François Boucher, La Renommée Presentant Louis XV à La France' (Fame presenting Louis XV to France). He goes on to interpret the subject as representing 'a winged figure of Fame depicted presenting the young king, robed in salmon-colored drapery, to a personification of France - in white and blue draperies, at the left; the latter stands on a platform and is attended by the mourning figure of the Church, with the fallen Papal Tiara beside her and other allegorical details'. Following this interpretation, the anonymous cataloguer for Parke-Bernet described the sketch in the catalogue of the La Rochefoucauld sale of 1952 as 'representing the young Louis XV presented to a despondent France as an emblem of hope', adding that in it, the despairing figure of the Church 'apparently alludes to the regime of licentious manners which, under the Regent Philippe, duc d'Orléans, had preceded the advent of the young king to the throne'. The La Rochefoucauld sale catalogue also states that the painting had previously belonged to the Goncourt brothers, an assertion that we have been unable to independently verify; however, it is possible that Wauters' note on the stretcher records a traditional interpretation of the subject that had passed down from owner to owner.

Whatever its true subject, the sketch seems to date to circa 1750-1760, and must have been Boucher's design for a lost, or never-executed ceiling or overdoor decoration.

Our thanks to Alastair Laing for his advice and for confirming, based on photographs, the attribution of the painting to François Boucher.

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