Wallace Collection Online - Shepherd and Shepherdess Reposing

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François Boucher (1703 - 1770) Shepherd and Shepherdess Reposing France: Date: 1761

Object Type: Painting

Medium: Oil on canvas

Image size: 76.6 x 63.6 cm, oval
Frame size: 117 x 85.5 x 15.5 cm, oval

Inv: P431

Location: Boudoir

A reworking of 'L'Ecole de l'Amour ('The School of Love) that Boucher painted as part of a pair for the Marchioness of Bade, Karoline Luise, in 1760 (Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle), Boucher changed the landscape format of the Karlsruhe painting into an upright oval, a shape he used often in his later, more classically inspired work, and combined it with a different pastoral scene ('L'oiseau mal défendu', Private Collection). The painting was one of Boucher’s last essays in the pastoral genre that he had been exploring since the 1730s. When it was shown at the 1761 Salon, it was praised by the critic of the Mercure de France and drawn by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale). In the eighteenth century it belonged first to the artist’s friend Randon de Boisset, one of the period's great collectors with a particular interest in contemporary French painting, then to the Marquis de Livois, an equally important collector from Angers. Boucher painted the same composition for a female and a male patron which means that his pastorals were not seen as particularly 'feminine' (nor, in fact, 'masculine').

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