Drawing of Children Playing, Circle of Francois Boucher

Venetian Capriccio, after Francesco Guardi (Italian, 1712-1793) Unsigned, with a label from Wandenberg Freres (Paris) affixed to the back of the mat.

Ancient Ruins with Strollers. Brown wash and graphite.

Neoclassical capriccio view of majestic Roman ruins with small figures engaged in daily activities in the background. Pencil, ink and wash on paper. Set in a Louis XVI style giltwood...

A Pair of Neoclassical Landscape Drawings, A Hillside Pass with Travelers, and a Pastoral Landscape with Figures by Classical Ruins, French School, Late 18th Century One signed 'Wau...

18th century French Rococo Painting Circle of François Boucher This idyllic pastoral oil painting shows Boucher’s impact on this f...

Baroque / Rococo lithograph print titled The Gallant Shepherd (French: Le Pasteur Galant) after François Boucher, originally painted around 1740–1745. Features a pastoral courting s...

18th Century Oil on Board, French School Painting of Four Putti Frolicking With a Goat. Painting features four cherubic putti--nude, playful childlike figures associated with love an...

We would like to thank Juliette Parmentier-Courreau of the Custodia Foundation for her welcome and support during the consultation of Glomy’s Journal des Ouvrages. This spectacularly large "feuille de desseins ajustés" commissioned by François Boucher from Jean-Baptiste Glomy is emblematic of the painter's art and mastery of rocaille. It is also fully representative of the taste of this period in the field of decorative arts. The largest of these three drawings, placed at the bottom of the composition, is particularly interesting: dating from around 1756, it constitutes a modello (apparently unpublished) for the frontispiece of the "Catalogue des tableaux de Monsieur de Julienne"), preserved in the Morgan Library in New York. 1. François Boucher, the master of French rocaille The extraordinary career of Francois Boucher was unmatched by his contemporaries in versatility, consistency and output. For many, particularly the writers and collectors who led the revival of interest in the French rococo during the last century, his sensuous beauties and plump cupids represent the French eighteenth century at its most typical. His facility with the brush, even when betraying the occasional superficiality of his art, enabled him to master every aspect of painting – history and mythology, portraiture, landscape, ordinary life and, as part of larger compositions, even still life. He had been trained as an engraver, and the skills of a draftsman, which he imbued in the studio of Jean-Francois Cars (1661 – 1738), stood him in good stead throughout his career; his delightful drawings are one of the most sought-after aspects of his oeuvre. As a student of Francois Lemoyne (1688 - 1737), he mastered the art of composition. The four years he spent in Italy, from 1727-1731, educated him in the works of the masters, classics and history, that his modest upbringing had denied him. On his return to Paris in 1734, he gained full membership of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture with his splendid Rinaldo and Armida (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Although, throughout his career, he occasionally painted subjects taken from the Bible, and would always have considered himself first as a history painter, his own repertoire of heroines, seductresses, flirtatious peasant girls and erotic beauties was better suited to a lighter, more decorative subject matter. His mastery of technique and composition enabled him to move from large scale tapestry...