A Franco-Flemish double-manual harpsichord,
originally a transposing harpsichord made in Antwerp,
c.1620 and
ravalé in Paris in 1750 and then refait by Jacques Barberini, Paris, c.1775
Painting of
Luisa O’Murphy by François Boucher, 1752
Alte
Pinakothek, Munich, oil on canvas
This is a painting by François Boucher (1703-1770) who
was born, worked and died in Paris.
Boucher was a Rococo painter, engraver, and designer, who
embodied the frivolity and elegant superficiality of French court life at the
middle of the eighteenth century. His
career was enormously successful and he received many honours, becoming
Director of the Gobelin factory in 1755 and then becoming both Director of the
Académie and King's Painter in 1765. He
was also the favourite artist of Louis XV's most famous mistress, Mme de
Pompadour, to whom he gave lessons and whose portrait he painted several times
(Wallace Collection, London; National Gallery, Edinburgh).
Boucher mastered every branch of
decorative and illustrative painting, from colossal schemes of decoration for
the royal châteaux of Versailles, Fontainebleau, Marly, and Bellevue, to
designs for fans and slippers. In his
typical paintings he turned the traditional mythological themes into wittily
indecorous scènes galantes, and he painted female flesh with a delightfully
healthy sensuality. This is
particularly notable in the celebrated Reclining Girl (Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
1751) seen above, which probably represents Louis XV's mistress Louisa O'Murphy. Towards the end of his career, as French
taste changed in the direction of Neoclassicism, Boucher was attacked, notably
by Diderot, for his stereotyped colouring and artificiality. He relied on his own repertory of motifs
instead of painting from the life. He
objected to nature on the grounds that it was 'too green and badly lit'. Certainly his work often shows the effects
of superficiality and overproduction, but at its best it has an irresistible
charm and a great brilliance of execution. qualities he passed on to his most
important pupil, Fragonard.
A similar painting to this, of Odalisk Brown, is dated
1745 and is located in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
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