Description
A young rural couple romance each other on a lazy summer day in a sunlitspot beneath the trees in this sweet scene. A dog sits nearby, perhapssymbolizing devotion, and a quaint cottage can be viewed in the distance.Boucher popularized the sub-genre of the pastoral painting featuringromances between shepherds and shepherdesses.
François Boucher was a prolific French painter, draftsman and etcher, consideredamong the leading artists of the 18th century. He seems to have beenone of the first artists to exploit the market for engravings afterpaintings, which spread his artistic influence throughout Europe ata time when Paris was the style setter in the fine and decorative arts.Boucher painted history and mythological subjects, and reinvented thegenre of the pastoral with sentimental pictures of amorous shepherdsand shepherdesses that were produced in every medium, including porcelain.Boucher’s airy painterly style dominated French painting until the emergenceof neoclassicism, which in part was a reaction against it. His paintingsare in the world’s major museums from The Hermitage, to the Louvre,to the Frick and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Reference:
“François Boucher.” The Grove Dictionary of Art. NewYork: Macmillan. 2000. Artnet.com. http://www.artnet.com/library/01/0104/T010423.asp (15 April 2004).
