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The Art Institute of Chicago

A "Bathing Nymph" by BoucherAuthor(s): Daniel Catton RichSource: Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago (1907-1951), Vol. 26, No. 3 (Mar., 1932), pp.25-27Published by: The Art Institute of Chicago

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26 BULLETINOFTHE ARTINSTITUTEOF CHICAGO

A BATHING NYMPH BY BOUCHER

CERTAIN artistsembodyandexpressthe spirit of their age so completely

that during their lives they are ex-tremely popular, but the moment the next

age is upon them their fame is forgotten.

Francois Boucher belongs to this class, aman who, in the words of the Goncourts,

manifested the French taste of the

eighteenth century in every particular ofhis character, fixing and creating theforms of the French rococo, bringing thewhole movement to a climax of refined anddecorative splendor. But by 1770, the yearin which Boucher died, another style was

on hand which swept the scenes of courtgallantry and mythology into the discardand neither David's classic austeritieswhich followed after, or the feverish visionsof Romanticism had any connection withBoucher's art.

In his day, however, Boucher was im-

mensely successful, and his life was longand happy. The son of an inconspicuouspainter, Francois

was born in Paris in 1703,becoming the pupil of Le Moyne, an art-ist famous for his

adaptationof Italian

baroque motifs to French decoration. Le

Moyne did much to introduce a new fem-inine type of beauty whose graceful and

elegant figures replaced the monumentalwomen of Rubens. Boucher's next masterwas an engraver, and in Cars's studio headded to the knowledge of color and flesh

painting learned from Le Moyne a sense ofline and pattern. In 1727 he made the in-evitable trip to Rome in the company ofCarle Van Loo, the painter, but Rome im-

pressed him less than Venice, where hecame in contact with the lightness and

fluency of the Ricci and the young Tiepolo.When Boucher returned to Paris in 1731

his intentions were clear. He wanted to

develop a type of painting which wouldtake its place in the paneled drawingrooms as part of the superb and complexdecoration of Louis XV. As such the in-dividual figures and details were less im-

portant than the rhythm and capriciousfancy of the whole; what the court wanted

and what Boucher hastened to offer was a

series of mythological and pastoral sub-

jects, coolly and expertly designed in

schemes of attractive color. Called toembellish Versailles and Fontainebleau,

he. made the acquaintance of Madame

d'Etioles, later the Marquise de Pompa-dour, and not only did he become her chiefartist but soon was teaching her to paintand draw and advising her on all mattersof personal and public taste. It was fittingthat Boucher should design tapestries;Oudry induced him to submit pictureswhich could be translated by the Beauvais

factory and, after Oudry's death, he be-

came Director of Beauvais as well as con-tributing to the Gobelins. Other honors

poured in. He was made Director of the

Academy and in 1765, the year after

Pompadour's death, was created FirstPainter to the King. All this time, he ex-hibited at the Salon where rich amateursvied with one another to procure his latestcanvases and where almost every work

by his hand received extravagant praise.To this day, most of his paintings hangin a few collections or decorate hotels andchateaux in France, though minor worksand characteristic drawings are to be pro-cured. These slighter works so often lackhis essential quality that the Art Institutefeels that in acquiring Boucher's Bathing

Nymph through the Wilson L. Mead

Fund it has been conspicuously fortunate.The canvas, though small,' is not only a

satisfactory example; it is a particularlycharming one.

It is not one of Boucher's extensive

mythological scenes like the Birth andTriumph of Venus, now in Stockholm, or

The Rising and the Setting of the Sun

in the Wallace Collection, London. When

the latter pair were shown in the Salon of

1753, the painter was warned by the critic,

Grimm, to stick to his overdoors and little

pictures, if he wanted to retain his repu-tation for excellent composition. As a

pure decorator there was no one in France

1I7xI8 inches,unsigned. Its formerhistoryis not known,exceptthat it camefroma Germancollection. ReneGimpel,

Dr. C. F. Foersterand Dr. HermannVoss have accepteditas original,the last especiallypraising ts high quality.

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ULLETIN O T H

RT INSTITUT

O CHC GO

MARCH NINETEEN THIRTY- %TWO

BATHING NYMPHBY

FRANCOIS BOUCHER, FRENCH (1703-1770). ACQUIRED THROUGH

THE WILSON L. MEAD FUND

VOLUME XXVI NUMBER 3






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BULLETIN OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO 27

of his period to rival him, and it is as adecoration that our small painting firststrikes the spectator.

The basis of Boucher's art is the quick,

broken curve of the rococo. He had ahorror of straight lines, of angles, and afondness for the serpentine. The motif ofthe seated figure placed like a trianglewith arms bending down is a very old one,but the artist has carefully adapted it to a

pattern of rounded lines and arcs. Simi-

larly the trees with their interlacingbranches, the curved log and vines in the

foreground, the verdure in the distanceare all connected in a system of repeatedcurves. This arrangement brings to the

picture a sense of quickened movement,and rococo gaiety. In the arbitrary han-

dling of his landscape, Boucher furthershows that he is far more interested in its

pleasing forms than in fidelity to nature.It is recorded that one day in typicaleighteenth century fashion the artist wentout in the country to paint a landscape.Dismayed by what he found-the rudenessof nature was too much for him-he in-

stantly returned to the studio where he

swept together an utterly charming andartificial picture of a ruined mill and poplartrees. His ready brush draws in a few

forms, covering them with a delicateshower of flowers and a spatter of leavesand in the same way the pool and its foliageare cast to play a decorative role. Againstthem is placed the simply modeled area ofthe body, the head partly in shadow, theleft leg crossed over the right knee.2

Boucher's use of color in the compositionis highly characteristic. Again decoration

is the aim and the mood must be light andgraceful. There are no deep notes; the

palette is distinguished by its greyed qual-ity and grey pervades the touches of light

green, pale yellow, rose and blue. Themodel's flesh is almost pallid, an unfailingpractice with the painter, but he has sur-rounded her with veils of pink, yellow

orange and violet, and these are faintlyechoed on the nude body. The cool notesof the trees are broken into by the lightflowers, and the bluish sky flushes dis-

tinctly pink near the horizon.In the quality of the paint, one may

study Boucher's method better than in

many of his highly polished, more pre-tentious compositions. We know thathe worked with extreme haste and a con-

temporary tells us that certain of his pic-tures were completed almost in a stroke.

Boucher's touch is crisp and sureand the fig-ure is createdwith great economy.Examiningcarefully the painting of the body, one willsee how he builds it up from a number ofrounded forms, slightly modeled but carry-ing the authority of thickness and weight.In fact, this subtle combination of curvedforms rippling and flowing across a Bouchercanvas is fully half of its charm. In thesame way the swift and fleeting strokeswhich form the head-a piece of painting

almost worthy of Boucher's pupil Frago-nard-give an impression of lightness anddash which a successful rococo performanceneeds.

It was these technical achievements incombination with his sense of design that

appealed to the Impressionists when theydiscovered Boucher among the neglectedmasters of the eighteenth century. Manet

-though he learned from other sources-must have respected his memory when he

painted the Olympia, for like Boucher's

goddesses, she is distinguished by a finelinear sense. Likewise Berthe Morisot,when she came to brush on the delicate

blue-greys and rose of Femme a sa Toi-lette (in Gallery 39), recalled the bathingnymphs which the painter had set downwith an almost identical palette over ahundred years before.

DANIELCATTON ICH

2Boucher experimentedoften with this motif, particu-larly in the decadeof the 1740'S. Because of this, and be-cause the modelis clearlythe sameas the kneelingfigure nthe Bath of Diana (1742) in the Louvre (see p. 40) ourpicture was probably painted about the same period. Itlacks altogether the mechanical hardness and coarsenedbrush-strokewhich disfigure ome of Boucher's ater work.

Published monthly, September to May, inclusive, at The Art Institute of Chicago, at Adams and Michigan. Enteredas second-class matter January 17, 1918, at the post-office at Chicago, Illinois, under the Act of August 24, 1912.

Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized onJune 28, 1918. Subscription included in membership fee, otherwise $1.00 per year I)- Volume XXVI, Number 3






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