Provenance:
Paris, Private Collection.
In the summer of 1745, during the Salon at the Louvre, the king’s painter François Boucher presented framed drawings for the first time to art lovers, rather than paintings. In doing so, he paved the way for a new way of collecting drawings, proposing that they be exhibited rather than kept in portfolios. Art lovers quickly embraced this idea, with some even going so far as to live in a home adorned with around 500 of the artist’s works in all techniques, hung from floor to ceiling. Clearly, François Boucher derived this idea of framed drawings from his practice with pastels, which, due to their fragility, could only be preserved when framed and under glass, or they would turn to powder.
The artist frequently used pastels, among other techniques. Like his entire generation, he knew its traditional use for preparing figures for a painting, as practiced by Lebrun, La Fosse, Coypel, or his mentor François Lemoyne. He was also familiar with the pastel works of Barrocci and Bassano, kept in French collections. Around 1720, he may have met Rosalba Carriera during her visit to Paris, as he is known to have copied one of her female portraits. However, his great skill with the medium came even more after 1735 through his acquaintance with the young pastel artist Maurice Quentin Latour, who chose François Boucher’s young wife, Marie-Jeanne Buseau, as the model for his first pastel portrait in 1737. On this occasion, the artist grasped all the possibilities of the pastel technique, which "can be abandoned, picked up again, retouched, and finished whenever desired," as Lacombe wrote in his *Dictionnaire portatif des beaux-arts* (1759), and which offers a very rich color palette.Throughout his life, Boucher used pastels in various ways: to study a face (as seen in *Esquisses, pastels et dessins de François Boucher dans les collections privées*, Versailles, Musée Lambinet, 2004, no. 33), to retouch or complete a drawing, enhancing shadows with deep touches of rich black pastel, or accentuating a drawing, sometimes in black chalk, most often with three crayons, as seen in certain studies of standing or seated women whose dresses are subtly tinted with pink or gold (*F. Joulie, François Boucher: Fragments of a Vision of the World*, Paris, Somogy, 2013, nos. 34 and 35), or in studies of nymphs surrounded by blues and greens of the water (Paris, Musée du Louvre, Department of Graphic Arts, inv. RF 3879).
He also created finished pastels on thick paper or parchment that could rival paintings: using pastel crayons, the artist produced numerous portraits from the 1750s onwards, which were easier to execute than painted portraits, as pastel is a "type of painting with a particular ease, [which has the advantage of] not emitting any odor, not causing any mess, being able to be interrupted and resumed at will, and lending itself to all positions, regardless of where the light comes from." Chaperon, in his *Traité de la peinture au pastel* (1788), continues, writing that "no other technique comes so close to nature, none produces such true tones, it is flesh, it is Flora, it is Aurora." Thus, many portraits of women were produced, and in 1761, the rare male portrait of his friend Sireul in a grey velvet suit (Geneva, Private Collection) was created.
Alongside this production of portraits in his maturity, Boucher also produced a few finished pastel versions of paintings, most likely commissioned works: these include *The Child with the Parsnip* from the Art Institute of Chicago (inv. 1971-22), signed and dated 1738, demonstrating Boucher’s perfect technical mastery at the time; the two putti from *Epic Poetry* of 1741 (formerly Schab Gallery, New York); or the *Study of a Foot* from the Musée Carnavalet, created about ten years later (Paris, Musée Carnavalet, inv. D. 4353).
These small, meticulously crafted "painted pastels" could be collected alongside miniatures, gouaches, or watercolors, which Boucher also created from time to time. However, their main flaw compared to these other techniques was their fragility, which was feared by collectors, at least until the 1750s. In 1753, after extensive research, a chemist named Loriot "found a way to fix pastel painting," a process he demonstrated but refused to disclose, reserving the exclusive rights until 1780. Artists could now confidently create refined pastel copies of some of their paintings to meet the demand from certain collectors. As a result, pastels by François Boucher dated from the 1750s-1755 appear among the works of his friends Randon de Boisset, Sireul, Varanchan, and Marigny, reproducing some of his paintings and, sometimes, certain of his drawings. *The Surprised Nymph* studied here is one such refined pastel version, created on parchment, giving it a particularly velvety and refined appearance. The date of 1754, discreetly marked by Boucher in the lower right corner, places this pastel among the commissions for pastels that multiplied from the early 1750s to 1755; it is a reproduction of a painting Boucher created in 1742, as evidenced by the date on the identical and high-quality canvas now held at the Musée de Dijon (ill. 1).
The 1742 painting from which this pastel derives represents a theme already treated in a less explicitly erotic manner in another work from the same year, *The Scamander River*, known from an engraving by Nicolas de Larmessin published in 1743 with the caption "For your young Apas, the burning Scamander / Rises from among its reeds, it is a god who loves you." The subject seems identical in both works, showing the young nymph Idaea surprised by the young god Scamander hiding among the reeds. The male figure is the same, but the young woman, who in the first painted version, gravely seated and removing her sandal, is here almost entirely naked, with the drapery barely covering her. This particular approach to the subject, with more emphasized eroticism, may explain the commission of a second version, produced in pastel, whose format and technique make it more intimate than a canvas. 1742 was an important year for François Boucher, during which he painted *Leda*, which was taken to Sweden by Count Tessin, and created sketches for *The Chinese Tapestry* for Beauvais; however, the patron of the painting he would later reproduce in pastel twelve years later remains unknown, as it cannot be the Marquise de Pompadour, who only appeared at court in 1745 during the *Ball of the Yew Trees*.
Nevertheless, it is possible that Boucher freely created his pastel version at the Marquise’s, as he was one of her regular visitors, and between 1745 and 1760, she acquired the painting. Two engravings were made of it in reverse by Jean Daullé, one dated 1760, the other 1761 (ill. 2), and one of them mentions, "To Madame de Pompadour, Lady of the Queen’s Palace... from her very humble and obedient servant Jean Daullé; the original painting belongs to Madame the Marquise de Pompadour" (ill. 2).
Upon the Marquise’s death in 1766, this painting, which Daullé called *The Surprised Bather* in his two engravings, entered the collection of her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, Superintendent of the King’s Buildings, and was later described in the catalogue of the sale of his collection in 1782. However, there was some confusion in the description, suggesting that the subject could also be *The Scamander River*, as the painting was listed under number 12 as *The Scamander River*, a very pleasant subject showing a naked woman in the pose of surprise at seeing a man through the reeds. This subject was engraved by Daullé under the title *The Surprised Bather*. Given the various names attributed to the same subject, the early history of this pastel is difficult to establish. A single pastel version of *The Scamander River* engraved by Daullé, formerly in the Marigny collection, is listed by Neil Jeffares in his *Dictionary of Pastellists*, but it is oval (no. 1.173.858). A nymph bath pastel by Boucher, "a very piquant piece," mentioned in the posthumous sale of Monsieur de St. Julien in Paris on December 10, 1759, under no. 376, could be our pastel, as could another depicting a satyr and a nymph, mentioned in a Parisian sale in 1876. However, it is also possible that this piece, remaining in the same family, has gone unknown until today.
Boucher created this second pastel version with care but with some liberty compared to the model. An advanced infrared examination conducted by the restorer Catherine Polnecq revealed a change on the nymph’s right arm, as well as subtle differences in the details of flowers, trees, and draperies compared to the engraved or painted versions. This examination also clearly showed the rapid preliminary work done in black chalk that the artist applied to the parchment before moving on to the pastel crayons that completely covered it. A rare example of a pastel copy of one of his own paintings, this refined work offers valuable insights into the work of François Boucher as a pastellist (ill. 3).
Françoise Joulie
