François Boucher
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Painter and engraver, François was born in 1703 in Paris and died in 1770 in the same town.
He’s the son of an embroidery designer. He won the Rome price for painting in 1732. In 1734, he was admitted to the Academy and became it director in 1765. The same year, he became the first painter of King Louis XV. Moreover, he is also a designer at the royal manufactory of Beauvais and Paris’ Opera.
He teaches drawing to Mrs. De Pompadour and thus obtains the protection of her brother Mr. de Marigny.
Gifted with amazing ease, he increases his paintings, decorations, grayness (monochrome paintings in monochrome gray, giving the illusion of relief. Cf. / Larousse), tapestries. Criticism as a painter, he ranks first as a decorator, especially in boudoirs.
He painted sheep berns, religious, mythological, allegorical subjects, landscapes, portraits (mostly naked). Like Rubens, he admired, he likes to emphasize the roundness and opulence of forms, but with a certain grace. Watteau exercised a rising factor on his style.
Still young, Francois Boucher was called by J. de Julienne to engrave more than a hundred figures of different characters, according to this master. One of his masterpieces is the decoration of the rooms of 1st floor of the Hotel de Soubise.
Among his works, we can talk about "The Toilet of Venus", "Diana Leaving the Bath" and "The Painter in his Studio" (Le Louvre museum), and a series of Chinese preserved in Besançon museum
The Wallace Collection in London has a series of his decorative compositions. He left many drawings, preserved in part at the Louvre.
