The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 20, 2023

The Presentation in the Temple

c. 1770

François Boucher

(French, 1703–1770)

France, 18th century

Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, and black chalk, heightened with white paint; framing lines in pen and brown ink

Support: Cream(3) laid paper

Sheet: 32.3 x 20 cm (12 11/16 x 7 7/8 in.); Framed: 66 x 50.9 x 6.4 cm (26 x 20 1/16 x 2 1/2 in.)

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1925.1005

Catalogue raisonné: Michel 819; Ananoff 651

Location

not on view

Fun Fact

This drawing was probably a sketch for an oil painting that Boucher was unable to complete before his death.

Description

Late in his career, François Boucher adopted a drawing style characterized by strong pen lines and loosely brushed washes. This sheet, which dates from that period, depicts the blind priest Simeon, at left, who was promised that he would see the Messiah before his death. When the Christ child was brought into the temple near him, Simeon regained his sight. Boucher emphasized the miraculous event by showing divine light streaming down onto the priest from the dove above, which represents the Holy Spirit. The drawing is similar to an oil sketch (Louvre, Paris) that Boucher completed during the last year of his life -- one of the very last projects he ever completed.

Inscriptions

Inscription

verso, center, in graphite: G; lower left, in graphite: Lest R./-oc-.

François Boucher

French Rococo artist who epitomizes the frivolous and elegant court life of France in the mid-18th century. During his early career he was closely associated with Watteau, many of whose paintings he engraved. Boucher was a successful and incredibly prolific artistic who had a major impact on both fine and decorative art of the 18th century. He is particularly noted for having reinvented the genre of the pastoral, creating images of shepherds and shepherdesses as sentimental lovers that was taken up in a variety of medium. Boucher's sketchy manner of painting helped to promote painterliness as an end in itself. This trend dominated French painting until the emergence of Neoclassicism, when the tides of criticism turned against Boucher and his followers.
Provenance
?-1770
Probably Barthélemy-Augustin Blondel d'Azincourt [1719-1783], Paris
1770
(Paris, Cabinet curieux...de M. d'Azincourt, April 18, 1770, no. 61, sold to Chariot) 1
1770-1788
M. Chariot, Paris
1788
(possibly Hotel de Bullion, Paris, Collection choisie...du Cabinet de M. Chariot, January 28, 1788, no. 128, sold to Pierre-François Basan) 2
1788-?
Possibly Pierre-François Basan [1723-1797], Paris
?-?
Jan Baptist de Graaf [1742-1804; Lugt 1120], Amsterdam
?-1883
Possibly Eugénie Tripier-LeFranc [1805-1872], Paris
1883
(Paris, Tripier-LeFranc sale, June 5-7, 1883, no. 45) 3
by 1900-after 1914
John Postle Heseltine [1843-1929; Lugt 1507], London
?-?
(Richard Owen, Paris)
?-1925
Leonard C. Hanna Jr., Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
1925-
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Provenance Footnotes

1 As "Une Présentation au Temple: dessein très spirituel, à la plume, par M. Boucher: hauteur 11 pouces 3 lignes, largeur 7 pouces 3 lignes." Sold to Chariot for 58.19 livres, according to annotated catalogue in Rijksbureau voor kunsthistorische en ikonografische Documentatie, The Hague.
2 "La Présentation au Temple, très-beau dessin à la plume, lavé de bistre & de sanguine, dans le stile de Rembrandt. Hauteur 14 pouces, largeur 10 pou. De la vente de M. Baudoin, Peintre" Sold for 34 livres, according to annotated copy of catalogue in library of the Institut de France, Paris.
3 As "La Presentation au Temple. Plume et sepia."
Citations
Catalogue d'une collection choisie de tableaux originaux et dessins précieux des trois écoles...du cabinet de M. Chariot. Paris: Paillet, 1788. Possibly mentioned: no. 128
Heseltine, J[ohn] P[ostle]. Drawings by François Boucher, Jean Honoré Fragonard, and Antoine Watteau in the Collection of J[ohn] P[ostle] H[eseltine]. London: Autotype Company, 1900. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 16
Michel, André. François Boucher. Paris: H. Piazza, 1906. Mentioned: p. 45, no. 819
Heseltine, J[ohn] P[ostle] and Lucien Guiraud. Dessins de l'école française du dix-huitième siècle provenant de la collectoin H[eseltine]. Paris: Frazier-Soye, 1913. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 4
The French Eighteenth Century: Drawings Coming from the J.P. Heseltine Collection. Exh. Cat. New York: E. Gimpel & Wildenstein, 1914. Mentioned: no. 4
Sizer, Theodore. "Drawings by Boucher and Fragonard." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 13, no. 1 (January 1926): 5-8. Mentioned: pp. 5-7
Eighteenth Century Masterpieces. Exh. Cat. Palm Beach, FL: Society of the Four Arts, 1952. Mentioned: no. 16
The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 593 archive.org
Houghton, Amory and Jacqueline Bouchot Saupique. Les Dessins français dans les collections américaines, de Clouet à Matisse. Paris: Art et Style, 1958. Mentioned and reproduced: n.p.
French Drawings from American Collections: Clouet to Matisse. Exh. Cat. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1959. (also published in French and Dutch) Mentioned and reproduced: no. 37
Ananoff, Alexandre. L'Oeuvre dessiné de François Boucher (1703-1770): catalogue raisonné. Paris: F. de Nobele, 1966 Mentioned: p. 175, no. 651
Sérullaz, Maurice. Great Drawings of the Louvre Museum: The French Drawings. New York: George Braziller, 1968. Mentioned: under no. 50
François Boucher, gravures et dessins provenant du Cabinet des Dessins et de la Collection Edmond de Rothschild au Musée du Louvre. Exh. Cat. Paris: Musée du Louvre, 1971. Mentioned: p. 104
Rosenberg, Pierre. French Master Drawings of the 17th & 18th Centuries in North American Collections. Translated by Catherine Johnston. Exh. Cat. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1972. Mentioned: p. 138, under no. 14
Slatkin, Regina Shoolman. François Boucher in North American Collections: 100 Drawings. Exh. Cat. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1973. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 99
Ananoff, Alexandre. François Boucher. Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 1976. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 311, under no. 686
Ananoff, Alexandre and Daniel Wildenstein. L'opera completa di Boucher. Milan: Rizzoli, 1980. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 143, under no. 724
DeGrazia, Diane, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000. Mentioned: p. 3, p. 7, pp. 104-105, 288, no. 38; Reproduced: p. 105
Exhibition history

The French Eighteenth Century: Drawings Coming From the J. P. Heseltine Collection. E. Gimpel & Wildenstein, New York (March 21 - April 16, 1914).

Drawings in the Classic and Romantic Tradition before 1830. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 7, 1932-January 11, 1933).

Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 9-December 2, 1934).

Old Master Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 4-March 26, 1939).

Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 17-August 24, 1942).

Eighteenth Century Masterpieces. Society of the Four Arts (organizer) (December 12, 1952-January 4, 1953).

Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 3, 1958-October 11, 1959).

French Drawings from American Collections: Clouet to Matisse. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands (July 31-September 28, 1958); Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France (October 24, 1958-January 2, 1959); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (February 3-March 15, 1959).

Italian and French Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 13, 1959-February 2, 1960).

Aspects of Drawing. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 10-April 2, 1961).

Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 11-September 10, 1963).

Drawings: France, Italy, Netherlands. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 1-March 24, 1965).

Prints and Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 6-September 9, 1965).

Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 11-October 21, 1968).

François Boucher in North American Collections: 100 Drawings. National Gallery of Art, Landover, MD (organizer) (December 23, 1973-March 15, 1974); The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (April 1-May 20, 1974).

Seventeenth-, Eighteenth-, and Early Nineteenth-Century Genre and French Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 31-August 19, 1979).

18th Century Master Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (October 6-November 22, 1981).

French Prints and Drawings in the Age of the Bourbons, 1589-1792. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 2-May 16, 1982).

Northern European Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 16, 1982-January 9, 1983).

I and Thou. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 21-May 27, 1984).

French Drawings from the Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 13, 1994-March 12, 1995).

Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002).

The Drawings of François Boucher. Frick Collection, New York, NY (October 24-December 14, 2003).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1925.1005