Collection Online as of November 28, 2023
The First Guard
Etching
Image: 32.4 x 20.8 cm (12 3/4 x 8 3/16 in.)
In honor of Leona E. Prasse 1964.26
Catalogue raisonné: Le Blanc II.403.67
Location
not on view
Description
Many of François Boucher's decorative designs were published as prints sometimes executed by the painter, etcher, and publisher-dealer Gabriel Huquier. Thus, both these artists played significant roles in the development and spread of the elaborate Rococo style.
The First Guard-depicting a rustic band of young and old men who have temporarily shed their weapons to concentrate on a game of dice-typifies the sort of picturesque genre scene at which Boucher excelled. The artist displays his ingenuity by composing a pleasing arrangement of artfully posed figures and carefully placed objects.
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.