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DESCRIPTION:
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This entrancing work, hitherto unknown to scholars, marks something of a departure for the artist; evidently intended as a decoration, it is painted with a degree of attention that Boucher normally reserved for major commissions of the highest quality. It was, perhaps, the importance of the lady to whom this work is dedicated, identified by Alastair Laing as the brilliant and seductive Mme de Tencin, which inspired Boucher to devote so much attention to this substantial painting, exceptionally placed within a ornate rococo border as if it was set in an imaginary boiserie. There is a chinoiseries enclosed in a painted rococo framework by Boucher (formerly in the Rothschild Collection, in 1915) with a single figure surrounded on a more modest scale than the present work, but this is clearly a more modest decorative work than the present painting. Two other chinoiserie overdoors en camaieu bleu, now divided between the Davids collection, Copenhagen, and that of the Earl of Chichester, have a lighter, decorative rocaille border.
Our painting may be dated both on stylistic and historical grounds to circa 1740-42, by which date Mme de Tencin and Boucher were already well-acquainted. The artist was hoping to attract the attention and patronage of the Swedish Count Tessin, charged by his royal mistress, Queen Louise Ulrike, with purchasing the very best examples of contemporary French art for her expanding collection. It is perhaps hardly surprising that Count Tessin was attracted to the vivacious and brilliant Mme de Tencin; even though then aged nearly sixty she was still able to attract leading intellectuals and public figures with her wit and learning. Among the works that Tessin purchased from Boucher was a second version of the celebrated Leda and the Swan (1742) now in the Swedish National Gallery, while he also commissioned the artist, a brilliant draftsman, to illustrate his own book of fables, Faunillane ou l’Infante Jaune (1741), inspired by his admiration for Boucher’s pretty young wife. Only a few copies of the book were produced and when Tessin was recalled to Sweden in the same year he gave the plates to Charles Pinon Duclos, who following a wager that he could write a different story to fit them, produced the romance of Acajou et Zirphile.
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