Francois Boucher was one of the great painters of 18th Century France, but he seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years. If I had to guess about the reason I'd say that he's considered by critics to be shallow. Look at the picture above. The dress is exquisite but the artist doesn't seem to have anything to say about the woman wearing it. Lots of his pictures are like that. Truth to tell, some of Boucher's work is a bit cold, there's no denying it. So why, you ask, am I writing about him?
The reason is that Boucher made a massive contribution to art in spite of his flaws. The critics were only half right.
Boucher's early heroes were Tiepolo and Rubens, except he didn't have their depth and insight. What we see in Boucher's first pictures is skill merely. They are kind of funny though. You can see the eroticism that characterized his later work (above) slowly creeping in, even though it seems out of place.
Boucher didn't really find his own voice til he got into soft core porn. He became a favorite of the licentious French court, maybe because he somehow managed to connect eroticism with something deep and profound. The man who had difficulty drawing faces managed to articulate something important about sex and life that no other painter had before. He gave his subjects a light-hearted, delicate charm that came to exemplify the new French style.
Boucher's contemporary Chardin had that charm and so did his pupil Fragonard, but I think they got it from Boucher.
I digress to air this parody (above) of Boucher's picture.
Boucher also did some pictures (above) that were pretty extreme. They're well done, and even funny on some level, but they strike me as decadent and beneath Boucher's talent.
Poor Boucher got typecast and found himself stuck with doing endless paintings of nudes and cupids (above). His overtly sexual charm diminished over time, but never disappeared. He just sublimated it into sumptuous lines and shapes and colors.
His pictures from this period are often juicy and erotic, even when the subjects aren't. The man who figured out how to put charm and delicacy into a nude, now figured out how to put it into abstract shapes. Pretty good for a guy who publishers deem unworthy of a book.
To keep from going crazy all those years, he amused himself by simplifying his humans and letting the cupids steal the show. They became more and more vivid and grotesque. Look at them (above)! One of these days I should do a whole blog about the man's surly cupids!
Boucher's star pupil was Fragonard (sample above), who took up a lot of Boucher's themes and pushed them farther in the direction of what we would call illustration. You can see a large part of the future of art in pictures like this. In this one I see Mary Blair and Freddy Moore as well as fine artists like Renoir, Lautrec and DeKooning.
BTW, many art critics consider Fragonard to be as shallow as Boucher, but the public likes him so he grudgingly gets the occasional book.
Fragonard (example above) had his teacher's knack for lightness and grace. Sadly it all came to an end with The French Revolution. According to a comment by Thomas, David helped Fragonard get a job at the Louvre, which at least kept him safe for a while. In a sense you could say that Fragonard prevailed, because a hundred years later his techniques, along with those of Boucher and Chardin, had a big influence on the Impressionists.
Interesting, huh?
