François Boucher
, French, 1703-1770
Title
A Female Nude Reclining on a Chaise-longueDatec.1752
MediumGraphite, red and white chalk on brown paper
Dimensions
22.2 x 36.2 cm
Credit LinePurchased, 2007
Object numberNGI.2007.3
DescriptionThe French artist François Boucher, one of the major proponents of the Rococo style, was painter to King Louis XV and Director of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. His paintings of scantily-clad women, coy milkmaids and plump putti represent French eighteenth-century taste at its most typical. Boucher was a prolific artist who claimed to have produced more than 10,000 drawings over the course of his 50-year career. He realised the marketable potential of drawings as artworks in their own right and produced drawings specifically for collectors, often sensuous depictions of the female nude. These erotic drawings were frequently displayed in cabinets, intimate private rooms usually hung with small-scale, prized works of art.
This drawing relates to Boucher’s iconic painting The Blond Odalisque (c.1752; Alte Pinakothek, Munich). The chalk sketch has an immediacy which suggests it was drawn from life but the identity of the young girl in the provocative pose has long been debated. It is thought that the model was the 14-year-old Louise O’Murphy, one of four sisters of Irish descent. She modelled for Boucher and notoriously became mistress to King Louis XV.
March 2016
ProvenancePurchased possibly Bondel d'Azincourt, Paris, 10 January 1783, lot 132; purchased, John Postle Heseltine, London; purchased by Colnaghi, October 1912, Lot 1501; H. de W. by 1966; purchased, Christie's, New York, 25 January 2007, Old Master and 19th Century Drawings Sale, lot 73Exhibition HistorySEDUCED: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2007-2008