BOUCHER, FRANÇOIS

BOUCHER, FRANÇOIS. — French painter and etcher, born in Paris in 1703, died there in 1770. A pupil of Fr. Le Moyne, he first followed in the footsteps of Watteau as an etcher and engraver. In 1727 he went to Italy with C. van Loo, where he came under the influence of Tiepolo’s art; in 1728 he was in Rome. He also made a trip to Holland in 1766. In 1734 he became a member of the Paris Academy, of which he was director in 1765. A prolific draughtsman (he himself claimed to have executed no fewer than 10,000 drawings), he supplied cartoons for the tapestry works of Beauvais (from 1734) and those of Paris, of which he was inspector from 1755 to 1765, the year in which he was appointed *pintre du roi*. Active especially as a painter of mythological and allegorical scenes, he rarely produced works of religious subject (church of St Louis in Versailles, Bellevue Chapel, Uffizi, Leningrad, Louvre, etc.). He was the master of Fragonard.