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

Bibliography8 works

BIBL.: E. and J. de Goncourt, B., Paris 1881; E. Watter, B., ibid. 1885; G. Kahn, B., ibid. 1905; G. Geffroy, s. v. in Thieme-Becker, IV, p. 428; A. Michel, B., Paris 1907; W. Hugelshofer, Ein religiöres Gemälde von B., in Pantheon, 3 (1920), p. 180; P. de Nolhac, B., ibid. 1925; A. Reichl, B.-Zeichnungen, Leipzig 1927.

Bernardo Degenhart

@incollection{ec2_boucher_francois, author = {Degenhart, Bernardo}, title = {Boucher, françois}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {1976}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/boucher-francois} }

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Boucher, François

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