Boucher

David Wakefield's study of Boucher presents a balanced portrait of an artist intimately associated with the Rococo period of mid eighteenth-century France and the rule of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. His brilliant career encompassed a prolific output of over 1,000 paintings and 10,000 drawings, including many royal commissions, appointment as the Head of the Royal Gobelins Factory in 1755, and finally becoming Director of the Academie Royale and 'Premiere Peintre due Roi' in 1765. Boucher was capable of creating works of real beauty, especially in his landscapes and drawings of the female figure at which he excelled. Moreover, Boucher's firm roots in Dutch naturalism lent his art a down-to-earth quality never too far removed from everyday life.