(Paris 1703–1770)
Amor playing with two doves,
oil on canvas, 25 x 28 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of the Marquis de Chaponnay;
art market, France;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
A. Ananoff/D. Wildenstein, François Boucher, Lausanne/Paris 1976, vol. I, p. 332, no. 217/2, fig. 662 (as François Boucher);
A. Ananoff/D. Wildenstein, L’opera completa di Boucher, Milan 1980, p. 103, no. 223 (as François Boucher)

We are grateful to Alastair Laing for suggesting the attribution and for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

This painting, in its possibly original carved and gilded Louis XV frame, was published by Ananoff and Wildenstein in 1976 as an autograph work by François Boucher (see literature). The composition relates to the lower corner of a painting conserved in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, that was engraved by Duflos as Vénus tranquille (see op. cit. Ananoff/Wildenstein, 1976, no. 217).

The Berlin painting is smoothly executed, however, as Alastair Laing has observed, the present version displays a freer painterly handling. The architectural fragment behind Cupid’s head, instead of the drapery against Venus’s stomach in the Berlin picture, shows that the present painting is not a directly derivation but was made by a pupil in the studio and supervised or retouched by the master himself. The detail implies that the architectural background was used in order to rearrange a detail of a larger original work into an autonomous composition. The issue of studio participation in Boucher’s paintings is complex, however the vigorous handling of paint in the present painting compares well to Boucher’s corpus of works.