Allegories of Seasons,
oil on canvas, 142 x 154 cm and 141 x 174 cm, framed, a pair (2)

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Françoise Joulie for suggesting an attribution to François Boucher (1703–1770) for the present pair of paintings. She dates these works to Boucher’s Italian period between 1728–1731.

Joulie considers the present works to be fully autograph larger variants of a pair of paintings commissioned from François Boucher for Châtelet Fortier, executed between 1730 and 1735 (both 72 x 72 cm). These are now divided between a private collection and the Rhode Island School of Design (inv. no. 64.115; see A. Ananoff, D. Wildenstein, L’opera completa di Boucher, Milan 1980, cat. nos. 60–61).

The compositions represent pastoral landscapes with amorini catching birds and playing with a goat, and were intended as allegories of Summer and Autumn. They are examples of Boucher’s early work which were permeated with the pastoral scenes which were to become a hallmark of his oeuvre and, subsequently, of the Rococo style as a whole. Boucher was celebrated for his paintings of children, amorini and putti, however these subjects were not of his own invention but derived from the antique, and were taken up by Venetian painters of the sixteenth century, in particular Titian, and, in the seventeenth century by masters including Domenichino, Francesco Albani and Nicholas Poussin, whose Bacchanal with Putti is in the collection of Palazzo Barberini, Rome, as well as François Duquesnoy whose relief of the same subject is in Palazzo Doria.

François Boucher was born in Paris and probably received his first artistic training from his father who was a painter. Subsequently he attended the Académie de France in Rome and may also have travelled to Naples, Venice and Bologna. After a decade in Italy Boucher returned to Paris in 1731 where he rapidly gained royal favour. He was a prolific artist and produced a wide range of works including pastoral paintings, designs for porcelain and tapestries, as well as stage designs. He greatly influenced the emergence and development of the Rococo.