Lovers in a Park | Timken Museum

Artist: Francois Boucher
Title: Lovers in a Park
Date: 1758
Culture: French
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 232.4 x 194.9 cm (91-1/2 x 76-3/4 in.),
Accession Number: 1965:003
Credit Line: Francois Boucher, Lovers in a Park, 1758, oil on canvas, 232.4 x 194.9 cm (91-1/2 x 76-3/4 in.), Putnam Foundation, Timken Museum of Art

Description

In Francois Boucher's vision of a lush garden setting, a young couple and their spaniel have stopped to rest while out for a stroll. The man, who is weaving flowers into the hair of his lover, is distracted by the appearance of a milkmaid, who has been gathering flowers of her own. The creamy folds of the seated woman's dress and the richly worked foliage of the surrounding bushes and trees epitomize Boucher's expression of Rococo style. This decorative style of art is associated with the reign of Louis XV. Boucher was also the favorite artist of the king's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, for whom he painted some of his most impressive works.

Related Information / Media

Provenance:

Baron Meyer Amschel de Rothschild, Mentmore Park, 1851 [1]; The earl of Rosebery, Mentmore Park, Bedfordshire, England, his sale, Sotheby’s, London, March 11, 1964, lot 53; Thomas Agnew & Sons, London; Acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 1965

Provenance Notes:

[1] Nothing is known of this painting before the mid-nineteenth century, when it was installed in the White Drawing Room at Mentmore Park. It was grouped with three other Bouchers now in the National Gallery of Scotland, which in the eighteenth century had belonged to the Maréchal de Sainscy. The Timken picture was not listed in the sale of Sainscy’s collection in 1789; thus its early provenance still awaits discovery. In the Mentmore catalogue (Mentmore [Edinburgh, 1883], p. 62), Lovers in a Park is listed simply as “Pastoral scene.”

Literature:

Mentmore (Edinburgh, 1883), p. 62, no. 29; Elizabeth Mongan, “Boucher’s Lovers in a Park,” Art News 66 (Summer 1967): 50-51, 79-80, ill.; Alexandre Anaoff with Daniel Wildenstein, François Boucher, 2 vols. (Lausanne, 1976), 2:177-77, no. 501, fig. 1394; id., L’opera complete di Boucher (Milan, 1980), pp. 128-29, no. 529, ill.; Jean-Luc Bordeaux, “Baroque to Neo-Classicism,” Apollo 115 (June 1982): 456, pl. V; Timken Art Gallery: European and American Works of Art in the Putnam Foundation Collection (San Diego, 1983), pp. 18-19, 115, no. 2, ill; Georges Brunel, Boucher New York, 1986), p. 13, fig. 2, p. 141, pl. XXI.

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Note

This record has been reviewed by Timken Museum of Art staff and may be incomplete or contain errors. Our records are constantly revised. Inquiries about provenance are advised to contact the Director of Curatorial Affairs: curator@timkenmuseum.org.