Boucher

François Boucher was born on 29 September 1703 in Paris. A painter, draughtsman, engraver and decorator, he trained in the studio of François Lemoyne before winning the Prix de Rome in 1723. His stay in Italy from 1728 to 1731 proved formative, immersing him in the grand decorative compositions of Tiepolo and the Baroque masters. Back in Paris, he was admitted to the Académie Royale in 1734 and rose swiftly through its ranks, professor in 1737, then Director of the Académie and First Painter to the King in 1765. Extraordinarily prolific, he claimed to have produced over ten thousand drawings in his lifetime, working across every genre: religious painting, mythology, pastoral scenes, portraiture, and tapestry design.
The consummate embodiment of French Rococo taste, Boucher became the visual voice of the reign of Louis XV. Under the patronage of Madame de Pompadour, the king’s influential mistress, he received a wealth of royal commissions for Versailles and the châteaux, while also designing for the tapestry workshops at Beauvais and the Gobelins, and the porcelain manufactory at Sèvres. His most celebrated works include The Rest of Diana (1742), The Triumph of Venus (1740), and his luminous Portraits of the Marquise de Pompadour. He died on 30 May 1770 in Paris, leaving behind an oeuvre that stands as the supreme expression of eighteenth-century French elegance and art de vivre.