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Boucher's pastoral paintings

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a pendant pair

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two works that were created to be displayed together

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hung on either side of a medallion portrait by John Baptist Lemuel of Louis XV

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both the paintings and the medallion sculpture are from 1748

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the height of King Louis XV's time as king

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the epitomize aspects of 18th century French art

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defined by its lightness of touch, sense of beauty, its eroticism and connections with themes of love

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Louis XV was known as Louis XV The Well Loved

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not just by his people but by women

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Madame de Pompadour

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he had several mistresses, she was the favorite

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single most important female patron of the arts in France

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her favorite painter was Francois Boucher

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first painter of the king

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director of the academy of French Painting and Sculpture

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group of artists

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during the time of Louis XIV came together to establish the rules of painting and sculpture and how artists should be trained

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Boucher plays with conventions

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a part of Rococo art

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relied on skilled users

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had learned how to decode painting in connection with their ideals of sociability and behavior

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pastoral paintings

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finished in 1748

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closely connected to pastoral literature and plays

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plays in the 18th century did not only take play in official theaters

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also in private theaters of the nobility

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worked with Favart

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reformed the comic opera

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took the bawdy and ribald performances of sexuality in pantomime, and connected them with refined codes of sociability that appealed to the nobility

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with the idea that the more refined audiences would start coming back to the theater

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Favare and Boucher grew up near each other

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by the 1740s they were collaborating

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Boucher came up with the ideas which he painted which then Favart then turned into plays and performances

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Boucher also did costume design and scenic backdrops for pastoral plays

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many plays derived from a tradition of pastoral literature that goes back to the 17th century

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a salon culture dominated by women and the tastes of women going back to Louis XIV

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by Louis XV, women set many of the standards of taste

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visual arts

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literature

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performances

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in the discourse of refined behavior

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pastoral plays

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no dialogue

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familiar songs in the background telling what people were doing

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set in a golden age somewhere in a landscape

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usually a simple love story between a shepherdess and a shepherd

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gives her a flute lesson

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girl asleep, young man who delivers a basket of flowers from the shepherd

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Favart's wife was often the main lead

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but not always as the shepherdess but the shepherd

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quite different from many other eras

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Portrait: Leçon de flute

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these are not real shepherds and shepherdesses that work in the fields

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but idealized

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wander around the landscape with their sheep and think about nothing but love

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the sheep are always perfectly coiffed

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the shepherdess is not engaged with her sheep

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she is learning a lesson from her shepherd who is attempting to woo her

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next to them a fountain of love

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connection with aristocratic way of life

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the nobility defined themselves by not working

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by the mid 18th century, they also had no real military function anymore

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they spent a large amount of their time pursuing leisure which was their primary occupation

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one aspect of that leisure was the pursuit of love

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a highly codified way of wooing a woman

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the crudeness of sexuality is turned into something that is highly refined and coded

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at the foot of the woman is a crown of flowers

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one meaning is that she gives this to her lover when he wins her heart

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also an erotic meaning of the vagina

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the flute

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a reference to the male penis

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her being taught to play it is a reference to her being taught to perform oral sex

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not understood by everyone but only those in a small elite circle

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Boucher's conventions on gender

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male figure is seated above the female figure

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Mannlich, student of Boucher

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had students make many drawings which Boucher signed and sold them off

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Boucher corrected the way students were painting the female body

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the female body should be painted as if it had hardly any bones at all

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the idea is that they're curved, soft lines

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nothing that's hard or breaks the eye in a way as it moves around the canvas

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female has a porcelain white color

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male figure has more of a sun-kissed look, more flesh tones

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The Mysterious Basket (1748)

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female and male are different along the customary markings

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the man is not the shepherd but the rustic delivering the basket

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man is very masculine

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ripples and veins

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fleshy and physicality that we don't see with the shepherd

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he is crude character

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Boucher was often criticized when pastoral scenes were shown in salons

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the way these coded meanings were understood, was a kind of pastoral versions of themselves, i.e. the upper echelons of society

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when they were shown at general salons they were criticized and seen as dangerous

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where art exhibitions take place every two years in Paris

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the perfumes of the fish mongers wife mixed with the perfumes with the ladies of the court

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showing sexuality as having any consequences

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you can learn to play a flute, but there is no suggestion that that can lead to any sort of moral downfall

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the male didn't look masculine enough

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less friendly critics

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Denis Diderot

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founding member of the encyclopedia

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didn't like Boucher's work

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thought it was moral degenerate

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in a later salon, Diderot, says, "when am I going to be rid of these pastorals"

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women would come and linger in front of these painters and would not understand that there was a price to be paid for this kind of sexual activity

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it was a misinterpretation of signs and symbols meant for certain class of society