Washerwomen

Washerwomen

Washerwomen
Artist:François Boucher (French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris)
Date:1768
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:95 x 93 in. (241.3 x 236.2 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Julia A. Berwind, 1953

Together with Shepherd's Idyll, this painting was probably commissioned by Roslin d'Ivry for the Château d'Hénonville. At the end of his life Boucher painted numerous large decorative canvases, often culling motifs from other paintings and drawings. Several of the figures here seem to be based on Boucher's memory of earlier works.

Catalogue Entry
Washerwomen and Shepherd’s Idyll (53.225.1), Boucher’s largest late works, hark back to the pastoral style the artist had developed more than thirty years before, in the early 1730s. In the last full year of his life, 1769, demonstrating his continuing vitality in old age, he painted six mythologies, probably commissioned by Jean François Bergeret de Frouville (1719–1783), all on a similarly grand scale. The pair of paintings catalogued here came to light at the estate auction of baron Léopold Roslin d’Ivry (died 1883), and Alastair Laing has suggested that they may have been commissioned by Jean Marie Roslin, seigneur d’Ivry, for the family château at Hénonville. The seigneur d’Ivry was connected through his wife to Pierre Jacques Onésyme Bergeret de Grancourt (1715–1785), Jean-François’s older brother and one of Boucher’s most important patrons.

Katharine Baetjer 2014

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