Boucher, Francois - Madame de Pompadour - art postcard c.1930s

Art Postcard
• Work of art title: Madame de Pompadour
• Artist (if known): Francois Boucher
• Media or other details:  painting
• Publisher / Gallery: National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp & postmark details (if relevant): na
• Size: standard
• Notes & condition details:

NOTES:

Size: 'Modern' is usually around 6in x 4in / 'Old Standard' is usually around 5 1/2in x 3 1/2in. Larger sizes mentioned, but if you need to know the exact size please ask.

All postcards are not totally new and are pre-owned. It's inevitable that older cards may show signs of ageing and use, particularly sent through the post. Any faults other than normal ageing are noted.

Stock No.: A626

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I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information:

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François Boucher (French pronunciation: ?[f??~swa bu?e]) (29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century. He also painted several portraits of his patroness, Madame de Pompadour.

A native of Paris, Boucher was the son of a minor painter Nicolas Boucher, who gave him his first artistic training. At the age of seventeen, a painting by Boucher was admired by the painter François Lemoyne. Lemoyne later appointed Boucher as his apprentice, but after only three months, he went to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars.^[1] In 1720, he won the elite Grand Prix de Rome for painting, but did not take up the consequential opportunity to study in Italy until five years later, due to financial problems at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.^[1] On his return from studying in Italy he was admitted to the refounded Académie de peinture et de sculpture on 24 November 1731.^[2] His morceau du reception (reception piece) was his Rinaldo and Armida of 1734.^[2]

Boucher became a faculty member in 1734 and his career accelerated from this point as he was promoted Professor then Rector of the Academy, becoming head of the Royal Gobelins Manufactory in 1755 and finally Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter of the King) in 1765.

Boucher died on 30 May 1770 in his native Paris. His name, along with that of his patron Madame de Pompadour, had become synonymous with the French Rococo style, leading the Goncourt brothers to write: ""Boucher is one of those men who represent the taste of a century, who express, personify and embody it.""

Boucher is famous for saying that nature is ""trop verte et mal éclairée"" (too green and badly lit).^[3]

Boucher was associated with the gemstone engraver Jacques Guay, whom he taught to draw. Later Boucher made a series of drawings of works by Guay which Madame de Pompadour then engraved and distributed as a handsomely bound volume to favored courtiers.^[4] The neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David began his painting instruction under Boucher.

Reflecting inspiration gained from such artists as Peter Paul Rubens and Antoine Watteau, Boucher's early works celebrate the idyllic and tranquil portrayal of nature and landscape with great elan. However, his art typically forgoes traditional rural innocence to portray scenes with a definitive style of eroticism as his mythological scenes are passionate and intimately amorous rather than traditionally epic. Marquise de Pompadour (mistress of King Louis XV), whose name became synonymous with Rococo art, was a great admirer of his work.

Boucher's paintings such as The Breakfast (1739), a familial scene, show how he was as a master of the genre scene, where he regularly used his own wife and children as models. These intimate family scenes are contrasting to the licentious style seen in his Odalisque portraits.

The dark-haired version of the Odalisque portraits prompted claims by the art critic Denis Diderot that Boucher was ""prostituting his own wife"", and the Blonde Odalisque was a portrait that illustrated the extramarital relationships of the King. Boucher gained lasting notoriety through such private commissions for wealthy collectors and, after Diderot expressed his disapproval, his reputation came under increasing critical attack during the last years of his career.

type=printed postcards

theme=artists signed

sub-theme=art

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=unposted