Allegory of Music

1764

François Boucher

Painter, French, 1703 - 1770

A woman wearing flowing, pastel-colored robes and two, winged, child-like putti gather on a bank of clouds among musical instruments and sheet music in this horizontal painting. The people all have pale, pink-tinged skin. The woman sits to our right of center, facing our left in profile. She has straight nose, a rounded chin, and her small, pink lips are closed. Her ash-blond hair is pulled back under a yellow band. A voluminous white robe falls away over her left shoulder, to our right, to reveal a firm breast and small pink nipple. Sky-blue drapery wraps over her far arm, and deep rose-pink cloth falls across her lap and onto the clouds around her. Her legs extend to our left, her toes pointed. She leans back on her left elbow, closer to us, and points with that index finger to a lyre she props against her knee with her other hand. One chubby, nude putto reaches forward to strum the strings. The other putto hovers above, holding a ring of laurel leaves up in one hand and a flute in the other. Both putti have chubby limbs and torsos, blond curls lifted as if in a breeze, and short, ice-blue wings. Both look at the woman. In the lower left corner, a helmet with a topaz-blue feather and the gold hilt of a sword sit near the woman’s feet. Beneath the woman’s lower leg, at the bottom center of the painting, is a gold horn encircled by another wreath of laurel leaves. Two white doves with wings spread support an open book of sheet music and two pink roses tucked under the woman’s bent elbow. Fog-gray clouds billow up both sides of the scene against a pale blue sky. The clouds on which the trio gathers are parchment brown shaded with mauve pink. The outer corners of the image are white, indicating that the corners of the canvas were rounded. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “F Boucher 1764.”

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 54

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 103.5 x 130 cm (40 3/4 x 51 3/16 in.)
    framed: 130.8 x 157.5 cm (51 1/2 x 62 in.)

  • Accession

    1946.7.2

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  French Paintings of the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries: Allegory of Music, 1764

A young woman draws on an oval surface with white chalk while three winged, baby-like putti gather nearby, all on a bank of pale pink clouds in this horizontal painting. The woman and putti have pale, rosy skin, flushed cheeks, and hazel-brown eyes. To our left, the woman reclines with her upper body propped up on her far elbow, which rests on a steel-blue cushion as her legs stretch out to our right. Her light brown hair is braided and wrapped across the top of her head. She wears a loose, seafoam-green robe over a billowing ivory-white garment that has slipped off the shoulder closer to us. A round paint palette with brushes sticking out of its thumb hole and a roll of blue and white paper sit in the lower left corner, behind the woman. The woman and the objects are on a red cloth. In front of the woman is a rounded surface, perhaps a canvas, on which she draws. She holds up a gold-colored stylus with her right hand, closer to us, with a pointed piece of white chalk in one end and black chalk in the other. The canvas is taller than her head, so the child-like putto she draws on it is life-sized. The three nude putti on the far side of the canvas have copper or golden-blond, curly hair, flushed, rounded cheeks, short wings in white or peacock blue, pudgy torsos, and dimpled limbs. One putto, presumably the one the woman draws, sits back on the bank of clouds with a carnation-pink sash across his chest. He pulls his chin back and looks at her from under his eyebrows. He holds a gold-colored torch with a pink flame in one hand, and the other hand rests near a cylindrical quiver of arrows. Another putto peeks around the side of the canvas, and the third stands and props the canvas up. That third putto holds up a wreath of laurel leaves up over the canvas, above the woman’s drawing hand. The bank of clouds is parchment-brown with muted pink and blue highlights against a vivid blue sky. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “F Boucher – 1765.”

Scholarly Series:  French Paintings of the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Possibly Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria [1745-1777]. Traditionally said to have been brought into France by the early 19th century by Général de Saint-Maurice. M. Maillet du Boullay, Paris; (his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 22 January 1870, no. 1); M. Féral. Gustave Rothan, Paris, by 1874;[1] (his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 29-31 May 1890, no. 122). Adèle, 4th duchesse de Dino [née Adèle Livingston Sampson, 1841-1912; married first to Frederick W. Stevens], Paris, by 1907; probably by inheritance to her daughter, Countess Mabel Stevens Orlowski [married 1891 to Count Mieczyslaw Orlowski (1865-1929)];[2] (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London); sold 1942 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1946 to NGA.
[1] The early provenance of this painting and NGA 1946.7.1 is based on tradition rather than documentary evidence, and derives from Paul Mantz, "La Galerie de M. Rothan," Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1873): 442, who believed the pair had been painted for the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian III Joseph. They were then supposedly returned to France in the early nineteenth century by General de Saint-Maurice, who, according to André Michel, François Boucher, Paris, n.d.[1906]: 51, kept them for some sixty years before selling them to Maillet du Boullay. As Alastair Laing has pointed out, however, Saint-Maurice never served in Bavaria and died in 1796 (letter of 20 April 1997 to Richard Rand). Nor do any references to the paintings appear in the state archives of Bavaria; see Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian, Oxford, 1977: 318, who offered the possibility that they were commissioned by Joseph von Dufresne, a courtier of the Elector who had a large collection of French pictures (see also correspondence in NGA curatorial files). Mantz writes that Rothan acquired the pair of paintings in 1870, probably at Maillet du Boullay's sale; Rothan certainly owned them by 1874, when he lent them to an exhibition in Paris.
[2] The Wildenstein prospectus for the pair of paintings listed the last three owners as Mme. Livingston-Sampson, Duchesse de Dino, and Comte Orllowski [sic]. Research for the Gallery's systematic catalogue of 15th-18th century French paintings determined that the first two names were the same person, and that the Count was her son-in-law. See NGA curatorial files for the prospectus and documentation of the family history.
[3] See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/194.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1874

  • Peinture exposés au profit de la colonisation de l'Algérie pars les Alsaciens-Lorrains, Palais de la Présidence du Corps législatif, Paris, 1974, no. 31.

1878

  • Tableaux anciens et modernes exposés au profit du Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Pavillon de Flore, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1878, no. 15.

1940

  • The Great Tradition of French Painting, Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, 1940, no. 8.

1946

  • Recent Additions to the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1946, no. 767.

1973

  • François Boucher in North American Collections: One Hundred Drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago, 1973-1974, unnumbered brochure for Washington venue (shown only in Washington).

Bibliography

1873

  • Mantz, Paul. "La Galerie de M. Rothan." Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 2cd ser., vol 7 (1873): 442

1880

  • Goncourt, Edmond de, and Jules de Goncourt. L'art du dix-huitième siècle. 2 vols. Paris, 1880-1884: 1:195.

  • Mantz, Paul. François Boucher, Lemoyne et Natoire. Paris, 1880: 153

1906

  • Michel, André. François Boucher. Paris, 1906: no. 937.

1907

  • Nolhac, Pierre de. François Boucher: premier peintre du roi. Paris, 1907: 147, repro. opposite 146

1908

  • Macfall, Haldane. Boucher, the man, his times, his art, and his significance. London, 1908: 152, 154

1925

  • Nolhac, Pierre de. Boucher, premier peintre du roi. Paris, 1925: 189, repro. opposite 92

1944

  • "Kress Makes Important Donation of French Painting to the Nation." Art Digest 18, no. 19 (1 August 1944): 5.

  • "The Almanac: French Paintings Given to the National Gallery." The Magazine Antiques 46, no. 5 (November 1944): 288

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 163, repro.

1948

  • Wildenstein and Company. French XVIII Century Paintings. New York, 1948: 4.

1952

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Great Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1952: 126, color repro.

1956

  • Einstein, Lewis. "Looking at French Eighteenth Century Pictures in Washington." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 47, no. 1048-1049 (May-June 1956): 226.

1957

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): 20, pl. 49.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 365, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 18.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 11, repro.

  • Gandolfo, Giampaolo et al. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Great Museums of the World. New York, 1968: 72, color repro.

1969

  • Mirimonde, Albert P. de. "Les Allégories de la Musique II: Le Retour de Mercure et les Allégories des Beaux-Arts." Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 6th ser., vol. 73 (May-June 1969): 357, repro. 360

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 38, repro.

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 336, no. 451, repro.

1976

  • Ananoff, Alexandre, with Daniel Wildenstein. François Boucher. 2 vols. Lausanne and Paris, 1976: 2:232, no. 580, repro.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 316-318, fig. 282, as The Personification of Music.

1980

  • Ananoff, Alexandre, with Daniel Wildenstein. L'opera completa di Boucher. Milan, 1980: no. 613, repro.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 334, no. 449, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 58, repro.

2005

  • Baillio, Joseph, et al. The Arts of France from François Ier to Napoléon Ier. A Centennial Celebration of Wildenstein's Presence in New York. Exh. cat. Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 2005: 78 (not in the exhibition).

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 5, 25-32, color repro.

Inscriptions

lower right in black paint, FB in monogram: FBoucher 1764
On stretcher: small encapsulated label, "1418d"; small encapsulated label, "MADE IN FRANCE"; written in blue crayon, "11553F"

Wikidata ID

Q20178239

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