The Love Letter

1750

François Boucher

Painter, French, 1703 - 1770

Two pale-skinned women sit together surrounded by five sheep and a dog in a lush forest in this vertical painting. The woman to our right sits slightly above the other, with her arm draped around the shoulders of her companion. The woman to our right wears a low-cut, rose-pink dress with a full skirt and voluminous, gossamer sleeves. Blond curls are pulled back behind a headband, which is adorned over one ear with three large, pink flowers and smaller yellow and blue flowers. She tips her head to our right as she gazes down to her left at her friend. She has blue eyes, flushed cheeks, a delicate nose, and her grapefruit-pink lips curl in a gentle smile. She crosses one knee over the other and leans toward the other woman. Tucked into her side, the second woman looks up at the first in profile facing our right. Her low-cut, lavender-purple dress has a gold shimmer that suggests silk. Her ash-brown curls are pulled back and decorated with small sea-blue flowers. One toe peeks out from her long skirt, and both women are barefoot. The woman in purple holds a white dove on her friend’s lap, and the woman in pink holds a small envelope closed with a shell-pink seal next to the bird. The dove’s wings are slightly outspread, and a blue ribbon is tied around its neck. Just behind the pair, a towering tree with a silvery-gray trunk grows up and off the top edge of the painting. It angles to our left, and green branches hang down into the picture. To our right of the tree, a rectangular sand-brown stone structure is topped with a male lion carved from the same stone, near the upper right corner. The ground beneath the women is covered with moss-green growth and the space around them filled with verdant bushes and plants. A single, cream-colored sheep stands to our right, facing the women, next to a basket of flowers near the lower right corner. Four more sheep stand and lie together beyond the women to our left, while a black-bodied hound with a white muzzle sits watching the women. A pile of broken branches, perhaps forming a fence, lies behind the sheep. Grassy hills and trees become hazy in the distance beyond, and the sky above is slate blue with a few white and pale pink clouds. The upper and lower right corners and the lower left corner are deep in shade. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had inscribed the stone in the shadow just below the lion, “f. Boucher 1750.”

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 55

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Timken Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 81.2 x 75.2 cm (31 15/16 x 29 5/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1960.6.3

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  French Paintings of the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries: The Love Letter, 1750

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

Painted for Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour [1721-1764], and installed in the chambre doré on the first [i.e., second] floor of the Château de Bellevue, outside Paris; removed c. 1757; recorded 1764 in the vestibule of the ground floor of the Hôtel d'Evreux, Pompadour's Parisian residence; by inheritance to her brother, Abel François Poisson, marquis de Ménars et de Marigny [1727-1781], Château de Ménars, Paris; (his estate sale, at his residence by Basan and Joullain, Paris, 18 March-6 April 1782 [postponed from late February], no. 17). (sale, Hôtel des Commissaires-Priseurs, Paris, 14-15 March 1842, no. 15). (anonymous sale ["Provenant du Cabinet de M. X***], Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 26 April 1861, no. 2). Emile [1800-1875] and Isaac [1806-1880] Pereire, Paris; (Péreire sale, at their residence by Pillet and Petit, Paris, 6-9 March 1872, no. 57, as Le Mouton chéri or Le messager); purchased by Sommier, possibly for Frédéric-Alexis-Louis Pillet-Will, comte Pillet [1837-1911], Paris.[1] (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London); sold to William R. Timken [1866-1949], New York, by 1932;[2] by inheritance to his widow, Lillian Guyer Timken [1881-1959], New York; bequest 1960 to NGA.
[1] Alexandre Ananoff, with Daniel Wildenstein, François Boucher, 2 vols., Lausanne and Paris, 1976: 2:66, no. 364, list the painting as being in the collection of comte Pillet Will "c. 1906" (his name is more correctly comte Pillet, although the surname was Pillet-Will). However, the comte purchased other paintings at the Péreire sale, including Fragonard's A Game of Horse and Rider (NGA 1946.7.5), so it is possible he purchased this Boucher through Sommier at the same time.
[2] The Timkens lent the painting to a 1932 exhibition in London. Correspondence in the Duveen Brothers Records indicates that the Timkens were considering, reluctantly, selling the painting in 1937 (Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, accession number 960015, reel 235, box 380, folder 4; copies in NGA curatorial files).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1753

  • Salon, Paris, 1753, under no. 181.

1932

  • Exhibition of French Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1932, no. 228.

1935

  • French Painting and Sculpture of the XVIII Century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1935-1936, unnumbered catalogue, pl. 29.

1940

  • Masterpieces of Art. European & American Paintings 1500-1900, New York World's Fair, 1940, no. 192.

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

1864

  • Brüger, W. "Galerie de MM. Pereire." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1st ser., 17 (1864): 201.

1880

  • Goncourt, Edmond de, and Jules de Goncourt. L'art du dix-huitième siècle. 2 vols. Paris, 1880-1884: 1:196.

  • Mantz, Paul. François Boucher, Lemoyne et Natoire. Paris, 1880: 130 (possibly)

1906

  • Michel, André. François Boucher. Paris, 1906: no. 1438.

1907

  • Nolhac, Pierre de. François Boucher: premier peintre du roi. Paris, 1907: 157

1932

  • Wildenstein, Georges. "Paintings from America in the French Exhibition." The Fine Arts 18 (January 1932): 26, repro.

  • Wildenstein, Georges. "L'Exposition de l'art français a Londres: Le XVIIIe siècle." Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 6th ser., vol. 7 (1932): repro. p. 63

1939

  • Cordey, Jean. Inventaire des biens de Madame de Pompadour rédigé après don décès. Paris, 1939: no. 1231

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 317, 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: 10, repro.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 40, repro.

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 336, no. 448, repro.

1976

  • Ananoff, Alexandre, with Daniel Wildenstein. François Boucher. 2 vols. Lausanne and Paris, 1976: 2:66, no. 364, repro.

  • Ananoff, Alexandre. "François Boucher et l'Amérique." L'Oeil 251 (June 1976): 21.

  • Bordeaux, Jean-Luc. "The Epitome of the Pastoral Genre in Boucher's Oeuvre: The Fountain of Love and The Bird Catcher from The Noble Pastoral." The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 3 (1976): 87, repro.

1978

  • Jean-Richard, Pierrette. L'Oeuvre grave de Francois Boucher, dans la Collection Edmond de Rothschild. Paris, 1978: 346.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 334, no. 444, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 59, repro.

1986

  • Brunel, Georges. Boucher. New York, 1986: 177, 247, 273, figs. 143, 227.

1992

  • From El Greco to Cezanne, Pincothèque Nationale Musée Alexandros Soutzos, Athens, 1992, under no. 27

2002

  • Madam de Pompadour et les arts. Exh. cat. Musée national des château de Versailles et de Trianon; Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich; National
    Gallery, London, 2002-2003: 245, under no. 96.

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. 2, 12-18, color repro.

Inscriptions

upper right on lintel beneath lion: f. Boucher / 1750
Formerly on reverse of plywood backing: two rectangular labels, "EXHIBITION OF FRENCH ART/ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS/LONDON JAN TO FEB 1932/JACQUES CHENUE/Packers of Works of Art./10, GREAT ST. ANDREW STREET/ LONDON, W.C. 1; in blue chalk, "90"; torn paper label, "...675..."; torn oval label, "Chenue/Emballeur..."; stamped into the wood, "Tachet Brevete A. Paris"; rectangular label, "#68/Date/Artist Boucher/Subject Les Deux Confidentes [sic]/Owner's name W.R. Timken/Address ---- "

Wikidata ID

Q20178004

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