"Le pasteur galant" after François Boucher, 19th century
This painting is a copy of "Pasteur galant", painted by François Boucher for the audience room of Prince Hercule-Mériadec, Duc de Rohan, on the first floor of the Hôtel de Soubise. It depicts a gallant scene in a landscape with ruins. The man is hanging a garland of flowers from a young shepherdess. At his feet lie his three sheep, as well as his hat, cane and a bouquet of flowers. Hidden behind the ruins, a young boy spies on the scene. Gilded wood frame, decorated with friezes of small pearls and foliage.
The Gallant Shepherd, commissioned by the Duc de Rohan
In 1732, at over sixty, the Duc de Rohan entered into a second marriage and decided to mark the occasion by having Boffrand transform the hotel built by his father a generation earlier. Boffrand was to build a pavilion containing two superimposed oval salons, one for the prince, the other for the new princess, and to transform the adjacent apartments. The painted decor of the princess's salon and the door tops of the other rooms were entrusted to the most prominent contemporary painters: Natoire, Boucher, Carle Van Loo, Restout and Trémolières. Boucher was commissioned to supply seven highly varied door tops: mythological scenes, pastorals and a landscape. He presented his first works at the Salon of 1738. The two overdoors, the Pasteur Galant and the Pasteur Complaisant, were the great novelty of the ensemble painted by François Boucher for the Hôtel de Soubise, and the engravings were to increase their influence. These two 18th-century paintings are the earliest surviving "pastorales". The term "pastoral" here takes on the more restricted meaning it had in 18th-century French painting, to designate idealized scenes of the sentimental lives of shepherds and shepherdesses.
Bibliography: "François Boucher : 1703 - 1770", Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1987, p 176.
Size without frame: W:93cm, D:2,5cm, H:98cm
Size with frame: W:98cm, D:4cm, H:103cm
Circa: 1850
Dim: L: 98cm, P: 4cm, H: 103cm.
Dim: W: 38,6in, D: 1,6in, H: 40,6in.
Condition report: Good condition. Slight craquelure to the oil. Wear to the gilding of the frame.
