"THE GALLANT PASTOR" AFTER FRANÇOIS BOUCHER, 19TH CENTURY

This painting is a copy of "The Gallant Shepherd," painted by François Boucher for the audience chamber of Prince Hercule-Mériadec, Duke of Rohan, on the ground 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, walking stick, and a bouquet of flowers. Hidden behind the ruins, a young boy spies on the scene. The frame is gilded wood, adorned with friezes of small pearls and foliage.

The Gallant Pastor, commissioned by the Duke of Rohan

In 1732, the Duke of Rohan, at over sixty years of age, contracted a second marriage and decided to mark the occasion by commissioning Boffrand to renovate the hôtel particulier built by his father a generation earlier. Boffrand was to construct a pavilion containing two superimposed oval salons, one for the prince and the other for the new princess, and to renovate the adjacent apartments. The painted decoration of the princess's salon and the overdoors of the other rooms were entrusted to the most prominent contemporary painters: Natoire, Boucher, Carle Van Loo, Restout, and Trémolières. Boucher was commissioned to provide seven very diverse overdoors: mythological scenes, pastoral scenes, and a landscape. He presented his first works at the Salon of 1738. The two overdoors, "The Gallant Shepherd" and "The Complaisant Shepherd," were the major innovation of the ensemble painted by François Boucher for the Hôtel de Soubise, and the engravings were intended to further enhance their impact. These two 18th-century paintings are the earliest "pastoral" scenes to have survived. The term "pastoral" here takes on the narrowest meaning it had in 18th-century French painting, referring to idealized scenes of the emotional lives of shepherds and shepherdesses.

Bibliography: "François Boucher: 1703 - 1770", Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1987, p 176.

Dimensions without frame: W: 93cm, D: 2.5cm, H: 98cm
Dimensions with frame: W: 98cm, D: 4cm, H: 103cm

Circa: 1850

Condition report: Good condition. Minor oil cracks. Wear to the frame's gilding.