François BOUCHER (Paris 1703-1770) - Lot 165

François BOUCHER (Paris 1703-1770) A gardener and her daughter loading a donkey with flowers Black stone, shading and white chalk highlights, formerly blue paper 39.5 x 25.8cm Previously annotated at bottom "F Boucher". Insolated, pasted in full on the old mount Provenance: Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Ader-Picard-Tajan, March 22, 1991; no. 72, reproduced, with its counterpart above. Bibliography: André Michel, François Boucher, Paris, ed. Piazza, possibly one of the three drawings described under no. 1190, "Jardinière"; Une jardinière et une petite villageoise chargent d'fleurs un âne rebelle; (Musée Dioclétien du colonel Bernardini, 1832) Anne Leclair, Une vente secrète en 1765: la correspondance inédite entre Pierre Paul Louis Randon de Boisset (1709-1776) et le marquis de Voyer d'Argenson (1722-1782), in BSHAF, 2006, pp.151-169, repr. fig. 5b. We would like to thank Madame Démazure, who kindly confirmed the authenticity of this drawing after studying it in person. The above information comes from the Alastair Laing archives and the drawing will be included in the Laing-Démazure catalog raisonné currently in preparation. We would like to thank Mme Françoise Joulie who kindly confirmed the authenticity of these drawings from a photograph. In 1765, Randon de Boisset attempted to exchange two drawings by Boucher for two paintings by Mieris with Voyer d'Argenson, who refused the exchange. The two drawings were found in his sale on March 19, 1777 under lot 336: "two other pastel drawings; in one a woman holds the bridle of a donkey loaded with vegetables; in the other a woman unloads a donkey, a little girl holds her by her petticoat"; 14 inches 6 lines x 10 inches (i.e. 39 x 27 cm) (See Anne Leclair, opus cited supra, note 68, p.167). Although the drawings are indicated as being executed in pastel, it's not impossible that they correspond to ours, the expression sometimes also covering 18th-century drawings in white chalk. There is, however, a pastel version of the first composition in the Maurice de Rothschild collection, looted during the war and never recovered (see N. Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellist, no. J.173.628, repr.).