Exhibitions
Francois Boucher (Grand Palais, Paris till 5 January 1987)
Too much sauce
David Wakefield
The current exhibition at the Grand Palais is the latest in a series devoted to the rehabilitation of French 18th-century artists, including Chardin, Oudry and Wat- teau. All of these were something of a revelation, showing these painters to be more beautiful than one had expected. If the same cannot quite be said this time of Boucher, this cannot be laid at the door of the exhibition's organisers, whose pre- liminary work and catalogue display a high degree of scholarly expertise. The problem lies with Boucher himself. I hoped that a wide-ranging, though by no means com- plete, exhibition (limited by the inability of major collections like the Wallace to lend) would show the artist in the most favour- able light, and finally refute those charges of triviality and banality which have been levelled at Boucher ever since Diderot launched his famous diatribes in the last years of the 18th century. This expectation was not fulfilled. Boucher is at his best on a relatively small scale, doing intimist work for a domestic setting. He was primarily a decorative artist, and much of his work was designed for a specific location, as over- doors or panels, in the many superb châteaux and town-houses built during the reign of Louis XV. Boucher's paintings have to be seen or imagined in this context, surrounded by the exquisite marquetry furniture, Sevres porcelain, Gobelins tapestries and Aubusson carpets of that period. They were not intended to be viewed as 'art' divorced from its setting. For this reason, the rather antiseptic, museum-like ambiance of the Grand Palais hardly seems the apropriate place for a Boucher revival. If only the French could mount an exhibition like this in one of their capital's many fine hOtels, more along the lines of the memorable Diderot exhibition held at the Hotel de la Monnaie in 1984. Admittedly, some attempt has been made to include the decorative arts in this exhibition — among them some ravishingly beautiful examples of Sevres porcelain and tapestries from the Gobelins and Beauvais factories inspired by Boucher's designs. But instead of mingling these with the paintings and drawings as they should be, they are displayed in separate sections, thus creating a distinction between the `fine' and decorative arts which modern art-historians might respect but certainly no 18th-century amateur would have done.
This said, there is still much to enjoy in the exhibition. Boucher is best approached in the spirit of his art, which was to charm, titillate and amuse. After an inauspicious start, following cleverly but unimaginative- ly in the footsteps of his Italian predeces- sors Castiglione and Sebastiano Ricci, Boucher found his natural home in the soft, voluptuous nudes of 'Rinaldo and Armida' of 1734 and the beautiful 'Diana bathing' of 1742. Few painters have ever rivalled the exquisite pearly flesh of the nude huntress. All too often though, a note of irritating sauciness re-appears, in the up-turned bottom of 'Louise O'Murphy' for example, which Boucher repeated countless times. This addiction to erotic themes should not be taken as proof of the artist's moral depravity — as it was by Diderot and the more earnest-minded 18th-century critics; in fact, as the cata- logue points out, Boucher was pleasure- loving but an excellent husband. The truth is that he painted such subjects to please his clients, the rich collectors and finan- ciers of the day, whose tastes usually rose no higher than this kind of thing.
The gallant pastoral — so-called because it depicts amorous shepherds and shepher- desses saying and doing very little in idyllic rustic settings — was the one genre at which Boucher excelled. Two specimens painted in 1738 for the Hotel de Soubise, `Le Pasteur Galant' and 'Le Pasteur Com- plaisant', display great charm and a degree of sophisticated poetry. The same can be said of the pair of over-doors (two from a set of four) from the Banque de France and Tours Museum depicting episodes from Tasso's poem `Aminta' (1581). Boucher was also an accomplished, if rather slap- dash, painter of landscapes, creating his own blend of picturesque jumble (for which the Goncourt borthers coined the term 'Le fouillis') combining motifs from French and Italian scenery in a most implausible manner. A fine example of the type is the 'Landscape with Watermill and Temple' from the Bowes Museum in Coun- ty Durham.
The one real revelation of this exhibi- tion, and the single domain in which (to my mind) Boucher achieved true stature, is a delightful sequence of intimist paitings `Our names are being linked.' depicting women and families in their everyday domestic setting, seen dressing, buying clothes and taking breakfast. 'Le Dejeuner' (1739) 'Woman fastening her Garter' (1742) and The Milliner' (1746): these three works are both beautifully painted and masterpieces of detailed ob- servation which afford a precious glimpse of life in the 18th century, as lived by the leisured classes. It is only a pity that towards the end of his career Boucher did not follow his own example of meticulous draftsmanship and superb sense of colour. The last works, especially, fall into a routine of slick drawing and uniform col- our, with an excessive use of the pinks and pastel blues for which Boucher became famous in his own lifetime and scorned afterwards.
Even though Boucher cannot be reck- oned among the 'great' and hardly stands up to full-scale exposure, his work can still give much pleasure. We should be grateful to the organisers of this exhibition for offering us a rare opportunity to see paintings which are now dispersed all over the world.
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