Caption

Probably painted just before, or during, Boucher's belated period of study in Italy (1728 —1730/31), this is characteristic of the Dutch-influenced scenes of rural life that he did before his invention of the more artificial, sentimental pastoral, which took its inspiration from the theatre. The sleeping peasant in the foreground is derived from Abraham Bloemaert (1564 — 1651), a group of whose drawings for figures of this kind Boucher appears to have acquired, etching a number of them. One of his first paintings to reach England, between about 1774 and 1929 this was at Belton, to which, in 1993, it was bequeathed back by Mrs. Martha Sklarz.

Summary

Oil painting on canvas, La vie champêtre, by François Boucher (Paris 1703 – Paris 1770), circa 1728. An early work showing group on a journey.

Full description

This picture is singular amongst French eighteenth-century paintings in having a virtually unbroken English provenance, extending back to a date not long after it was painted. Like most of the few other Bouchers that featured in English sales or collections in the eighteenth century, it is quite different in character from the sentimental pastorals or nude mythologies that were so avidly sought after by just a few British collectors (often with their domicile in, or with particular links with, France) in the nineteenth century. Indeed, as with La belle cuisinière (Musée Cognacq-Jay) , it was no doubt because of the genre in which it was painted, rather than because of Boucher's own reputation, that it was taken over to England in the first place. The genre here is Dutch. Into a setting that owes something to the rural scenes with ruins by the Italianate school of landscapists, Boucher has inserted figures indebted to his imitations of Abraham Bloemaert's studies from everyday life . The figure of the sleeping harvester, in particular, is almost a quotation from Bloemaert's Pastoral Scene with Tobias and the Angel in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin . From a study identifiably for the latter, Boucher directly quoted the figure of the boy standing with a basket, which he was to employ in his Capriccio View of the Farnese Gardens (The Jack & Belle Linsky Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and in the tenth etching of his Livre d'Etude d'après les Desseins Originaux de Blomart . The brushwork of the present picture, and the types of the figures in the middle plane in particular, associate it with such paintings as La fontaine (The J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville) , or the two depictions of Noah entering the Ark and The sacrifice of Noah (Private collection, Fort Worth) , and - slightly more distantly - with certain of the early group of pastoral landscapes published by Hermann Voss in his first article on the young Boucher in 1953: Rustic Scene with a Mother Spinning (last recorded in the Frey collection in Paris in that year), the Landscape with Bathers in a Moat (last recorded in a private collection in Paris in 1966), and the Crossing the Ford (auctioned in Avranches in 1995) . All but the last of these have the slumped figure of a peasant acting as a repoussoir in the foreground, and one can well believe that, if these were not derived directly from drawings by Bloemaert, they were at least inspired by such. In the three last, the landscape predominates over the figures and is characterized by exaggeratedly plunging effects of perspective recession and by vegetation of almost demented vitality (partially inspired by Lemoine). In La fontaine, as in the present picture, it is the figures that predominate over the setting, and the distortions of perspective and foliage are less extreme. The brushwork and the treatment of drapery have also shed the mannerism of Boucher's earliest pictures, without acquiring the summary quality of those that he painted after his return from Italy. Despite the fact, therefore, that La fontaine was said by the catalogue of only the fourth sale in which it appeared, that of M. Bourlat de Montredon , to have been painted by Boucher after his return from Rome, it is most probable either that it and the present picture just antedate the journey there, or that they are examples of the "tableaux précieux à la maniere des Flamands," that Papillon de La Ferté asserts Boucher did in Rome. Additional support for a dating of the present picture to Boucher's time in Rome can be obtained from closer consideration of the etchings after Bloemaert. Although these were published as late as 1735, the drawings from which they were done seem to have been available to Boucher for some time before. Not only is there the evidence of their exploitation in other early works, as seen above, but they also appear to have come from a larger group of drawings circulated among Boucher's fellow students in Rome. This would at any rate appear to be the explanation of the two sheets of copies of Bloemaert drawings among the three fonds d'ateliers of French artists in Rome acquired by the comte d'Orsay and now in the Louvre . One indicator that might suggest a later placing of the present picture than the one proposed here, is the date of Elizabeth Lépicié's engraving of it: 1741. The date of an engraving after Boucher bears no necessary relation, however, to that of the original painting or drawing, least of all by the 1740s, when his reputation was made and publishers eagerly sought out anything of his to reproduce. In this case, however, the absence either of a dedication or of any indication of ownership on the plate is more probably an indication that it was simply made to assist the picture's resale. Significantly, the advertisement for the engraving in the Mercure de France says that the picture was "entierement peint dans le goût de Benedetto Castillon", which is palpably not the case, but which was no doubt intended to associate this picture commercially with those which Boucher painted immediately after his return from Rome, in which the influence of Castiglione is evident. So, too, the verses underneath the engraving, hymning the simply pleasures of rustic society, belong more to the time of the engraving, when Boucher was painting his first sentimental pastorals, than to the epoch of the picture itself, although these implications may well have been latent in it. It is, indeed, the concentration upon a group of rustics, without the introduction of any erotic or sentimental note, whilst not reducing them to mere staffage in a landscape, that sets this painting, La fontaine, and one or two other transitional works, apart from the themes of Boucher's maturity. At this period in his life, when he needed to accumulate the funds to go to Rome at his own expense (normally the reward for winning the annual prix de Rome, as he had done in 1723, but of which the favouritism exercised by the Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi, the duc d'Antin, had deprived him, to sustain himself whilst he was there (1728-1730/31), and to relaunch his career after his return, Boucher seems to have turned out pictures, etchings, and designs for engravings, at a furious rate. Probably unable, as yet, to take on studio assistance, he seems to have simplified the task for himself, not only by repeating whole compositions with minimal variations, but by re-employing elements - particularly figures and animals - from one painting in another. His dexterity in this respect also meant that he was invited to enliven landscapes by other - sometimes earlier - artists with these. His ability to compose at the point of his brush, however, meant that he often introduced small modifications in the process. In the case of La vie champêtre, the figure of the sleeping young man (but without his guitar), together with a pissing cow borrowed from the painting engraved as Le berger napolitain , two sheep, and a herdswoman, were added to a Landscape with ruins, doubtfully ascribed to J.-B. Lallemand (1716-1803), (auctioned in Brest in 1994) . The cow in the present picture recurs, with minor variations, amongst Boucher's additions to a Landscape Capriccio with Ruins by Jacques de Lajoue (1687-1761), last seen at auction in Paris in 1991. A variant version of the young man behind a mule laden with a brass cauldron and earthenware pitcher is to be found in another lost early painting, now known only from an engraving, entitled Départ de Jacob ; whilst the mule itself, without the young man, looms into the picture in a similar way -but from the right rather than the left - in the picture painted around 1735/36 given the modern title of La tendre pastorale (present whereabouts unknown) . The Sir Henry Bankes (1711-1774) who bought this painting at Dr. Bragge's sale was no relation of the Bankes family at Kingston Lacy, but a City merchant (a member of the Grocers' Company), who became Sheriff of London and was knighted in 1762. He put together a good little collection of pictures, not depending purely upon the London salerooms, but himself making a buying-trip to Antwerp in 1754, where his best purchase still at Belton was a head of Jan van den Wouwer ('Woverius') very close to Van Dyck. He kept his collection at his villa in Wimbledon. It came to Belton through the marriage of his only daughter, Frances (1756-1847) to Sir Brownlow Cust, 7th Bt., created Baron Brownlow in 1776. His was the second of the three collections of Old Masters to come in whole or in part to Belton, of which - after successive sales - only a paltry remnant survives there. It is, thus, particularly gratifying that Mrs. Sklarz should have left this picture back to the house, both on account of the picture's own quality, and as a reminder that such - and even greater - was the quality of the pictures that have permanently departed. (i) Cf. Thérèse Burollet, Musée Cognacq-Jay:Peintures et Dessins, Ville de Paris, 1980, no.10; exh.cat. François Boucher, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, &c., 1986-87, no.21. The advertisement in the Mercure de France of April 1735 for Pierre Aveline's engraving of this states that the painting had been "acquired by an English gentleman who had taken it to London". It was re-engraved by P. Benazech and published as The handsom Cook Maid by François Vivares, and produced by J. Johnson as a glass-engraving published by J. Fisher as Eggs in Danger. (ii) Regina Shoolman Slatkin, 'Abraham Bloemaert and François Boucher: Affinity and Relationship', Master Drawings 14, 1976, pp.247-60 & pls.1-15. (iii) J. Rosenberg, S. Slive & E.H. ter Kuile, Dutch Art and Architecture 1600—1800, Rev. ed. Harmondsworth & New York, 1977, pl.193; for the copy of Bloemaert's drawing for this figure the offset of which bears an early ascription to Subleyras, see exh.cat. Les collections du comte d'Orsay:Dessins du Musée du Louvre, Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, 1983, Paris, no.100. (iv) Exh.cat. François Boucher, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, &c., 1985-86, no.23. (v) Pierrette Jean-Richard, L'Oeuvre gravé de François Boucher dans la Collection Edmond de Rothschild (Inventaire général des gravures:École française.I), Musées Nationaux, Paris, 1978, no.184. (vi) Alexandre Ananoff & Daniel Wildenstein, François Boucher, 2 vols., Lausanne & Paris, 1976, no.46; engraved by Jean Pelletier, cf. Jean-Richard, op.cit., no.1453. (vii) Exh.cat., François Boucher, nos.10 & 11. (viii) Hermann Voss, 'François Boucher's Early Development', The Burlington Magazine, vol.XCV (July 1953), p.82, & fig. 45; Ananoff & Wildenstein, op.cit., no.50. (ix) Voss, art.cit., p.82, & fig. 37; Ananoff & Wildenstein, op.cit., no.72. (x) Voss, art.cit., p.82, & fig. 38. (xi) Sale in Paris, 17 March ff. 1778, lot 15; which also mistitled it Bergers à la Fontaine, thus confusing it with a different early painting engraved by Fessard. (xii) Denis-Pierre P[apillon] d[e] l[a] F[erté], Extrait des différens ouvrages publiés sur la vie des peintres, Paris, 1776, vol.II, p.657. (xiii) cf. exh.cat., Les collections du comte d'Orsay:Dessins du Musée du Louvre, Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, 1983, Paris, nos.99 & 100. The sheet with the figure of the sleeping peasant-boy may indeed be, as its offset in Darmstadt is inscribed, by Subleyras; but the sheet with the two figures of seated women has every appearance of being by Natoire. Boucher's copy of the larger of these two figures, inscribed as by 'vateau', was included in a sale of items belonging to descendants of Bouchardon, held at Troyes 17 May 1987. (xiv) Mercure de France, November 1741, p.2456. (xv)Unrecorded since the 19th century; engraved by Daullé in 1758, when in the collection of the chevalier de Damery: cf. Ananoff & Wildenstein, op.cit., no.425, vol.II, p.116 & fig. 1216 [placed much too late, under 1753]. The landscape of this is the one on the easel of Boucher's Painter in his studio, from the La Caze collection in the Louvre: cf. Ananoff & Wildenstein, op.cit., no.424, vol.II, p.116, & fig. 1215 [again placed much too late]. (xvi) The whole picture was ascribed to Lallamand when it was put up for auction at Brest on 25 October 1994, but it looked earlier. Lallemand, who certainly seems to have worked for Boucher when he first came to Paris from Dijon, only did so in 1744 - too late for Boucher to have been inserting figures such as this into any pictures of his. (xvii) Last sold at the Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 18 December 1991, lot 60, as entirely by Lajoue: cf. Marianne Roland Michel, Lajoüe et l'Art Rocaille, Neuilly, 1984, no.P92, p.106 & fig. 107 [also as entirely by Lajoue]. The first record of it, however - in an age when figure-painting was given primacy over landscape - is in the Silvestre sale in Paris, 16 Nov.ff. 1778, lot 53, when it was wholly ascribed to Boucher: it is identifiable thanks to the little sketch of it by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin in his copy of the catalogue, now in the Bibliothèque de l'Institut, Paris. (xviii) Ananoff & Wildenstein, op.cit., no.34, vol.I, p.171 & fig. 223, reproducing the engraving by Elizabeth Cousinet Lempereur: Jean-Richard, op.cit., no.1375. (xix) Ananoff & Wildenstein, op.cit., no.54, vol.I, pp.190-91 & fig. 274. Mr. David M. Koetser kindly told me that he had sold it to the David Findlay gallery in New York around 1955, but that gallery was either unable or unwilling to indicate its present whereabouts. (adapted from author's version/pre-publication, Alastair Laing, In Trust for the Nation, exh. cat., 1995)