Category: François Boucher

M’sieu Boucher

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Gustav Lundberg ~ Portrait de François Boucher, 1741
François Boucher ~ La Toilette de Vénus, 1751

Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, greatly admired Boucher and was his patroness from 1747 until her death in 1764. This famous work is one of a pair that she commissioned for the dressing room at Bellevue, her château near Paris. In 1750 she had acted the title role in a play, staged at Versailles, called “The Toilet of Venus,” and while this is not a portrait, a flattering allusion may well have been intended. The Metropolitan Museum of Art