François Boucher: Une Dame à sa Toilette

Oil on canvas
34 x 30 in. (86.3 x 76.2 cm.)

Rediscovered in the 1980s and therefore not included in Ananoff's 1976 catalogue raisonné, (see A. Ananoff, Boucher Peintures, 1976) this charming portrait of a young woman at her toilette relates to series of paintings engraved by Gilles Edmé Petit, where the times of day were represented through the activities of a fashionable young lady. Only three of these are recorded by Ananoff as surviving: Morning, (No 111) showing the young lady at her toilette, Noon (No 112) showing a lady with a parasol winding her watch and Evening, (No 113) showing the lady holding a mask and preparing to go out to a ball. This painting, which is an oval variant of Morning, represents the toilet of a young lady wearing a peignoir, a type of negligeé used to protect clothes during the toilette, about to apply a beauty spot, or mouche, to her cheek. On the table is a powder box and in her left hand she holds a boite à mouches, a box containing the beauty spots: small discs of taffeta or black velvet, which were applied to the skin in order to emphasise the whiteness of the skin or to hide some defect. On the underside of its hinged lid is a portrait of a young gentleman, presumably her lover, which was revealed when the picture was cleaned. This can be compared with the portrait of Mme de Pompadour now in the Fogg Art Museum where a miniature on her bracelet contains a portrait of Louis XV. Like the fan, the beauty spot had its own well-defined language of love, which would have been understood by the contemporary viewer.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• François
• Boucher
• Dame
• Toilette
• Lady
• beauty
• spot
• art
• arte

[meesterschilders]

thanks for the up-load... 5* and placed into my playlist of Francois Boucher