To celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of François Boucher (1703-1770), an unprecedented international loan exhibition of his drawings opens this fall at The Frick Collection in New York. This is truly the first major survey of the artist's graphic work to bring together a substantial number of loans from both international and national public and private collections. Presenting approximately seventy-five sheets of the highest quality, the exhibition provides a deeper understanding of Boucher's prolific output of works on paper and demonstrates his extraordinary technique and style as a draftsman. The artist's wide variety of subject matter is revealed by a selection that includes depictions of pastoral scenes and landscapes, various conceptions of mythology, religious narratives, historical events, representations of literature and allegory, and contemporary scenes.
By his own admission, Boucher is said to have made as many as ten thousand drawings over the course of a career that spanned nearly five decades. Not only did he make preparatory compositional and figure studies for his paintings, but he also used drawings in the process of designing cartoons for Beauvais and Gobelins tapestries and as models for Sèvres porcelain. From early on in his career he provided drawings to be engraved as thesis plates, book illustrations, frontispieces, and allegorical vignettes. As a mature artist he pioneered the concept of the autonomous drawing, creating individual works specifically for collectors. Following innovations in printmaking in the 1740s, Boucher also made drawings to be engraved in facsimile, which could, therefore, reach broader audiences. Furthermore, he explored the graphic medium in all its variety, drawing in sanguine (red chalk); sanguine brûlée (reddish-brown chalk); pen and ink (both black and brown); brush and wash; pastel; in the trois crayons technique perfected by Watteau; and in black chalk heightened with white on blue, gray, or fawn paper.
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