François Boucher (Paris 1703-1770)

When published by Ananoff and Wildenstein in 1976, this drawing was connected to one of the putti in Les Génies des Arts, from 1761 in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers (see A. Ananoff and D. Wildenstein, op. cit., no. 545, fig. 1502; erroneously located as in Amiens). More recently, however, Alastair Laing has dismissed this connection and suggested that the drawing should be dated to the 1740s/50s rather than the 1760s. The present drawing might have been used for one of the putti in The Triumph of Venus from 1740, now in the National Museum, Stockholm and in Jupiter and Callisto, from 1744, in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (A. Ananoff and D. Wildenstein, op. cit., I, no. 177, fig. 567 and no. 267, fig. 797).

We are grateful to Alastair Laing for his assistance in cataloguing this drawing and for confirming the attribution to Boucher.