Journal of the History of Collections Advance Access published January 28, 2015 Journal of the History of Collections The artist as collector: François Boucher (1703–1770) Jessica Priebe ON 18 February 1771, the dealer Pierre Rémy (1715– 1797) staged a public auction for the estate of François Boucher, the former premier peintre du roi and director of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. The sale, which lasted several weeks, was held in Boucher’s apartment at the Louvre, a space that had been home to the artist and his family for close to two decades. In the catalogue that accompanied the sale, Rémy outlined the details of Boucher’s collection of approximately 13,100 carefully chosen objects of art and nature.1 Such objects, noted the engraver Johann Georg Wille (1715–1808), were acquired ‘over many years by this famous and gracious painter, with as much taste as expenditure’.2 Boucher’s surprisingly large collection, which sold for 120,844 livres, was unparalleled among his artistic colleagues and even exceeded the collections of comparatively wealthier collectors like Joseph Bonnier de La Mosson (1702–1744), whose celebrated collection raised a little over 100,000 livres when it was sold in 1745. As the deed to his estate reveals, over the course of his lifetime Boucher spent approximately three-quarters of his personal fortune of 152,600 livres on his collection.3 This was a considerable sum for an artist whose annual pension from the Crown would never rise above 1,000 livres. As Boucher’s sale catalogue reveals, the artist’s collection ranged from paintings and drawings from the Italian, Netherlandish and French schools of art, to all manner of porcelain, lacquer, bronze and marble. He also assembled a ine collection of furniture, jewellery and clothing, along with other curiosities such as musical instruments, ireworks and natural objects. According to Rémy, it was generally agreed by ‘everyone’ that the artist’s collection was ‘one of the richest and most pleasant ever seen in Paris’.4 Others, like the naturalist Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1680–1765) argued that: ‘The shells are especially eye-catching, either by their rarity, their size, or their brilliance and variety of colour, combined with the inest state of preservation’.5 For this reason, Boucher’s name appears on two separate lists of the principal natural history collectors in eighteenth-century Europe.6 His collection was also discussed in mid-century guides to collecting and several memoirs by those who either knew the artist during his lifetime or who were in attendance at his 1771 estate sale. Despite Boucher’s notable role as one of the leading artists-turned-collectors of the eighteenth century, a formal study of his collection is almost entirely absent from the existing ield of historical scholarship.7 In this essay, I seek to rectify the relative anonymity of Boucher ‘the collector’ by bringing to light details surrounding the acquisition and display of his collection, in particular the natural objects for which he was well known. By locating Boucher’s collection within the context of the eighteenth-century culture of collecting, the different avenues the artist pursued in order to build his collection of art and nature are revealed. While each of these channels uncovers a side to Boucher that © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/jhc/fhu063 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 The name François Boucher is synonymous with the visual and material culture of luxury in mid eighteenthcentury France. His paintings are filled with desirable objects that informed the tastes of collectors. What is less known is that Boucher was a prolific collector of art and nature, with more than 13,000 different objects in his collection at the time of his death in 1770. Despite this, a formal study of his collection is almost entirely absent from the existing field of historical scholarship. This article aims to bring to light Boucher’s activities as a collector, in particular his interest in natural objects for which he was especially well known. It also considers the extent to which Boucher’s passion for collectable objects had an impact on his practice as an artist. Jessica Priebe Often interchangeable with their counterparts the magots, pagods were found in French collections from the late seventeenth century.15 Made primarily from porcelain, these collectable igurines were modelled after mortal and immortal beings from the East. Pagods are present in the background of The Luncheon and Lady on Her Day Bed, both of which picture the new market for luxury operating within the Parisian bourgeois interior. Such objects may have been drawn from Boucher’s collection of more than forty-ive pagods, valued at approximately 2,000 livres.16 A number of these were complete with spring-loaded heads that caused them to wobble and move about. Arguably the most spectacular pagod in his collection was the igure of a woman mounted on a horse.17 Made from a combination of Chinese soapstone and silver, the pagod was itted with a specially designed spring that allowed the horse to walk on its own. A similar pagod can be seen on a trade card designed by Boucher in 1740 (Fig. 3) to promote the picture dealer Edmé-François Gersaint’s (1694–1750) foray into luxury objects and assorted curios. Boucher’s engagement with the market for luxury and material goods, both as a collector of objects and as an artist whose imagery helped to promote its inluence, is consistent with development of the model of the artist as collector in eighteenth-century France. Indeed, the creation of the public auction system in the 1730s, in combination with issues concerning the rising status of the artist during this period, opened up new opportunities for artists who collected.18 For artists and craftsmen like Jacques Pingat (d.1752), François-Louis Colins (1699–1760) and Charles Cressent (1685–1768), collecting and selling ine and decorative art was a way to supplement their incomes and establish their reputations as experts in particular master works.19 Even some of Boucher’s closest colleagues used their collections to diversify their interests and become experts and dealers. For example, the premier peintre du roi Joseph Aved (1702–1766), whose obituary lists Boucher and the artist Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) among his friends, was in possession of a signiicant collection sold by Rémy in 1766 for 69,010 livres.20 Yet the catalogue attached to Aved’s sale shows that the artist’s personal collection of decorative objects and assorted curios accounted for only 4 per cent of the estate.21 The rest of the collection was comprised of important Italian, French and Netherlandish works that Aved had Page 2 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 has been overlooked by historians of art and science, the material presented here will seem familiar to readers in light of recent scholarship on Boucher’s wider artistic practices and circle of inluence.8 This essay also gives consideration to the extent to which Boucher’s passion for collectable objects had an impact on his practice as an artist, particularly in later years when he became increasingly focused on his collection. As an artist-turned-collector, Boucher followed in the tradition of other artists of the early modern period such as Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), who collected antique gems, coins and master works.9 Boucher’s approach to collecting was similar to that of Rubens (whose works Boucher also owned) in that he used his collection to bring him closer to the network of dealers, patrons and artists who admired his oeuvre.10 Exposure to this network gave Boucher the opportunity to pursue a socially and intellectually rigorous mode of collecting, one that would inspire him in the arrangement of his own collection in his studio at the Louvre. Another artist who inluenced Boucher and his approach to collecting was Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). Works by or after designs by Rembrandt made up an important part of Boucher’s estate when it was sold in 1771.11 As a collector, Boucher shared an afinity with Rembrandt, who assembled a diverse range of objects including antique busts, costumes, shells and other curious items such as fragments of human bone and tissue anatomized according to the teachings of the renowned sixteenth-century anatomist Andreas Vesalius.12 Like Rembrandt, whose collection of layed arms and legs was inluential in the creation of his anatomy portraits, Boucher also used part of his collection as inspiration for his paintings.13 This is evident in a series of genre paintings from the late 1730s and 1740s, which capture the emerging market for luxury in eighteenth-century Paris. Works such as The Luncheon from 1739 (Fig. 1) and Lady on Her Day Bed from 1743 (Fig. 2), for example, use a variety of objects either from, or inspired by the artist’s collection as a way of communicating the evolving tastes of the modern collector. One particular object that Boucher revisited in his paintings, drawings and engravings during this period was the Chinese igurine known to period collectors as a pagod (in French pagode).14 T H E A RT I S T A S C O L L E C T O R : F R A N Ç O I S B O U C H E R ( 1 7 0 3 – 1 7 7 0 ) Fig. 1. François-Bernard Lépicié, after François Boucher, The Luncheon, 1744, engraving, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 acquired, presumably with his proitable business as a picture dealer in mind. As this essay reveals, Boucher took advantage of the changes taking place in the French market for luxury and material goods during this period. He also offered occasional advice to other collectors. However, there is no evidence to suggest that he worked as a dealer in master works (though not his own), or that he used his collection to supplement the income he derived from a combination of state and private patronage.22 On the contrary, Boucher’s interest in collecting was driven primarily by the materiality of the objects and the opportunity for further pedagogical instruction, particularly in the natural sciences. The estate sales Like other collectors of his generation, Boucher acquired his collection through several different channels. The most recognizable process for selection was via the various estate auctions held in Paris from the mid 1740s. These sales would become the primary vehicle for the distribution of objects during the eighteenth century. According to annotated notes found in the accompanying Page 3 of 16 Jessica Priebe Fig. 2. François Boucher, Lady on her Day Bed, 1743, oil on canvas, 57.2 x 68.3 cm. New York, © the Frick Collection. Having declared his interest in collecting shells and natural history at the La Roque sale, Boucher turned his attention to a range of decorative objects and works of art. The La Roque catalogue reveals that Boucher purchased a piece of red lacquer mounted on a wooden base inished with black varnish at a cost of 52 livres.28 He also successfully acquired an album containing approximately 300 loose engravings after different Italian masters for which he paid a further 30 livres.29 With 26 livres going towards the shells, this brought the total amount spent by Boucher to 108 livres. Although Boucher had retained a number of lucrative commissions by 1745, most notably the sale of his Triumph of Venus to Tessin, it was still a signiicant sum for an artist whose modest pension of 400 livres per annum from the Crown had been increased to 600 livres only the previous year.30 The fact that Boucher spent approximately 18 per cent of his annual pension on objects at one sale, suggests that by the mid 1740s the artist regarded himself as a serious collector.31 It is also reasonable to assume that in acquiring these objects, he was following in the footsteps of collectors whom he admired. This was most certainly the case when Boucher acquired a goldlacquered Chinese lantern decorated with ivory mosaics from the collection of the connoisseur Jean de Jullienne (1686–1766).32 The lantern was one of two purchased Page 4 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 catalogues, Boucher purchased part of his collection either from or in connection with the estate sales of a number of high-proile French collectors. One of the earliest was in 1745 at the estate auction of Antoine de La Roque (1642–1744), the former editor of the Mercure de France. The sale, which was organized by Gersaint, attracted the usual crowd of collectors, including the Swedish diplomat Carl Gustaf Tessin (1695–1770). Just ive years earlier, Tessin had been responsible for Boucher’s largest private commission to date, paying the artist 1,600 livres for his Triumph of Venus (Fig. 4).23 While Boucher was not the only artist in attendance at the La Roque sale, he was the only one of his peers to buy natural objects.24 His purchase of two drawers of shells, some of which were extremely rare, relects his growing interest in natural history, particularly those items once owned by a reputed collector such as La Roque.25 To be sure, La Roque’s natural history collection was well known in Paris. His shells had been the subject of a poem by Paul DesforgesMaillard (1699–1772) published in the Mercure de France in 1733.26 Boucher may also have been aware of La Roque’s collection, as a large number of natural objects had been purchased at Gersaint’s inaugural shell auction in 1736, the same sale for which Boucher designed the catalogue’s frontispiece (Fig. 5).27 T H E A RT I S T A S C O L L E C T O R : F R A N Ç O I S B O U C H E R ( 1 7 0 3 – 1 7 7 0 ) by the dealer Jean-Antoine Rouveau for 736 livres at Jullienne’s estate sale in 1767.33 Rouveau, who that same year negotiated the sale of a Sèvres toilette service (London, Wallace Collection) to Queen Lovisa Ulrika of Sweden, most likely sold one of the lanterns to Boucher, which appears in the artist’s 1771 sale catalogue with a note from Rémy conirming its provenance.34 For Boucher, possessing an object that had once belonged to a celebrated collector like Jullienne was of great signiicance. On one level, it tied Boucher to one of the most important private collections of the eighteenth century. Jullienne’s collection, contained many ine representations from the Italian, Netherlandish and French schools of painting and was considered progressive in its showcase of contemporary French Page 5 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 Fig. 3. Comte de Caylus, after François Boucher, À la Pagode, 1740, engraving, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. art.35 The collection was also rich in the number and variety of decorative porcelains, as well as shells and other natural objects that were so highly prized during this period.36 As the dealer Gersaint asserted some twenty years earlier, Jullienne possessed ‘an inherent taste for beautiful things’.37 This, Gersaint argued, drove him to choose only the most aesthetically pleasing objects for his famous collection of art and nature.38 Owning a piece from the collection not only brought Boucher closer to Jullienne, but also to one of the most sensational sales of the decade. Jullienne’s estate sale took place over several months in the Salon carré of the Louvre, home to Académie Royale’s biennial Salon exhibitions and just a short walk from Boucher’s studio. The sale, which was widely reported on in the press, was attended by a host of prominent collectors, artists and dealers, some of whom like Rémy were bidding on behalf of foreign heads of state.39 While it is not clear if Boucher was in attendance, he would have been aware of this highly anticipated sale, which included a number of his own paintings and drawings.40 Given the ierce competition from local and international buyers, it is possible that Boucher was simply outbid. If so, he was not alone. In a letter to Horace Mann, the English writer and collector Horace Walpole (1717–1797) complained that he had no ‘success at the sale of Mons. Julien’s cabinet, where everything sold as extravagantly as if the auction had been here’.41 Indeed, the sensation surrounding Jullienne’s sale suggests that it was not just the items that warranted hefty price tags, but rather the status attached to possessing a piece of this famous collection was in and of itself priceless. The purchase of Jullienne’s lantern thus reveals something of Boucher’s ambitions as a collector. In many ways Jullienne represented the type of collector Boucher had always aspired to be, perhaps since the 1720s when Jullienne hired the young Boucher to engrave a series of drawings from his collection by Antoine Watteau (1684–1721).42 The engravings, which were later published in a four-volume tribute album to Watteau known as Recueil Jullienne (1726–8), were of immense importance to Boucher. The commission not only exposed him to Watteau’s oeuvre and his use of the trois crayons technique, but it also set Boucher on the path to inancial independence. The sudden inlux of income came at a critical juncture for Boucher, allowing him to travel to Italy in 1727 where he would stay for the next four years studying Jessica Priebe Fig. 4. François Boucher, Triumph of Venus, 1740, oil on canvas, 130 x 162 cm. Photo © Eric Cornelius, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. efforts would bring him into contact with amateur naturalists and collectors like Madame Dubois-Jourdain, from whom Boucher purchased approximately 200 objects valued at 1,254 livres at her estate sale in 1766.44 These items included a piece of gold from Peru, along with samples of copper, silver, iron and spath collected from mines in Spain, Germany and Switzerland.45 The artist also purchased over 100 precious stones and agates, some of which were already engraved while others, like the amber, were sold as pre-prepared plaques, ready to be transformed by Boucher into more artful presentations of nature.46 Boucher’s attendance at the Dubois-Jourdain sale was augmented by the unmistakable presence of the artist’s design for the catalogue’s frontispiece. The illustration, which features an ornamental arrangement of shells and corals set in an imaginary cabinet of natural history, was a reprint of his original design for Gersaint’s 1736 shell catalogue (see Fig. 5). His attendance at the Dubois-Jourdain sale represents a signiicant moment for Boucher, one in which his dual reputations as a collector and an artist were no longer perceived by his contemporaries as mutually exclusive. A general awareness of Boucher’s interest in conchology had been growing since 1742 when Dezallier d’Argenville commissioned Boucher to design the frontispiece (Fig. 6) to his La Conchyliologie, the irst Page 6 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 important works of art and architecture.43 This was despite winning the Académie Royale’s coveted Prix de Rome in 1723, for which, due to economic stringency on the part of the Académie, Boucher failed to receive the appropriate funding. In sharing part of his collection of drawings with Boucher, Jullienne unwittingly presented the young artist with a model of collecting and connoisseurship to which he could aspire. Thirty years later Boucher would once again experience Jullienne’s collection, when he was asked by the collector to design the frontispiece for an illustrated inventory (New York, The Morgan Library). While the 1756 inventory does not relect a number of signiicant purchases Jullienne made in the last decade of his life, the collection Boucher viewed at this time had evolved into one of the most important assemblages of the eighteenth century and certainly one of the most impressive with which Boucher is known to have come in to contact during his lifetime. The commission also offered Boucher a preview to the great sale of 1767, a sale that allowed him to further align himself not only with Jullienne but also with the noble tradition of collecting. While Boucher’s ambitions as a collector drew him to objects once owned by celebrated collectors, the artist was equally motivated by the desire to pursue a more academic and inclusive mode of collecting. Such T H E A RT I S T A S C O L L E C T O R : F R A N Ç O I S B O U C H E R ( 1 7 0 3 – 1 7 7 0 ) Fig. 5. Claude-Augustin Dulos II, after François Boucher, engraved frontispiece. E.-F. Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné de coquilles et autres curiosités (Paris, 1736). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. illustrated guide to shell and mineral collecting produced in France.47 Boucher’s frontispiece, which is linked stylistically and thematically to his Triumph of Venus (see Fig. 4) from two years earlier, was reused for subsequent editions of La Conchyliologie in 1757 and 1780, the latter containing a description of Boucher’s own natural history cabinet.48 It was through his connection to Dezallier, that Boucher became aware of Madame DuboisJourdain’s natural history collection, which was discussed in the 1757 edition of La Conchyliologie.49 However, it was not just the contents of Madame Dubois-Jourdain’s collection to which Boucher was drawn. Like Jullienne, Madame Dubois-Jourdain embodied many of the characteristics that Boucher respected in a collector. The widow of a well-known natural history collector and courtier, she had continued her late husband’s interests with great enthusiasm.50 In order to further her understanding of their collection, she took courses in physics, chemistry and natural history.51 Madame DuboisJourdain would later share this knowledge with other collectors during the intimate gatherings she regularly hosted in her natural history cabinet.52 While it is not known whether Boucher attended this particular collector’s events, his student Johann Christian von Mannlich (1741–1822), a leading source for Boucher, has revealed that when Boucher was not required to perform his oficial duties at Versailles, the Opéra-Comique, or the Manufacture des Gobelins, he spent much of his time ‘with the dealers and amateurs of natural history’.53 Presumably, the type of intellectual and social exchanges offered by these small cabinet gatherings appealed to Boucher. Not only was the artist able to view objects that belonged in some of the inest collections in Paris, but he was also given the opportunity Page 7 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 Fig. 6. Pierre-Quentin Chedel, after François Boucher, engraved frontispiece. A.- J. Dezallier d’Argenville, La Conchyliologie (Paris, 1742). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Jessica Priebe dynasty of artists, Charles-Antoine had inherited both the studio-apartment and a much larger residence in the southeast corner of the Cour Carrée. Upon his death, the three-loor residence passed to CharlesNicolas Cochin, who took over Charles-Antoine’s role as the keeper of the King’s drawings, while the studioapartment on the irst loor went to Boucher.60 With its spacious living quarters and studio on site, the Louvre apartment provided Boucher with an opportunity to consolidate his personal and professional needs. Conversely, Charles-Antoine’s requirements for the space had proved somewhat different from Boucher’s. The Coypel collection (enhanced considerably by Charles-Antoine) was displayed in the family’s residence, which also included a gallery on the third loor for the King’s collection of drawings.61 While it is possible that Charles-Antoine used the irst-loor studio to display items from his personal collection, of the 582 items listed for sale in his 1753 estate catalogue, 434 of these were made up of paintings, drawings, and engravings – in other words, items that could be either hung or stored lat.62 Thus, it quickly became apparent to Boucher that in order to accommodate the 13,000-plus objects in his collection, he would need to make a number of signiicant modiications to the space. Between July and December 1752, Boucher carried out a series of renovations at a cost of 9,000 livres, only half of which was reimbursed by the Crown during his lifetime.63 The renovations involved both structural and cosmetic changes and included a number of new cupboards for storage. The results were announced in the fourth volume of Jacques-François Blondel’s Architecture Françoise (1752–6), in which the author conirmed that this ‘celebrated artist has renovated a very handsome lodging, containing an ininite amount of curiosities that merit the attention of connoisseurs’.64 While the renovations guaranteed a more comfortable and practical layout for Boucher and his family, it seems they were carried out by the artist with his collection irmly in mind. Reconstructing elements of the display of Boucher’s collection at the Louvre is made possible through the analysis of several contemporary sources. These sources are drawn from those who knew of the collection by reputation and those who came into contact with it; either as a visitor to the studio, or as an attendee at the artist’s estate auction in 1771, where the collection remained ‘in place’ for the duration of Page 8 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 to discuss the merits of collecting with the other amateurs and naturalists in attendance. While Boucher’s reputation as an artist was important to this process, it was ultimately his status as a collector that provided him with unfettered access to these events. As Gersaint explained, a collector ‘becomes the equal of those who, sharing this noble passion, are above him by their rank or condition; but as such he may be invited and received with pleasure in their midst’.54 For an artist of relatively humble origins, the nature of this acceptance must have pleased Boucher greatly, particularly in his later years when according to his eulogist Antoine Bret (1717–1792), he became increasingly focused on perfecting his cabinet of natural history.55 Entrance to these and other types of social events, such as Madame Geoffrin’s (1699–1777) ritual Monday night dinners, not only brought Boucher into contact with like-minded artists, writers, collectors and travellers, but it also enabled him to reciprocate in kind.56 It was at one such dinner in December 1765 that Boucher was introduced to Horace Walpole, whom he invited to visit him in his studio at the Louvre during Walpole’s extended stay in Paris.57 Accompanied by Madame Geoffrin and the GreekItalian chemist Count Marco Carburi (1731–1808), Walpole visited Boucher in his studio in February the following year, where he noted the ‘great quantities of shells, mosses, ores, Japan, china, vases, Indian arms, and music’ that Boucher had on display.58 Madame Geoffrin was also responsible for introducing Boucher to the Polish aristocrat Count Michel Mniszech (1742–1806), who after visiting Boucher in his studio in 1767 revealed that: ‘His cabinet is composed of several rooms, it is an immense storehouse of curiosities from art and nature, uniquely arranged for the pleasure of the eye . . .’59 While Mniszech and Walpole were no doubt both interested in viewing the artist at work in his studio, their comments speak to the prominence of Boucher’s collection and moreover, his success in creating an atelier and cabinet of curiosity that, like chez Dubois-Jourdain, was a destination in its own right. To be sure, visitors to Boucher’s studio at the Louvre were treated to a spectacular display of art and nature. Located in the aile de l’Oratoire in the northwest corner of the Cour carrée, the space had become available in 1752 following the death of CharlesAntoine Coypel, a former premier peintre du roi and director of the Académie Royale. A member of Coypel T H E A RT I S T A S C O L L E C T O R : F R A N Ç O I S B O U C H E R ( 1 7 0 3 – 1 7 7 0 ) in the fertile exchange it represented between art and nature. Part scientiic and part decorative, this abstract taxonomy was ‘as much enjoyable as instructive’.72 In this way, Boucher’s arrangement was in keeping with that of other collectors of his generation in that it satisied both the desire for tasteful spectacle and a genuine interest in scientiic instruction. Boucher’s awareness of the recent trends in conchology and the study of natural history was relected in the arrangement of his shell collection, the bulk of which was stored in a wooden coquillier designed by royal cabinet maker Jean-François Oeben (1721– 1763). The coquillier, which contained multiple drawers for viewing shells, was decorated with gilt bronze mounts executed by royal sculptor and bronze caster Philippe Cafiéri (1714–1774).73 Within the fabriclined drawers of the coquillier, Boucher’s arrangement followed the principles set out in Dezallier’s La Conchyliologie (1742).74 This pre-Linnaean approach to natural history saw Boucher divide his shells into the twenty-ive different families of species identiied by Dezallier. Within these familial groups, the shells were arranged according to the object’s external visual character, a common practice that gave collectors the opportunity to experiment with the relationship between taste and order.75 The design of the coquillier allowed Boucher to demonstrate his knowledge of natural history, as well as his appreciation of the various aesthetic qualities that determined their place within the arrangement. However, ultimately the drawer system proved too limiting for the artist, who required greater access to the shell collection. The need to experience the collection as part of a more complete system of viewing saw him install a further sixteen different-sized tables covered with mirrored glass.76 Placed strategically around the room, the tables were reserved exclusively for the most visually spectacular shells in his collection. Writing about these tables in 1767, Dezallier exclaimed: ‘This ingenious Painter . . . presents to the eyes of the viewer a spectacular enamelled parterre that appears to rival nature.’77 An expert in the French formal style of gardening, Dezallier’s comparison to the parterre garden implies that the artfulness of Boucher’s shell tables not only called attention to the artiice of nature, but also by extension, the inventiveness of Boucher the artisan.78 Embedded in Dezallier’s comments lies an all-important clue as to how Boucher as an Page 9 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 the sale.65 While these responses provide a rich and varied account of Boucher’s collection, most agree that the highlight was his selection of natural objects, which he displayed in an adjoining room dedicated to natural history and located at the eastern end of the studio. According to the young Joseph-Henri Costa de Beauregard (1752–1824), who visited Boucher at the Louvre on several occasions in 1767, every inch of the cabinet of natural history was taken up with objects from the collection.66 This included a suite of framed seaweed and other exotic plants forming a small marine herbarium.67 On the opposite wall to the interconnecting door were two long cabinets showcasing ‘an ininite number of the inest minerals, corals and all types of marine plants and petriied objects’.68 Arranged like trophies behind glass, the collection served as a daily reminder of Boucher’s knowledge of natural history, while at the same time encouraging visitors to the studio to think aesthetically about nature. In the centre of the room Boucher installed a long table covered with mirrored glass on which he displayed a spectacular arrangement of shells, minerals, butterlies and exotic birds.69 Other preserved specimens including ish, a parrot, a rooster and a peacock with its tail extended, were exhibited on smaller tables and pedestals around the room. To complement the display, Boucher included a selection of decorative vases made from jade, amber, crystal and porcelain. More precious objects, like his collection of engraved stones and ‘a very beautiful Diamond’, were stored in a series of glass boxes that Boucher placed in the recess of the large window that ran along the southern wall.70 As Costa de Beauregard recalled: ‘He has an immense natural history collection. It is the most wonderful thing. There I saw beautiful butterlies. Some, with spread wings, are at least half a foot wide . . . Everything is arranged with great art and taste’.71 Indeed, for Boucher, the arrangements of an enlightened collector were analogous with the role of the artist, whose responsibility it was to invent and inspire new sites of cultural exchange. This is not to say that Boucher’s pedagogical aspirations were suppressed by his love of ornament and lare for artistic display. On the contrary, in his entry on Boucher’s natural history collection from his 1767 guide to shell collecting, Dezallier d’Argenville argued that the genius of Boucher’s arrangement lay Jessica Priebe Boucher abroad Acquiring objects at estate sales was not the only channel that Boucher pursued in order to expand his collection. Shortly after the Dubois-Jourdain sale in May 1766, Boucher travelled north in the company of royal tax administrator and collector Randon de Boisset (1708–1776). An enthusiastic patron of Boucher’s, Randon had invited the artist to accompany him to Bergues and Amsterdam in order to build his collection of Dutch and Flemish masters. While it was not unusual for Randon to seek advice on his collection from Boucher, or other artists and dealers for that matter, it was the irst time that Boucher had accompanied a collector abroad, not to mention the irst time in thirty-four years that he had left the country.81 Assisted by Boucher, Randon made several important acquisitions during the trip. They included an altarpiece by Rubens featuring a scene from the Adoration of the Magi, purchased from the St Winoc Abbey in the fortiied town of Bergues.82 At the time of their visit, Randon owned very few religious works and had only one other work depicting a scene from the Magi cycle in his collection.83 By comparison, Boucher’s 1771 catalogue lists fourteen paintings, drawings and engravings by various artists (including himself) on the subject.84 It is tempting to think that Boucher’s interest in the Magi cycle played a role in drawing Randon’s attention to the Bergues altarpiece and the subsequent advice he provided to secure its purchase. Following the visit to Bergues, the pair moved on to Amsterdam, where they met with the art dealer J. Lubbeling. With Boucher’s help, Randon purchased several paintings from the dealer, including works by Jan Wynants, David Teniers, Willem van de Velde, Philippe Wouwermans, and Adrian van der Velde.85 However, Randon was not the only one to take advantage of the exposure to the market for Netherlandish art. An annotated note found in the 1801 sale catalogue of François-Antoine Robit the Elder (c.1752–1815), reveals that Boucher purchased a painting (whereabouts unknown) by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jan van der Heyden, ‘during the trip he made with M. Randon de Boisset in 1766’.86 According to the dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun (1748–1812), the composition featured seventeen igures skilfully organized within a streetscape view of Cologne, one of many that Van der Heyden painted during his career.87 Boucher’s purchase of the Cologne painting conirms his intent to add to his collection whilst abroad, a fact that is supported by the relative inancial freedom the artist enjoyed during these later years.88 Boucher’s interest in expanding his collection whilst in Amsterdam was presumably extended to the procurement of shells and other natural objects. With its trade links to the Far East, Amsterdam was a rich source of rare and exotic shells.89 As Gersaint had observed more than three decades earlier: ‘the number of ships that they send to the ends of the world provides them with abundant riches of the sea’.90 This, he argued, contributed to ‘the Nation’s wealth in this area’.91 While there is no record of Boucher purchasing shells in Amsterdam, the visit provided him with the opportunity to add to his own collection, either by buying shells directly through specialist dealers, or possibly by trading duplicates brought with him from his own collection. A gift economy In addition to purchasing objects through the more conventional practices associated with the market for collecting both in Paris and abroad, Boucher also Page 10 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 artist-turned-collector was understood by his contemporaries. Whether it was arranging shells on mirrored tables, or pairing them with decorative imitations cast in ceramic and mounted in gilt bronze, the artist’s thoughtful approach to his collection implies a total re-ordering of art and nature, one that was seen as a quality unique to Boucher. Referring speciically to the arrangement of Boucher’s natural history collection, Rémy argued that ‘one recognizes the picturesque style [le goût pittoresque] and graces of M. Boucher, a taste that few people can claim’.79 According to Antoine Bret, it was this sense of artistic taste that gave Boucher’s cabinet of natural history ‘a charming look, which could only be the work of a soul sensitive to the harmony of colours’.80 Such comments speak to the highly aestheticized nature of Boucher’s cabinet. Moreover, the acknowledgment that Boucher’s arrangements contained a form of artistic signature, suggests a degree of luidity between Boucher’s taste for collecting and the production of works emanating from his studio at the Louvre. T H E A RT I S T A S C O L L E C T O R : F R A N Ç O I S B O U C H E R ( 1 7 0 3 – 1 7 7 0 ) This specially chosen gift acted as a reminder of their encounter, binding together the collections of both the giver and receiver.97 Such exchanges, however, were not just about the objects in question. There was often a complex negotiation of the social codes attached to the giftgiving process. Typically this had to do with aristocratic notions of honour, prestige, power and status, all of which could be achieved in a proper handling of the trade. Writing in his instructive treatise on court conduct in 1630, Nicolas Faret listed the art of giving presents among the essential skills to be mastered by courtiers. Faret duly encouraged his readers to ‘notice what will be pleasing to those whom we desire to oblige’.98 The way in which participants in the gift exchange stood to beneit goes some way to explaining the reasons why natural history objects so often accompanied the correspondence between eighteenth-century collectors. For example, a number of visitors to Madame Dubois-Jourdain’s natural history cabinet were reportedly so impressed by its contents that upon their return they sent gifts from their own collections in the hope that she would respond in kind.99 According to Rémy, Madame Dubois-Jourdain always honoured such requests as it was through ‘these multiplied exchanges that she acquired the most beautiful pieces in her rich Collection of minerals’.100 This type of transaction, as Jonathan Simon has noted, is an example of how a legitimate gift economy of naturalia grew alongside more conventional market forces, in particular those that regulated the auction system.101 Like Madame Dubois-Jourdain, Boucher received gifts from visitors to his collection. The most memorable was a case of minerals given to him in 1765 by Mannlich’s patron Christian IV, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld (1722–1775).102 The gift was the result of a promise made by the Duke of Zweibrücken when introducing Mannlich to Boucher for the irst time in February the previous year. As the young student recalled: At the beginning of the Lent, Mgr le Duc presented me one morning to M. Boucher the painter of the French graces. He was in his cabinet of natural history which, by the beauty and the choice of objects it contained, and above all by its arrangement was unique. Le Duc, who had an extensive knowledge of mineralogy, discussed this matter with him for a long time and promised him quicksilver minerals of a particular formation found only in the Duchy of Deuxponts. [He said] This young man whom I introduce to you and Page 11 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 traded objects with other collectors and dealers. It was through this process of exchange that Boucher acquired the majority of his natural history collection, trading well into his inal years. Recalling the moment when Boucher was presented with a case of shells and minerals, his student Mannlich noted that: ‘Of all the case, he kept only seven pieces for his cabinet, putting the rest aside to barter with the collectors and dealers with whom he had spent his life doing business’.92 It is unlikely that Boucher’s restraint in this instance was inancially motivated; rather his decision to keep only seven pieces was based on the conidence he placed in the exchange process. The ability to trade duplicates with other collectors would prove to be a valuable resource for Boucher, whose collection displayed very little repetition, something he would have worked hard to avoid. While Boucher used the barter system to alleviate some of the problems surrounding duplication, he also traded objects as a way of securing the best possible example of its kind. As Mannlich explained, Boucher told him he had shells, ‘which without being very rare had cost him more than 600 livres each, having bartered them against more beautiful examples of the same species’.93 Boucher’s ability to choose only what pleased him provided a unifying approach to his process for selection. According to Rémy: ‘The taste that nature has given to M. Boucher for everything that is agreeable has made him desire with great exuberance all that pleased him and rarely did he refuse the challenge of seeking out things that appealed to his desires’.94 It is clear from Rémy and Mannlich’s comments that Boucher was perceived by his peers as having a natural talent for acquiring a range of diverse and interesting objects. This included items bought, sold and traded on the open market, as well as nonprecious objects such as stones and pebbles that he collected from the streets around Paris.95 Boucher’s reliance on less conventional modes of acquisition also saw him take part in another ritual of exchange, namely the process of gift-giving and receiving. By their very nature, these gifts are more dificult to trace. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that Boucher’s collection was acquired partly through the process of gift exchange. The practice of gift-giving was commonplace among European collectors during the early modern period.96 For instance, a visit to a contemporary’s cabinet might result in a gift being sent from the guest’s personal collection. Jessica Priebe recommend, who seeks a career in the arts and of whom I am very fond, will bring you a case from there on my next trip to Paris. He has only to remind me of my promise upon my return to Deuxponts, I will ensure that he delivers it.103 The case of minerals that I delivered to M. Boucher, which Mgr le Duc had promised him the previous year, made him so happy, for as weak and decrepit as he was, he could not wait to undo it. At each rare and well chosen piece, he cried and was happy as a child.107 The Duke’s attempt to choose a gift that Boucher would consider worthy of such an exchange not only legitimizes the institution of gift-giving but it also conirms Boucher’s commitment to his natural history collection. As Rémy noted, Boucher’s interest in Page 12 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 Mannlich’s recollection of the meeting suggests that the Duke’s offer of a case of minerals was in fact a gift in exchange for Boucher’s agreement to accept Mannlich into his studio. To be sure, the Duke recognized that for a passionate collector of natural history like Boucher, the offer of such unique minerals would be too tempting to refuse. The Duke’s promise of a present that he believed would bring Boucher the greatest joy highlights what Marcel Mauss has described as the paradox of the gift: on one hand, the gift is presented as ‘free’ and ‘disinterested’, when in actual fact it is ‘constrained’ and motivated by ‘self-interest’.104 Thus, like the visitors to Madame Dubois-Jourdain’s cabinet who sent gifts from their own collections in the hope of procuring a return, the Duke’s offer was given with the intention of securing a professional obligation from Boucher in the form of an apprenticeship for Mannlich. It seems that Boucher understood what was necessary to meet this commitment, with the artist agreeing to accept Mannlich as a student the following year. Yet, while Mannlich acknowledged that Boucher made every effort to welcome him into his studio, he also added that the artist ‘begs me not to forget it’.105 Indeed, Boucher knew that if he were ever going to take receipt of the gift promised to him by the Duke, he would have to ensure that his new student was comfortable and well cared for. Mannlich would go on to spend two years as a student in Boucher’s studio. Although he would later criticize his teacher’s ‘false and made-up charms’, Mannlich’s initial impression of the experience was a happy one.106 This fact did not escape the attention of the Duke, who delivered his gift shortly after Mannlich joined his studio in 1765: his collection grew to a point where ‘everything that pleased his eye became worthy of his research, and he wished for nothing else’.108 In recognizing Boucher’s weakness for collecting, the Duke was able to procure a favourable outcome for his young friend, one that would see him become an apprentice to the newly appointed premier peintre du roi and director of the Académie Royale.109 Boucher’s willingness to trade the acceptance of Mannlich into his studio for a small selection of the Duke’s minerals opens up the possibility that the artist may have used his own artworks as an opportunity to expand his collection of art and nature. There is evidence that Boucher gave works of art as gifts, such as the pastel portrait he produced in 1761 (private collection) for his friend and patron Jean-Claude Gaspard de Sireul (c.1720–1781).110 Boucher is known to have received gifts from the porcelain factory at Sèvres, most likely in return for supplying drawings for the production of the factory’s own range of highly proitable collectable pieces after Boucher’s designs.111 There are also reports of Boucher receiving a gift from the artist Jean-Baptiste Massé (1687– 1767) in the form of a painting by Étienne Parrocel (1696–1775), after he admired the work during a visit to Massé’s home.112 Such muniicence was not unusual in the context of the artist-patron relationship in eighteenth-century France and is emblematic of the way in which works of art circulated within the model of the gift economy during this period.113 When viewed in the context of Boucher’s collection, these exchanges speak to the power of Boucher’s authority as an artist-turned-collector. Moreover, they highlight the potential for this authority to act as a form of non-monetary currency, one that allowed Boucher to further indulge his passion for collecting. These practices raise questions about the extent to which Boucher’s interest in collecting affected his career as an artist. By all accounts he was a prodigious worker, reportedly labouring for twelve-hour days to produce around 10,000 drawings and 1,000 paintings.114 While these latter igures may be exaggerated, it has long been contended by art historians that his vast output was based on a consistent demand for his work, even in later years when mainstream tastes had turned away from the rococo style in favour of neoclassicism.115 According to Mannlich, this demand was not without its price: T H E A RT I S T A S C O L L E C T O R : F R A N Ç O I S B O U C H E R ( 1 7 0 3 – 1 7 7 0 ) He [Boucher] kept us busy for a long time, copying those of his inest drawings that he wanted to retain in his portfolio. It was these copies, which we were told simply to lay in, without inishing them, that he reserved to himself the task of retouching in his lunch hour, and out of which he made originals that he also sold for two Louis apiece.116 Address for correspondence Dr Jessica Priebe, Department of Art History and Film Studies, R. C. Mills Building A26, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. jessica.priebe@sydney.edu.au Acknowledgements I would like to thank Jennifer Milam and the anonymous reviewer for the Journal for their insights and comments on earlier versions of this essay. Notes and references 1 Pierre Rémy, Catalogue raisonné . . . le cabinet de feu M. Boucher, premier peintre du Roi (Paris, 1771). 2 ‘. . . rassemblés depuis nombres d’années par ce fameux et gracieux peintre, avec autant goût que de dépense.’ J.-G. Wille, Mémoires et Journal (Paris, 1857), vol. I, p. 470. The italics are mine. 3 Details of Boucher’s estate are revealed in a deed dated 6 April 1773. This document is preserved in the Archives nationale de France, Minutier central, XXXV, 775. 4 ‘. . . pour une des plus riches & des plus agréables collections que l’on voit à Paris’. Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), Avant-propos. Page 13 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 While such practices were commonplace in the artist’s studio, Mannlich’s comments conirm Boucher’s interest in supplementing his income from selling smaller studio works, despite receiving a number of signiicant state and private commissions during this period. In his eulogy on the artist, Antoine Bret went one step further, maintaining that during his lifetime Boucher ‘was forced to take on more [work] in order to meet his spending and his different tastes’.117 He argued that this reduced Boucher ‘to unashamedly accept help from those less talented’.118 As Bret’s comments imply, Boucher’s seemingly continuous supply of original and studio works was not, as previously thought, solely motivated by the demand from patrons. These works were most likely generated, at least in part, by Boucher as a way to fund his collection. In the case of his later studio works, the ability to delegate offered Boucher an opportunity to spend more time with the objects he so obviously treasured. The additional works that both Mannlich and Bret referred to also provided Boucher with a solution to the rising costs associated with the business of collecting. A deed to his estate drawn up in 1773 reveals that Boucher’s debts, which were a direct result of his interest in collecting, fell into two distinct categories.119 The irst related to the sale of his collection in 1771, with 9,400 livres owed to Rémy and his assistant J. Guillot for the organization of the sale.120 The remaining debt of approximately 5,243 livres was spread across various dealers, collectors, framers, and engravers – people with whom Boucher had spent a lifetime doing business. One such merchant was Lazare Duvaux (c.1703–1758), from whom Boucher purchased a number of imported decorative Asian porcelains and other collectable objects at a cost of 3,215 livres.121 Unlike Duvaux’s other clients, Boucher had a rolling account with the dealer that allowed him to pay in instalments when necessary. Boucher’s debts to Duvaux can be traced throughout the latter’s Livre-Journal, which incidentally featured a reprint of Boucher’s trade card for Gersaint (see Fig. 3) as its frontispiece when it was posthumously published in 1873.122 That Boucher needed to go to such lengths to obtain objects for his collection distinguishes him from Duvaux’s more wealthy clients like Louis XV’s mistress Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764). Yet at the same time, it also attests to the nature of the relationship between Duvaux and Boucher, which in addition to being forged in good faith, was dependent on a shared clientele and therefore likely to be regarded as mutually beneicial by both parties. The extent to which Boucher’s artistic practices were driven by his passion for collecting cannot be measured with any exactitude. What is clear, however, is his willingness to further his interest in collecting, either by purchasing items outright at estate sales, indebting himself to dealers, trading them for objects in his own collection, or by exchanging them in return for a service – as was the case with his student Mannlich. The fact that all of these avenues were pursued by Boucher at one point or another during his lifetime, reafirms the artist’s underlying desire and dedication to his collection and its display at the Louvre. Moreover, it suggests that for Boucher, his identity as an artist-turned-collector was part of a broader strategy, one that offered him the potential to beneit both professionally and personally from the intellectual and social opportunities associated with the culture of collecting in eighteenth-century Paris. Jessica Priebe 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 François Marandet, ‘Pierre Rémy: the Parisian art market in the mid-eighteenth century’, Apollo 158 no. 498 (2003), pp. 32–44. On the partnership formed by Pignat and Colins, see J. Guiffrey, ‘Scellés et inventaires d’artistes français’, Nouvelles archives de l’art français (1884), vol. II, pp. 44–66. 20 Pierre Rémy, Catalogue raisonné de tableaux . . . le cabinet de feu M. Aved, peintre du Roi & de son Académie (Paris, 1766), p. v. For a brief summary of artists who collected drawings during this period, see Cordélia Hattori, ‘Les artistes français collectionneurs des dessins au XVIIIe siècle’, in Monbeig Goguel, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 89–97. 21 This is my estimate based on the annotated notes found in Aved’s estate sale catalogue in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, YD-2060 (2)-8. 22 On the commissions Boucher received, see Alexandre Ananoff, with Daniel Wildenstein, François Boucher (Lausanne, 1976). 23 The sale is mentioned in Carl Gustaf Tessin, Lettres inédites, ed. Gunner von Proschwitz (Paris 1983), pp. 70–1. 24 For a list of artists at the La Roque sale, see Guillaume Glorieux, À l’Enseigne de Gersaint (Paris, 2002), pp. 573–4. 25 E.-F. Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné . . . le cabinet de feu M. le Chevalier de La Roque (Paris, 1745), lots 500, 510, 515. 26 ‘Les Coquillages’ was published under the pseudonym Mademoiselle de Malcrais de la Vigne in the February edition of the Mercure de France in 1733. 27 E.-F. Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné de coquilles et autre curiosités naturelle (Paris, 1736). On La Roque’s collection of works by Boucher, see Gersaint, op. cit. (note 25), lots 193, 195, 567–8, 585, 641. 28 Ibid., lot 371. 29 Ibid., lot 605. 30 Alastair Laing, ‘Chronology’, in Alastair Laing, J. Patrice Marandel, and Pierre Rosenberg (eds), François Boucher, 1703–1770 (New York, 1986), p. 22. 31 This is conirmed by Wille, who noted that at the time of his death in 1770, Boucher had been collecting for around thirty years: Wille, op. cit. (note 2), p. 470. 32 Pierre Rémy and C.-F. Julliot, Catalogue raisonné . . . aprés le décès de M. de Jullienne (Paris, 1767), lot 1627. 33 The annotated copy of Jullienne’s sale catalogue in the Philadelphia Museum of Art lists Rouveau as the buyer of the lanterns. I am grateful to Jennifer Tonkovich for sharing her knowledge of buyers at the 1767 sale. 34 Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), lot 941. 35 On the significance of Jullienne’s collection, see Jennifer Tonkovich, Christoph Vogtherr et al., Jean de Jullienne: Collector and Connoisseur (London, 2011); and Rochelle Ziskin, Sheltering Art: Collecting and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris (University Park, PA, 2012), pp. 187–204. 36 The decorative objects and natural curiosities are listed in part two of the catalogue. See Rémy and Julliot, op. cit. (note 32). On the mania for shell collecting during this period see Bettina Dietz, ‘Mobile objects: the space of shells in eighteenth-century France’, British Society for the History of Science 39 no. 3 (2006), pp. 362–82; Kristel Smentek, Rococo Exotic: French Mounted Porcelains and the Allure of the East (New York, 2007); Emma Spary, ‘Scientiic symmetries’, History of Science Page 14 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 8 Here, the term ‘everyone’ (tout le monde) refers to a select group of collectors and connoisseurs brought together by issues relating to the materiality of objects. On the social structure of these groups and their role in determining taste and production during this period, see Charlotte Guichard, ‘The rise of the amateur in eighteenth-century Paris’, EighteenthCentury Studies 45 no. 4 (2012), pp. 519–47, esp. p. 532. ‘Les coquillages surtout attirent les regards, soit par la rareté de l’espèce, soit par leur grandeur, soit enin par l’éclat & la variété de leurs couleurs, jointes à la plus conservation.’ A.-J. Dezallierd’Argenville, La Conchyliologie (Paris, 1780), vol. I, p. 236. Ibid; A.-J. Dezallier d’Argenville, Conchyliologie nouvelle et portative (Paris, 1767), pp. 312–13. A notable exception is Françoise Joulie’s essay from 2006, which looks primarily at Boucher’s collection of paintings and drawings. See F. Joulie, ‘La collection de François Boucher’, in C. Monbeig Goguel (ed.), L’artiste collectionneur de dessin. De Giorgio Vasari à aujourd’hui (Paris, 2006), pp. 129–40. In the past ten years, art historical scholarship has presented fresh insight into Boucher and his work. Most notably, Melissa Hyde and Mark Ledbury (eds), Rethinking Boucher (Los Angeles, 2006); Alastair Laing, The Drawings of François Boucher (New York, 2003); Jo Hedley, Boucher: Seductive Visions (London, 2004); F. Joulie, Boucher et les peintres du Nord (Dijon and London, 2004); Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, ‘Image matters: the case of Boucher’, in Elizabeth crapper (ed.), Dialogues in Art History (Washington, DC, 2008), pp. 227–303, and Melissa Hyde, Making up the Rococo: François Boucher and his Critics (Los Angeles, 2006). On Rubens as a collector, see Jeffrey Muller, Rubens: The Artist as Collector (Princeton, 1989). For Boucher’s collection of works by, or in the style of Rubens, see Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), lots 13, 109, 221–3. For Boucher’s collection of works by, or after Rembrandt, see ibid., lots 111–5, 237–57, 547–51, 1822. On the impact of Rembrandt’s collection on his life and work, see Paul Crenshaw, Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy: The Artist, His Patrons, and the Art World in Seventeenth-Century Netherlands (Cambridge, 2006). On issues relating to his studio practices, see Svetlana Alpers, Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (Chicago, 1990). On Rembrandt’s anatomy portraits, see Mieke Bal, Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge, 1991); and Dolores Mitchell, ‘Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp”: a sinner among the righteous’, Artibus et Historiae 15 no. 30 (1994), pp. 145–56. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (eds), Encyclopédie (Paris, 1765), vol. XI, p. 746. Ibid., vol. IX, p. 861. On the history of these collectables, see Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide, ‘The reign of magots and pagods’, Metropolitan Museum Journal 37 (2002), pp. 177–97. Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), lots 659–83. Ibid., lot 697. Andrew McClellan, ‘Watteau’s dealer: Gersaint and the marketing of art in eighteenth-century Paris’, Art Bulletin 78 no. 3 (1996), pp. 439–53. On the changing status of the artist during this period, see Thomas Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven and London, 1985). T H E A RT I S T A S C O L L E C T O R : F R A N Ç O I S B O U C H E R ( 1 7 0 3 – 1 7 7 0 ) 37 38 39 40 41 42 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 ‘. . . devient égal à ceux-mêmes, qui livrés à cette noble passion, se trouvent au-dessus de son état par leur rang ou par leur condition: comme tel, il est appelé & reçu avec plaisir dans leurs assemblées . . .’ Gersaint, op. cit. (note 37), pp. 2–3. In this instance, I have used Charlotte Guichard’s translation: see Guichard, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 532–3. 55 Antoine Bret, ‘Éloge de M. Boucher, premier peintre du roi’, Le nécrologe des hommes célèbres de France (Paris, 1771), pp. 47–70. 56 J.-A.-J. Desboulmiers, ‘Éloge de M. Boucher’, Mercure de France (September 1770), p. 188. 57 W. S. Lewis (ed.), The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (London, 1939), vol. V, p. 283. 58 Ibid., p. 304. 59 ‘Son cabinet, composé de plusieurs pièces, est un immense magasin de curiosités de l’art et la nature, rangés uniquement pour le coup d’oeil . . .’ Michel Mniszech, ‘Un gentilhomme polonais à Paris en 1767’, Revue Rétrospective 6 (1887), p. 109. 60 Colin B. Bailey, ‘Marie-Jeanne Buzeau, Madame Boucher (1716–96)’, Burlington Magazine 147 no. 1225 (2005), p. 226. 61 Ziskin, op. cit. (note 35), pp. 134–5. 62 Pierre-Jean Mariette, Catalogue . . . du cabinet de feu M. Coypel (Paris, 1753). By comparison, Boucher’s catalogue lists 1,865 lots for sale, many with multiple listings. See Rémy, op. cit. (note 1). 63 Bailey, op. cit. (note 60), p. 226. 64 ‘. . . dans lequel ce célèbre artiste s’est pratiqué un fort beau logement, contenant une ininité de curiosités qui méritent l’attention des connoisseurs.’ J.-F. Blondel, Architecture Françoise (Paris, 1756), vol. IV, p. 36. 65 ‘. . . étant encore en place’. See Wille, op. cit. (note 2), p. 470. 66 Joseph-Henri Costa de Beauregard, Journal de voyage d’un jeune noble savoyard à Paris en 1766–1767, ed. Patrick Michel (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2013), pp. 98–100. 67 Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), lots 1805–7. 68 ‘. . . un nombre inini des plus beaux minéraux, de coraux, toutes sortes de plantes marines, de pétriications.’ Costa de Beauregard, op. cit. (note 66), p. 99. The cabinets are also discussed in Dezallier d’Argenville, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 312–13. 69 Costa de Beauregard, op. cit. (note 66), p. 99. 70 ‘. . . un très beau Diamant’. Ibid. 71 ‘Il a un cabinet d’histoire naturelle immense. C’est la plus belle chose qu’il soit possible de voir. C’est là que j’ai vu de beaux papillons. Il en a qui, les ailes étendues, ont au moins un demipied de large . . . Le tout est arrangé avec beaucoup d’art et de goût.’ Costa de Beauregard, op. cit. (note 66), pp. 94–5. 72 ‘. . . aussi agréable qu’instructif.’ Dezallier d’Argenville, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 312–13. 73 Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), lot 1863. 74 Dezallier d’Argenville, op. cit. (note 47), pp. 237–396. 75 On the issue of taste and order as it relates to the collection of shells and other objects of natural history during this period, see Daniela Bleichmar, ‘Learning to look: visual expertise across art and science in eighteenth-century France’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 46 no. 1 (2012), pp. 85–111. 76 The existence of Boucher’s shell tables is mentioned in Dezallier d’Argenville, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 312–3. The tables were sold in 1771 for 391 livres. See Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), lot 1021. For further discussion on the display of Boucher’s natural history collection at the Louvre, see Jessica Priebe, ‘Conchyliologie to Conchyliomanie: The Cabinet of François Boucher, 1703– 1770’, PhD diss., University of Sydney (2011), pp. 145–76. 77 ‘Ce Peintre ingénieux . . . elles présentent aux yeux du spectacteur un parterre émaillé qui semble le disputer à la nature.’ Dezallier d’Argenville, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 312–3. 78 A.-J. Dezallier d’Argenville, La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (Paris, 1709). 79 ‘. . . l’on reconnoissoit le goût pittoresque & plein de graces de M. Boucher, goût auquel peu de gens peuvent prétendre.’ Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), Avant-propos. 80 ‘. . . formaient un coup d’oeil ravissant, qui ne pouvait être l’ouvrage que d’une ame sensible à l’harmonie des couleurs.’ Bret, op. cit. (note 55), pp. 47–70. 81 Boucher’s trip and his relationship with Randon is discussed in J.-C. Gaspard de Sireul, ‘Éloge de M. de Boisset’, J.-B.-P. Lebrun (ed.), Almanach historique et raisonné des architectes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs et ciseleurs (Paris, 1777), pp. 153–6. 82 For a description of the work, see John Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters (London, 1830), p. 41, no. 119. Page 15 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 43 42 (2004), pp. 1–46; and Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice 1500–1800, trans. Elizabeth WilesPortier (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 159–62. ‘. . . le goût naturelle pour les belles choses’. E.-F. Gersaint Catalogue raisonné des diverses curiosités du cabinet de feu M. Quentin de Lorangère (Paris, 1744), pp. 170–1. Gersaint, op. cit. (note 27), p. 36. For example, Pierre Rémy (who also organized Boucher’s estate sale in 1771) bid on several paintings for Catherine the Great. See Tonkovich and Vogtherr, op. cit. (note 35), p. 40. Rémy and Julliot, op. cit. (note 32), lots 270–3, 316, 934, 952, 1180. Horace Walpole, Letters of Horace Walpole to Horace Mann 1760 – 1785 (London, 1843), vol. I, p. 347 On Boucher’s work for Jullienne and other patrons during these years, see Beverly Schreiber-Jacoby, François Boucher’s Early Development as a Draughtsman, 1720–1734 (New York, 1986). On the importance of this trip to Boucher’s artistic development, see ibid., pp. 107–121. Pierre Rémy, Catalogue raisonné . . . le cabinet de feu Madame Dubois-Jourdain (Paris, 1766). Ibid., lots 482, 511, 513, 516, 535, 591, 595, 633. Ibid., lots 651, 667, 708, 778, 819, 871, 923, 927, 978, 1045, 1328. Dezallier d’Argenville, L’Histoire naturelle éclaircie dans deux de ses parties principales, la Lithologie et la Conchyliologie (Paris, 1742). Dezallier d’Argenville, op. cit. (note 5), p. 236. Dezallier d’Argenville, L’Histoire naturelle éclaircie dans une de ses parties principals: La Conchyliologie, qui traite des coquillages (Paris, 1757) vol. II, pp. 119–21, 388–9. Dezallier d’Argenville, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 216–18. Rémy, op. cit. (note 44), p. vi. Ibid., p. vii. ‘. . . chez les marchands et amateurs d’histoire naturelle’. Johann Christian von Mannlich, Histoire de ma vie (1741– 1822), ed. Karl-Heinz Bender and Herman Kleber (Trier, 1989), vol. I, p. 156. Jessica Priebe 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 qui avait beaucoup de connaissance dans mineralogy s’entretint longtemps avec lui sur cette matière et lui promit des mines de vif-argent d’une formation particulière qui se ne trouvait que dans le Duché des Deuxponts. Ce jeune homme que je vous présente et recommande, qui court la carrière des Arts et que j’aime beaucoup, vous en apportera une caisse à mon prochain voyage à Paris. Il n’a qu’a me rappeler ma promesse à mon retour aux Deuxponts, je la lui ferai remettre.’ Mannlich, op. cit. (note 53), p. 56. Mauss, op. cit. (note 97), pp. 4, 42. ‘. . . me conjura de ne pas l’oublier’. Mannlich, op. cit. (note 53), p. 56. ‘. . . râces factices et fardées’. Ibid., pp. 173, 195–6. ‘La caise [sic] de mineraux que je rémis a M. Boucher, que Mgr le Duc lui avoit promi [sic] l’année précedente, lui it tant de plaisir, que foible et decrepit comme il etoit, il ne put achever de la déballer. A chaque morçau [sic] rare et bien choisi, il s’ecrioit et se réjouissoit comme un enfant.’ Ibid., p. 156. ‘. . . tout ce qui pouvoit plaire à la vue, devenoit un objet digne de ses recherches, & il n’en vouloit point d’autres’. Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), Avant-propos. Boucher was appointed premier peintre du roi on 8 August 1765. Fifteen days later he was elected director of the Académie Royale. According to the inscription on the back of the portrait, Boucher presented the work to Sireul in 1761. On Sireul’s relationship with Boucher, see N.-F.-J. Boileau, Catalogue . . . de M. de Sireul (Paris, 1781). For further analysis of the portrait, see Laing, op. cit. (note 8), p. 174. According to factory records, Boucher received a gift of a decorative basket in 1757, possibly the same one acquired by the Getty Museum in 1982. See J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 11 (1983), pp. 45–7. On the production of works at Sèvres after Boucher’s designs, see Rosalind Savill, ‘François Boucher and the porcelains of Vincennes and Sèvres’, Apollo 115 (1982), pp. 162–70. Massé’s gift is mentioned in Georges Brunel, Boucher, trans. Janet Fairweather et al. (London, 1986), p. 52. On the relationship between artists and patrons during this period, see Colin B. Bailey, Patriotic Taste: Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris (New Haven and London, 2002). 114 Desboulmiers, op. cit. (note 56), p. 184. 115 On the critical backlash against Boucher, see Hyde, op. cit. (note 8). 116 ‘Il nous occupà longtems a copier de ses plus beaux désseins qu’il vouloit garder dans son portefeuille. Ce sont ces copies que nous ne dévions que préparer sans y metre les derniers touches qu’il rétouchoit pendant son déjeuner, en it des origineaux [sic] et les vendit deux Louis piece.’ Mannlich, op. cit. (note 53), p. 157. 117 ‘. . . avait même été contraint de faire plus encore pour soutenir sa dépense & ses gouts différents’. Bret, op. cit. (note 55), pp. 47–70. 118 ‘. . . sans en rougir pour lui-même, accepté la ressource des talents médiocres’. Idem. 119 Op. cit. (note 3), pp. 8–11. 120 Ibid., p. 8. 121 Louis Courajod, Le Livre-Journal de Lazare Duvaux (Paris, 1873), vol. II, lots 140, 575, 903, 910, 965, 988, 1047, 1081, 1092, 1229, 2490, 2559, 2774. 122 For evidence of Boucher’s rolling account with Duvaux, see ibid., lots 140, 903, 1081. Page 16 of 16 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 1, 2015 83 Pierre Rémy and C.-F. Julliot, Catalogue des tableaux & desseins autres objets du cabinet de feu M. Randon de Boisset (Paris, 1777), lot 9. Annotated notes reveal that the two remaining Magi pictures were bought by Randon in 1773, seven years after his trip with Boucher. See lots 185 and 187. 84 Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), lots 66, 178, 191, 208, 224, 232, 333, 446–7. Boucher’s 1771 sale catalogue also lists two grisailles by the artist, entitled L’Adoration des Bergers and L’Adoration des Rois, along with a drawing from the same series. See lots 79–80 and 395. On Boucher’s religious works, see Martin Schieder, ‘Between grâce and volupté: Boucher and religious painting’, in Hyde and Ledbury, op. cit. (note 8), pp. 61–87. 85 Rémy and Julliot, op. cit. (note 83), lots 54, 58, 73, 87, 136. 86 As quoted in Ananoff, op. cit. (note 22), p. 113. 87 A full description of the painting is reproduced in ibid., p. 113. 88 For details on the commissions Boucher received between 1766 and 1770, see Laing, op. cit. (note 30), pp. 34–7; and Ananoff, op. cit. (note 22), pp. 113–27. 89 On the trade routes for shells during the eighteenth century, see Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (Cambridge and New York, 2003). 90 ‘. . . le nombre de vaisseaux qu’ils envoïent jusqu’aux extremités du monde leur procure, avec plus d’abondance les richesses de la mer’. Gersaint, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 17–8. 91 ‘. . . la Nation la plus opulence dans cette partie’. Ibid. 92 ‘De toute la caise [sic], il ne gardà cependant que sept morceaux pour son cabinet, le reste fut mis de coté pour le troquer a des amateurs ou des marchands, avec lesquels il passoit sa vie a négocier.’ Mannlich, op. cit. (note 53), p. 156. 93 ‘. . . qui sans être tres rares lui avoient coûté plus 600 livres piece, en les rétroquent [sic] toujours contre une belle de la même éspece’. Ibid. 94 ‘Ce goût que la nature avoit donné à M. Boucher pour tout ce qui est agréable, faisoit qu’il desiroit avec la plus grande vivacité tout ce qui lui plaisoit & que rarement il se refusoit au deit de posseder ce qui le lattoit.’ Rémy, op. cit. (note 1), Avant-propos. 95 Mannlich, op. cit. (note 53), p. 156. 96 On the model of the gift economy, see Cynthia Klekar and Linda Zionkowski (eds), The Culture of the Gift in EighteenthCentury England (Basingstoke, 2009). 97 On the social and institutional obligations of gift-gifting, see Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. Halls (London and New York, 2001). 98 ‘. . . remarquer les choses qui peuvent plaire à celuy que nous desirons obliger’. Nicolas Faret, L’Honnête homme (Paris, 1630), pp. 103–6. 99 Rémy, op. cit. (note 44), pp. vii-viii. 100 ‘. . . ces échanges multiplies qu’elle avoit acquis les plus beaux morceaux de sa riche Collection de mine’. Ibid., p. viii. 101 Jonathan Simon, ‘Mineralogy and mineral collection in 18thcentury France,’ Endeavour 26 no. 4 (2002), p. 133. 102 Christian IV de Deux-Ponts-Birkenfeld was Duke of Zweibrücken from 1733 until his death in 1775. 103 ‘Au commencement du carême Mgr le Duc me présenta un matin a M. Boucher le peintre des graces françaises. Il était dans son cabinet d’histoire naturelle qui, par la beauté et le choix des objets qu’il renfermait et surtout par son arrangement était unique. Le Duc