Boucher, Madame de Pompadour

Art History

Rococo

Fragonard, The Swing
Fragonard, The Meeting
Boucher, Venus Consoling Love
Boucher, Madame de Pompadour
Vigée Le Brun, Madame Perregaux

Boucher, Madame de Pompadour François Boucher, Madame de Pompadour, oil on canvas, 1750 (extention of canvas and additional painting likely added by Boucher later, Fogg Museum

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Boucher, Madame de Pompadour

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SmartHistory. Art. History. Conversation.
Male voice: We're looking at François Boucher's "De Marcido Pompadour"
Female voice: But I have, before we go into, to say...
...that I don't really like Rococo paintings but I really like this one.
There's something really... beautiful about it.
I'm taken in by the pink ruffles and the lace
...and the cameo on her wrist
...and the puff that she's using to powder herself
...and the flowers on the bottom
...and the pink of the cheeks
...and the blue bow in her hair
...and the little pink at the end of the brush
...that she's using to put on her blush.
I mean... it's just... really yummy!
Male voice: So let's talk about those things for just a moment
because they really do catch the eye.
The lace and the pink ribbons
have the kind of almost architectural quality to them.
- ...that's really extraordinary. - Yeah, they have like a kind of veil volume to them.
Male voice: They have volume and structure
and you can feel the weight and the stiffness of the fabric
and the proof is the opposite of that.
And there's tremendous focus, of course, on the cameo on her wrist.
- Because it's a portrait of her lover. - King Louis XV.
That's right, of France.
But then contrast that with the rendering
of her face, of her head...
which is sort of impossibly... soft and, sort of, reformed.
Look at the size of the eyes in comparison to the size of the mouth.
She's become child.
Female voice: That's true, I haven't thought of that.
Male voice: It's almost as we're looking at
Japanese cartoons... what are those called?
Female voice: Anime? It's certainly not about her personality
and who she was, and her humanity, and then he...
Male voice: No, it's about her persona, right?
Female voice: Yes, her persona.
And, that's to me, that's what the whole painting is about.
It's just about the artifice.
It's like the artifice of the French court
in the 18th century in the Rococo period.
It's about the artifice of the clothing, of the make-up.
It's just about the surface.
It's true but this is a very intimate kind of surface, isn't it? And...
Female voice: In regard it's the king's lover, in that way?
Male voice: Yeah, and also just the sense of proximity.
Female voice: That's true, we're very close to her.
Male voice: Yeah, we feel as we could've reach out.
Female voice: We're her best friend and she's about to share
- ...an intimate secret. - That's exactly right.
Male voice: But then our eyes rise up across her wrist
over the portrait of her lover, across her breast, up to her neck,
and then finally, we get to her face which seems, sort of, almost remote.
Female voice: The first thing I'd noticed was all of those
accessories of artifice
and then I've looked at her face, you know, I've read the label...
OK, this is mistress to Louis XV and then I thought...
Who is this woman?
I've looked at her face for clues... and I didn't get anything
Male voice: The sense of clarity with which the artifice
as you put it, is painted against the softness
and the indeterminacy of her individuality
...is, I think, clearest in the colour.
Look how incredibly crisp, almost frozen that colour is
and then look at the softness
but there is this wild sense of indeterminacy
...and mystery, I think.
SmartHistory. Art. History. Conversation.

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