Saint John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert

c. 1758–64

Jean Baptiste Henri Deshays (French, 1729–1765)

A precocious talent, Jean-Baptiste Deshays married Rococo artist François Boucher’s daughter and became his father-in-law’s protégé. Although best known as a painter of religious subjects, Deshays often employed the soft, highly fluid manner that Boucher used for his amorous “boudoir” pictures. In fact, this work was for a long time believed to be by Boucher. The subject of the painting derives from the Gospel of Matthew: Seated before the multitude with his arms dramatically outstretched, John the Baptist warns, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Status: On View, Gallery 216
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Jean Baptiste Henri Deshays
Title: Saint John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1758–1764
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 42.2 × 26.5 cm (16 5/8 × 10 7/16 in.); Framed: 59.4 × 44.3 × 7.4 cm (23 3/8 × 17 7/16 × 2 7/8 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Eugene A. Davidson
Reference Number: 1979.540
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/105704/manifest.json

Louis Soullié and Charles Masson, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné de François Boucher…, in André Michel, François Boucher (Paris, 1906), p. 41, no. 729.
Georges Pannier, “Catalogue des oeuvres peintes de François Boucher qui ont passé en vente publique depuis 1770 jusqu’ en 1906,” in Pierre de Nolhac, François Boucher: Premier Peintre du Roi, 1703–1770 (Paris, 1907), p. 107.
Regina Shoolman Slatkin, “François Boucher: St. John the Baptist, A Study in Religious Imagery,” Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin 62 (1975), pp. 20–21, fig. 30.
Alexandre Ananoff with Daniel Wildenstein, François Boucher, vol. 2 (Lausanne and Paris, 1976), p. 220, no. 560, fig. 1525.
Alexandre Ananoff with Daniel Wildenstein, L’opera completa di Boucher, Classici dell’arte 100 (Milan, 1980), p. 133, no. 591, ill.
Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report 1979/80 (Chicago, 1980), p. 31.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, François Boucher, 1703–1770, exh. cat. (New York, 1986), p. 293, under no. 75.
Susan Wise in Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1996), pp. 45–48, ill.
André Bancel, Jean-Baptiste Deshays, 1729–1765 (Paris, 2008), p. 132, no. 75, ill.

Paris, Galerie Cailleux, Esquisses, maquettes, projets et ébauches de l’école française du XVIIIe siècle, peintures et sculptures, 1934, no. 2, as François Boucher.
Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Collectors, 1963, p. 4, pl. 46, as François Boucher.

Eugène Féral (d. 1900), Paris; sold Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 22–24, 1901, no. 13, as François Boucher, for Fr 320 [price according to an annotated sale catalogue in the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, and Pannier 1907]. Bourdier [according to a letter from Michel Strauss to John Maxon dated November 26, 1962, in curatorial files]. Alphonse Kann, Paris; sold Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, December 6–8, 1920, no. 5, as François Boucher, to Jules Strauss, for Fr 19,000; Jules Strauss (d. 1943), Paris; sold Galerie Charpentier, Paris, May 27, 1949, no. 14 (ill.), as François Boucher, to his grandson, Michel Strauss, London, for Fr 340,000 [according to an annotated sale catalogue at Galerie Heim, Paris]; sold by Michel Strauss to Mrs. Sterling Morton (d. 1969), Santa Barbara and Chicago, 1963 [according to registrar’s records]; by descent to her daughter, Suzette Morton Davidson, Chicago; on loan to the Art Institute, 1978; given to the Art Institute, 1979.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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