Study of a Draped Woman Leaning on a Pedestal

CC0 Public Domain Designation

Prints and Drawings

1759/61

François Boucher
French, 1703–1770

In this powerful drawing, François Boucher’s model is so enveloped in yards of voluminous cloth that the fabric itself becomes the work’s subject and the drawing functions as an exercise in near abstraction. Boucher manipulated the black chalk to create outline and shadows, the white chalk to produce shimmering highlights, and the buff-colored paper to suggest flesh and give the fabric color and volume, in the process producing one of the finest drawings of 18th-century France.

The sheet may have served as the model for Cleopatra in the artist’s etched frontispiece opening an edition of Pierre Corneille’s tragedy Rodogune, Princess of Parthia.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: François Boucher
Title: Study of a Draped Woman Leaning on a Pedestal
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.: 1759–1761
Medium: Black chalk, with stumping, and white chalk on buff laid paper, laid down onto thick modern laid paperboard
Inscriptions: Inscription, verso, l.l.: "74"
Dimensions: Primary support: 52.3 × 36 cm (20 5/8 × 14 3/16 in.); Secondary support: 54.5 × 38.7 cm (21 1/2 × 15 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
Reference Number: 2019.835
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/244908/manifest.json

Possibly, André Michel, François Boucher (J. Rouam, 1886), p. 126, no. 2280.
Le Figaro artistique, no. 62, Feb. 19, 1925, ill.
Alastair Laing, The Drawings of François Boucher, London, 2003, under no. 51, p. 238, n.1 and p. 248, n. 2.

The Art Institute of Chicago, “Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection”, January 25 - May 10, 2020, pp. 64-65, cat. 25, p. 138, GC 69, p. 118, fig. 25.3., traveled to New York, The Morgan Library, February 19 - June 6, 2021, and Berkeley CA, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, August 4 - November 28, 2021.

Possibly Étienne Maurice Falconet (1716–1791), Paris. Possibly Bourlamaque collection; sold, Pierre Remy, Paris, Mar. 27, 1770, lot 22. Sold, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 7–8, 1888, lot. 23. D.S. collection; sold, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Dec. 17, 1924, lot. 125, to a private collection; sold, Artcurial, Paris, Nov. 13, 2013, lot 14. Sold by Eric Coatalem, Paris, to the Gray Collection Trust, Chicago, Mar. 29, 2016; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2019.

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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. Learn more.

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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.

Learn more.