Are They Thinking about the Grape? (Pensent-ils au raisin?)

1747

François Boucher
French, 1703–1770

This painting is based on a 1745 pantomime about a young shepherd’s awakening love for a shepherdess. The couple feed each other grapes—a fruit associated with Bacchus, god of pleasure—suggesting that their encounter is not entirely chaste. François Boucher’s compositions on pastoral themes comprise his most influential contribution to 18th-century French art. These lush and playful fantasies of rustic life, designed primarily for the private enjoyment of wealthy financiers and aristocrats, had little to do with the social realities of rural labor during the period.

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

Artist: François Boucher
Title: Are They Thinking about the Grape? (Pensent-ils au raisin?)
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.: 1747
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: f. Boucher 1747 (bottom, right of center)
Dimensions: Oval: 80.8 × 68.5 cm (31 3/4 × 27 in.)
Credit Line: Martha E. Leverone Endowment
Reference Number: 1973.304
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[Abbé Jean Bernard Le Blanc], Lettre sur l’exposition des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, etc. , de l’année 1747…, Paris, 1747; reprint Geneva, 1970, pp. 81-82.
“Recent Accessions of American and Canadian Museums,” Art Quarterly 36 (1973), p. 429.
“Art across North America—In the New,” Apollo 99 (1974), p. 474, fig. 8.
“La Chronique des arts,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 83 (1974), suppl. to no. 1261, p. 128, fig. 411.
John David Farmer, “A New Painting by François Boucher,”Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 68, 2 (1974), pp. 16-18 ill.
Alexandre Ananoff, “François Boucher et l’Amérique,” L’Oeil, no. 251 (1976), pp. 18, 21.
Alexandre Anaoff with Daniel Wildenstein, François Boucher, Lausanne and Paris, 1976, vol. 1, p. 33, under no. 299, p. 34, under no. 301, vol. 2, p. 3, under no. 309, p. 4-5, no. 310, fig. 888, pl. opp. p. 32.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago, New York, 1977, pp. 62-63, ill.
Pierrette Jean-Richard, L’Oeuvre gravé de François Boucher dans la collection Edmond de Rothschild, Paris, 1978, pp. 68-69, ill, no. 30.
Regina Shoolman Slatkin, review of Alexandre Anaoff with Daniel Wildenstein, François Boucher in Burlington Magazine 121 (1979), pp. 119-20.
Alexandre Anaoff with Daniel Wildenstein, L’opera completa di Boucher, Classici dell’arte 100, Milan, 1980, p. 111, no. 321, ill., pl. 29.
Denys Sutton in François Boucher (1703-1770), exh. cat., Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1982, p. 261.
Pontus Grate in François Boucher, Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from the Nationalmuseum, Stockhold, exh. cat., Manchester, City Art Gallery, 1984, p. 21, under no, P6.
Alan P, Wintermute in The First Painters of the King. French Royal Taste from Louis XIV to the Revolution, exh. cat. Stair Sainty Matthiesen, 1985-86, p. 128, no. 13, ill.
George Brunel, Boucher, New York, 1986, p. 208.
Michel Hilaire, “François Boucher, 1703-1770,” Le petit journal des grandes expositions 164 (1986), n. pag., ill.
Alastair Laing, “Boucher et la pastorale peinte,” Revue de l’Art, no, 73 (1986), pp. 59-60, 63 n. 71, fig. 16.
L’Oeil, no. 374 (1986), cover ill.
Carter Ratcliff, “François Boucher, Absolutist Painter,”Art in America 74 (July, 1986), p. 95 ill.
Pierre Rosenberg and Michel Hilaire, Boucher, 60 chefs d’oeuvres, Fribourg, 1986, p. 6.
Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé, “The Influence of Boucher’s Art on the Production of the Vincennes Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory” in François Boucher 1703-1777, exh. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986/1987, pp. 345-50.
Pierre Rosenberg and Marion C. Stewart, French Paintings, 1500-1825: The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, 1987, pp, 127-28, ill.
Guy Stair Sainty in François Boucher: His Circle and Influence, exh. cat., New York, Stair Sainty Matthiesen, 1987, p. 117.
Henry Bonnier, François Boucher dessins, Paris, 1988, p. 42.
Art Institute of Chicago, Master Paintings, Chicago, 1988, p. 41, ill.
John Ingamells, The Wallace Collection. Catalogue of Pictures, pt. 3, French before 1815, London, 1989, pp. 33 under P399, p. 61 under P482.
Christopher Wright, The World’s Master Paintings from the Early Renaissance to the Present Day: A Comprehensive Listing of Works by 1,300 Painers and a Complete Guide to Their Locations Worldwide, New York, 1991, vol. 1, p. 433, vol. 2, pp. 61, 584.
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. 12-17, ill.
Melissa Hyde, “Confounding Conventions: Gender Ambiguity and François Boucher’s Painted Pastorals,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 30 (1996), pp. 35-36, 41, 54 n. 48, 57 n. 67.
Julius Bryant, Kenwood: Paintings in the Iveagh Bequest, New Haven and London, 2003, p. 112, fig. 1.
Melissa Hyde, Making up the Rococo: François Boucher and his Critics, Los Angeles, 2006, pp. 161-2, 174-75, 187, fig. 39.
Christian Michel, “Nature and Moeurs: Thoughts on the Reception of Genre Painting in France” in French Genre Painting in the Eighteenth Century, Philip Conisbee, ed., Studies in the History of Art 72, Symposium Papers 49, Washington, D.C., 2007, p. 279, fig. 5.
Susan M. Wagner, “Amorous Pursuits,” in Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Casanova: The Seduction of Europe, exh. cat., eds. Frederick Ilchman, Thomas Michie, C.D. Dickerson, and Ester Bell (MFA Publications, 2018) pp. 149-151, fig. 73; 309 no. 73

Probably Paris, Salon, 1747, no. 33bis. as deux pastorales, aussi en forme ovale.
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, La Douce France (Det ljuva Frankrike), 1964, no. 16.
Art Institute of Chicago, François Boucher in North American Collections: 100 Drawings, 1973/1974, not in catalogue.
Art Institute of Chicago, Selected Works of Eighteenth-Century French Art in the Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1976, no. 9.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, François Boucher 1703-1770, February 17-Mary 4, 1986, no. 53; Detroit Institute of Arts, May 27-August 17, 1986; Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, September 19, 1986-January 5, 1987.
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard, Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, 2003/2004, no. 55, traveled to Washington, National Gallery of Art and Berlin, Altes Museum.
Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, Casanova: The Seduction of Europe, August 27, 2018 - December 31, 2017, pp. 149-151, fig. 73; 309 no. 73; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, February 10 – May 28, 2018; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, July 8 – October 8, 2018 [Boston Only]

With the pendant Flageolet Player, probably Jean Baptiste Machault d’Arnouville (died 1794), contrôleur général des finances; by descent to Melchior, marquis de Vogüe, one of whose descendants married comte René de Rohan Chabot [proposed by Alistair Laing in connection with the history of the pendant, in a letter to Susan Wise, August 13, 1986 in curatorial file]. Comte René de Rohan Chabot, Paris; sold to Wildenstein, 1959 [telephone conversation of Ay-Wang Hsia with Susan Wise, May 4, 1982]; sold to the Art Institute, 1973.

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