Study of a Draped Woman Leaning on a Pedestal
François Boucher (French, 1703–1770)
1759/61
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Materials & printing
Archival matte paper, 189 g/m² (10.3 mil), sourced from Japan, printed with multicolor water-based inkjet so every brushstroke stays crisp. Framed prints arrive ready to hang in a .75″ ayous-wood frame with an acrylite front. Sized to standard frames by cropping, never stretching — at most about 3% comes off one edge, which isn’t noticeable on most pieces, and we only offer a size when it stays that small.
Shipping & returns
Made to order and delivered in 5–8 business days (2–4 to print, 3–4 in transit). US shipping only for now. Because each print is made for your order, all sales are final — but if it arrives damaged or defective, send us a photo within 14 days and we’ll replace it free. Full policy.
Why is it this affordable?
A thin, flat margin on every piece — just enough to keep the store running. Most of what you pay is the print itself. We only sell sizes that reproduce at full quality, and we don’t mark up the large sizes the way most shops do.
About this work
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.
- Medium
- Black chalk, with stumping, and white chalk on buff laid paper, laid down onto thick modern laid paperboard
- Original size
- Primary support: 52.3 × 36 cm (20 5/8 × 14 3/16 in.)
Museum record · 6 owners · 1 exhibition
Provenance
- 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.
- 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.
Exhibitions
- The Art Institute of Chicago, "Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection", January 25 - May 10, 2020, GC 69., 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.
