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.
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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.
- Artist
- François Boucher French, 1703–1770
- Date
- 1759/61
- Medium
- Black chalk, with stumping, and white chalk on buff laid paper, laid down onto thick modern laid paperboard
- Origin
- France
- Collection
- Prints and Drawings
- Reference
- 2019.835 · Art Institute of Chicago