Francois Boucher
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French rococo was a style which spread from France to other European countries in the 18th Century, even to Sweden. A painting by one of the most famous French rococo artists, Francois Boucher, can be found here in Linköpings Länsmuseum (the County Museum). It can be viewed as a countryside rococo idyll, and was painted in 1768.
In a thickly wooded landscape with a watercourse and mill the artist has placed three groups of people occupied with different tasks. A few cooing pigeons on the mill roof contribute to the idyllic scene. A woman is hanging out clothes to air on the railing, and in the middle of the picture, in the foreground, a fisherman pulls up his net. On the left, a women wanders with a child and mule in tow. It is all painted in a pastel-like colour range of silver green, the green hardly perceptibly fading into the blue sky. Even the smoke from the mill chimney has the same colour as all the other details in the picture. The only exception is the red in the woman’s skirt and in the fisherman’s waistcoat. It has been said about Boucher’s paintings that they were just the right size, light and weight, made in a cool tone that never intended to render an illusion of intrusive reality. They were just as pictures should be if they were to be hung in a rococo lounge.
Rococo is like decorative comprehensive art-work. Art, furniture, handicraft, material and colour are created in a graceful soft wholeness and attuned colour scale, often in pastel tones. Several motifs were especially appreciated within art: Fetes Galantes, which depicted social games out in nature with an input of love, music and dance, and then the pastoral landscapes with idealised shepherding life and country existence.
Francois Boucher had an incredible career and was appointed painter to H.M. The King – the absolute finest an artist could become in France. His art was in great demand. Our painting has almost certainly hung in a distinguished rococo lounge and been admired as one of the absolutely most modern.
