Allegory of Painting

A young woman reclines on a bank of pale pink clouds drawing with a white-chalk stylus on an oval canvas propped before her, while three rosy putti gather around — one modelling for her with a torch and quiver, one peeking around the canvas, one holding a laurel wreath above it — her seafoam-green robe slipped from one shoulder over an ivory garment, a round palette and a roll of drawings at her side against a vivid blue sky. François Boucher, first painter to Louis XV and the most fashionable decorative artist of the French Rococo, signed and dated the canvas “F Boucher — 1765”; it was long believed to have been painted for the Elector of Bavaria with a companion allegory, and it later passed through the Paris collection of Gustave Rothan before the Samuel H. Kress Foundation presented it to the National Gallery of Art in 1946. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.