Boy with a Carrot

A young boy with a carrot is drawn in pastel on warm buff paper, a finished independent study by the painter whose art epitomized the light-hearted grace of the Rococo. François Boucher, the most famous painter and decorator of the reign of Louis XV, seldom left the grand machines of his commissions for finished works on paper, and he did not pursue portraiture except on rare occasions, which makes this child study of 1738 one of the more personal products of his studio. Its early history — in the celebrated collection of Dezallier d’Argenville, sold in 1766, and of the financier Randon de Boisset, sold in 1777 — records the esteem eighteenth-century connoisseurs gave to Boucher’s drawings. The pastel was acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1971 for the Helen Regenstein Collection. The pastel is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.