3-002-448 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Pastoral, c1730. During his twenties, Boucher spent three years in Italy on a prestigious scholarship sponsored by the French Academy of Art, and paintings like this one show the influence of 16th-century Venetian artists. The critic Denis Diderot (1713–84), who later became Boucher’s most outspoken enemy, praised these early Italianate works, which he admired for their fresh colors and vigorous brushwork. This composition was one of Boucher’s first successes, and it was reproduced as a print by Louis-Michel Halbou (1730–ca. 1809).