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The Fountain of Love
Francois Boucher • Painting, 1748, 338×294 cm
Description of the artwork «The Fountain of Love»
If you happen to be born a noble lady and live in France around the middle of the 18th century, you would certainly hang a picture of Francois Boucher in your home "Fountain of love". Well, or something very similar. Because then it was the squeak of interior fashion.
“Flutes, lambs, shepherdesses ...” you will absently think, “Stop!” And why would I decorate my own house with a rural scene? It is said that I was a noble lady! ”
Exactly. By the end of the first third of the “gallant century”, French society had lost faith in the serious topics that the art of classicism offered them. Duty, honor, high ideals - all this somehow quickly and significantly devalued. Nobody believed in this anymore. The evolving Rococo style did not digest pathos and heroism. Everyone now wanted art to give them only pleasure, a sense of carelessness and relaxation, a sparkling holiday of life. No one wanted to think about the serious and, moreover, to see him in the paintings.
The main subjects of painting are pastorals, fetes galantes (the so-called "gallant festivities"), light and elegant love scenes. Until recently, your ancestors decorated scenes with ceremonial portraits and solemn canvases with the heroes of antiquity. But you, a contemporary of the Marquise de Pompadour, of course, will not allow such a mistake. You know what is in fashion now? What used to be considered low and unworthy. Shepherds and shepherdesses! Besides, who are now interested in the front halls? All important issues are solved in alcoves, chamber salons, cozy boudoirs. That's how much everything has changed! No wonder they say that fashion is a lady windy and unpredictable.
The 1748th year of the writing of The Fountain of Love is precisely the year when Boucher began to work for Madame de Pompadour. The tasks facing him are not picturesque, but a decorative-interior plan. He must write something that will adorn the walls and doorways. But the picture is something unique, ideally existing in a single copy. And in France, from the 1730s, painting became an aid to industrial production. Plots like “Fountain of Love” are massively reproduced on trellises (lint-free carpets) and tapestries.
And even if you happened to be not very noble and not so rich as to acquire the original Boucher (after all, a court painter!), You could still get involved in Rococo fashion. How? Very simple - acquiring a tapestry or trellis for your home. Before Bush, they were flashily bright, rude and tasteless. Rococo changed this: now trellis can exactly repeat the best picturesque masterpieces.
Boucher personally painted cardboard for trellis, a little later, with the filing of Madame de Pompadour, he headed the Royal Tapestry Manufactory. And his friend, an artist Jean-Baptiste Udry developed the finest color scale, where each shade of threads in the tapestry had its own number. Now the weavers could no longer pick colors at random, according to their unpretentious taste: they were given a pattern where all the shades were strictly calculated, as in the picture.
Just look at how the sky is written in the "Fountain of Love"! And now imagine how many shades of gray, blue and beige would be needed to accurately convey the light and unobtrusive color of Bush, his famous "Pearl harmony"! So tapestries are also art. Especially if Boucher worked for them.
Gentle and sonorous colors of the “Fountain of Love” just as caress the eyes as the cooing love of shepherds and shepherdesses softens the heart. And the fact that we are no longer able to say anything particularly meaningful about this picture itself is absolutely correct. After all, we noticed at the beginning: the art of Rococo is not for thinking. It is in order to "relax and enjoy."
Author: Anna Yesterday
“Flutes, lambs, shepherdesses ...” you will absently think, “Stop!” And why would I decorate my own house with a rural scene? It is said that I was a noble lady! ”
Exactly. By the end of the first third of the “gallant century”, French society had lost faith in the serious topics that the art of classicism offered them. Duty, honor, high ideals - all this somehow quickly and significantly devalued. Nobody believed in this anymore. The evolving Rococo style did not digest pathos and heroism. Everyone now wanted art to give them only pleasure, a sense of carelessness and relaxation, a sparkling holiday of life. No one wanted to think about the serious and, moreover, to see him in the paintings.
The main subjects of painting are pastorals, fetes galantes (the so-called "gallant festivities"), light and elegant love scenes. Until recently, your ancestors decorated scenes with ceremonial portraits and solemn canvases with the heroes of antiquity. But you, a contemporary of the Marquise de Pompadour, of course, will not allow such a mistake. You know what is in fashion now? What used to be considered low and unworthy. Shepherds and shepherdesses! Besides, who are now interested in the front halls? All important issues are solved in alcoves, chamber salons, cozy boudoirs. That's how much everything has changed! No wonder they say that fashion is a lady windy and unpredictable.
The 1748th year of the writing of The Fountain of Love is precisely the year when Boucher began to work for Madame de Pompadour. The tasks facing him are not picturesque, but a decorative-interior plan. He must write something that will adorn the walls and doorways. But the picture is something unique, ideally existing in a single copy. And in France, from the 1730s, painting became an aid to industrial production. Plots like “Fountain of Love” are massively reproduced on trellises (lint-free carpets) and tapestries.
And even if you happened to be not very noble and not so rich as to acquire the original Boucher (after all, a court painter!), You could still get involved in Rococo fashion. How? Very simple - acquiring a tapestry or trellis for your home. Before Bush, they were flashily bright, rude and tasteless. Rococo changed this: now trellis can exactly repeat the best picturesque masterpieces.
Boucher personally painted cardboard for trellis, a little later, with the filing of Madame de Pompadour, he headed the Royal Tapestry Manufactory. And his friend, an artist Jean-Baptiste Udry developed the finest color scale, where each shade of threads in the tapestry had its own number. Now the weavers could no longer pick colors at random, according to their unpretentious taste: they were given a pattern where all the shades were strictly calculated, as in the picture.
Just look at how the sky is written in the "Fountain of Love"! And now imagine how many shades of gray, blue and beige would be needed to accurately convey the light and unobtrusive color of Bush, his famous "Pearl harmony"! So tapestries are also art. Especially if Boucher worked for them.
Gentle and sonorous colors of the “Fountain of Love” just as caress the eyes as the cooing love of shepherds and shepherdesses softens the heart. And the fact that we are no longer able to say anything particularly meaningful about this picture itself is absolutely correct. After all, we noticed at the beginning: the art of Rococo is not for thinking. It is in order to "relax and enjoy."
Author: Anna Yesterday
