Boucher, Fran�ois 1703-70
French painter

Born in Paris, he was the purest Rococo painter at the court of Louis XV. As a young man he engraved the work of Antoine Watteau. From 1727 to 1731 he was in Italy, and he was received into the Academy in 1734. He worked on a range of material from stage design to tapestry, and from 1755 was director of the famous Gobelins factory. A refined portrait painter also, he produced several portraits of the king's most famous mistress, Madame de Pompadour, and it was she who bought his greatest pictures, The Rising and The Setting of the Sun. In 1765 he became premier peintre du Roi, but by this time his style was under attack from Diderot, and when Sir Joshua Reynolds visited his studio he was scandalized to find Boucher working without a model. His work is usually considered, along with that of his pupil, Jean Fragonard, to be wholly representative of the frivolous spirit of his age. Some of it can be seen in the London Wallace Collection.