A bulimic collector if there ever was one, François Boucher – also a recognised expert on shells – developed his art throughout his life in a world filled with works of art, oriental objects and naturalia. The collection of oriental objects François Boucher undoubtedly began building in the 1730s-1740s, was put up for sale in the painter’s apartment in the Louvre Palace from Monday 18 February 1771, ten months after his death. The catalogue prepared by Pierre Remy is the most important source for knowledge and study of this collection in the absence of an inventory after death. Recent research (Joulie F., 2017; Une des provinces du rococo: La Chine rêvée de François Boucher, 2019) has identified three objects that most probably belonged to Boucher: a pair of celadon porcelain vases in gilt bronze mounts with tritons and a stoneware potpourri bowl (called “porcelaine truitée” (flecked porcelain) in the catalogue) with gilt bronze mount with satyrs’ heads (all three held in private collections). Though nothing is known about the way his collection was displayed prior to 1756 – date of Boucher’s installation in the apartment of Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752) in the Louvre – the major refurbishing work Boucher undertook at that time is documented. Furthermore, the testimony of a young Savoyard aristocrat, Joseph Henry Costa de Beauregard (1752-1824), passing through Paris, written on 10 January 1767 informs us about the way the collection was displayed. The oriental objects were mixed in with natural curiosities (all kinds of stones, butterflies from India and China, four or five very small birds, an infinite number of the most beautiful minerals, corals, marine plants and petrified specimens).
François Boucher’s first purchases were undoubtedly made from the merchant Gersaint – who in 1737 decided to convert his activity to the sale of objects from the Far East – and participated in the development in Paris of the taste for Chinese objects. The painter took part in this activity by drawing the merchant’s address card and, thanks to his practice of collector, entered the circle of curious amateurs, maintaining ties notably with Jean de Jullienne, Blondel d’Azincourt (1695-1776) and Randon de Boisset (1708-1776), with whom he attended public auctions. The annotated catalogues reveals that he bought in particular during the estate sales of Antoine de La Roque (1672-1744) in 1745, René-Louis Bailly in 1766 and Madame Dubois-Jourdain (?). In addition to Gersaint, he bought from the marchands-merciers Lazare Duvaux (1703-1758), Pierre Remy (1715 or 1716-1797), Dubuisson, Rouveau and Simon-Philippe Poirier (circa 1720-1785). Truly an activity of sociability, his collection was instrumental in raising his social status. He not only acquired oriental objects. From the 1730s on, he began to discreetly and delicately include porcelains and screens in his paintings of interiors, participating in the promotion of this newly developed taste being tested by his friend Gersaint. Though the Chinese objects disappeared fairly quickly from his paintings, his collection does not seem to have been limited to a phenomenon of fashion. For the painter it was a genuine passion that lasted until his death, as attested by the number of purchases that he made, at least until 1767.
An insatiable amateur, he assembled a highly diverse collection of oriental objects which was considered “by the admission of everyone, as one of the richest & most agreeable collections one may see in Paris” as Pierre Remy emphasised in the foreword of the catalogue for the estate sale. This book is divided into four major domains: Paintings, “drawings, etchings”, diverse objects and “Minerals, Crystallisations, Madrepores, Shells & other Curiosities”. The seven-hundred-one some odd Far-Eastern objects are distributed into three-hundred-five lots, themselves broken out into ten categories, according to their material (“Bronzes, Ivories, Pagodas made of India pastes, Soapstone, silver Curiosities, Lacquers, Porcelains, India clay”) or their typology (“Chinese paintings, Curious pieces and curious Effects”). The copy held in the library of the Institut national d’histoire de l’art is the one which, to our knowledge, is the most richly annotated. It specifies the name of most of the buyers and the prices of the lots, while also detailing the presence of numerous dealers (Doyen, Dufrêne, Claude-François Julliot (1727-1794), Legère, Neveu, Alexandre-Joseph Paillet (1743-1814), Perrin, Pierre Remy, etc.) and amateurs such as the abbots Gruel and Le Blanc (1707-1781), the ducs de Caylus (vers 1733-1783) and de Chaulnes (1741-1792) and Randon de Boisset. The total sales for the Far East collections attained 23,775 livres 51 sols. The market value of the collection, though far from ridiculous, nevertheless did not reach the high prices of the estate sales of some of Boucher’s contemporaries, such as Randon, Louis-Jean Gaignat (1697-1768) and Jean de Jullienne. Among the many buyers mentioned in the margins of the catalogue, the duc de Chaulnes distinguished himself by purchasing at least twenty-five lots for a total of 3,131 livres 82 sols, the highest price being for a Chinese house for which he paid 1,199 livres 19 sols (lot 942) – a considerable sum for the Boucher sale. The six-paned Chinese lantern from the cabinet of the amateur Jean de Jullienne, won by Chaulnes for 730 livres 9 sols, stood out for its rarity and origin. Pierre Remy was the second buyer with seventy-one lots acquired for a total of 3,954 livres 81 sols. The merchants Doyen, Dufrêne, Julliot, Légere, Neveu, Paillet, Perrin followed further behind with about ten lots each. Though the collection was predominantly comprised of porcelains, lacquers and other objects highly appreciated by the amateurs, there waere also a number of rarer pieces that made it so singular. In the domain of porcelain, common pieces from China and Japan were mixed in with more precious types such as whites from Dehua 德華, celadons, celestial blues, crackled and flecked, forming an ensemble of 234 pieces of which one third is garnished with bronze. Ninety lacquers in fourty-three lots were placed auctioned off, most were boxes and trays of varying dimensions. The pieces most prized by the market were the ivories made for export, “pagodas in Indian clay” certainly made in Canton and objects made of “pierre de larre” (soapstone). Finally, Chinese bronzes, rarely imported in Europe, silver curiosities and musical instruments were the real singularity of this collection, proving once again that far from being merely a fad, this ensemble reflected Boucher’s genuine interest in the Orient.
Article by Lisa Mucciarelli (translated by Gammon Sharpley)
