François Boucher Sociability, Mondanité and the Academy in the Age of Louis XV

This volume assembles a group of interrelated thought-provoking essays from leading international scholars in the field originally presented at the conference Boucher and the Enlightenment. The papers have been revised and enriched with further original research, incorporating important recent discoveries and trends in Boucher scholarship. The book includes a variety of inter-disciplinary topics including new biographical information regarding Boucher’s life, artistic practices and relationships.  Together they shed new light on Boucher’s significance as one of the most original and controversial artists of the eighteenth century. The volume is the first major work on the artist to appear in recent years.

Leda Cosentino is the Curator of Sculpture at the Wallace Collection. Dr Christoph Martin Vogtherr was Director of the Wallace Collection from 2011 to 2016 and was previously Curator of Pictures pre-1800. In 2010 he published the catalogue raisonné of paintings by Watteau, Pater and Lancret in Berlin and Potsdam and, more recently, on Antoine Watteau, French eighteenth-century collecting and the Fête galante.