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Francois Boucher (French, 1703-1770)
Pastorale: The Vegetable Vendor, c. 1735
Oil on canvas, 95 x 67 inches
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

Love was the presiding theme of French rococo art, and painter François Boucher paid lavish homage to rococo romance in his idealized countryside scenes called pastorales. As Louis XV's premier artist and the quintessential exponent of mid-18th-century French style, he created these bucolic images using a ravishing palette and buttery brushwork.

As in all of Boucher's pastorales, The Vegetable Vendor presents a rural paradise, the perfect setting for the blossoming of youthful love. It is an idyllic dreamworld in which comely young maidens are courted by handsome swains under an eternally blue sky. Inspired in part by the idealized vision of rustic life found in pastoral poetry and contemporary theatrical productions, Boucher's paintings appealed to the French aristocracy for the mental refuge they provided from the pressures and formalities of
court life.

In this early pastorale, a farm boy displays his produce - one of several remarkable still-life vignettes within the painting - to a young female buyer. Her bashful companion, who like her is probably a kitchen maid, peers over the boy's donkey with delighted interest.
The blushing encounter before her brims with amorous intent; their ostensibly mercantile dealings surely symbolize the romantic exchange of hearts.

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