Masterpieces in Colour

Boucher

Edinburgh is fortunate in possessing this, one of the world-famous examples of Bouchers exquisite portraiture. He painted with rare charm more than once this wonderful woman, the kings morsel, Jeanne Poisson, Madame Lenormant dEtioles, who became the notorious Marquise de Pompadour. He gives us perhaps too dainty a butterfly; for, of a truth, this womans prettiness masked an iron nerve, an unflinching courage, and a capacity and talents which must have reached to fame in any human being whose frame they illumined. Nor is there hint of those hard qualities that robbed her of mercy, nor allowed her to bend an ear to suffering. The year after good Queen Anne came to rule over us, Louis the Fourteenth being still King of France, on an autumn day in the October of 1703, that saw the trees of Paris shedding their parched leaves as a carpet to the feet of the much-bewigged dandified folk who stepped it swaggeringly down the walks[Pg 12] of the Palais Royal, swinging long canes, and strutting along the shaded promenades of the more fashionable places of the city, there stood in the vestry of the parish church of Saint Jean-en-Grve a little group of the small burgess folk, gathered about a little infant, whilst the tipstaff to the kings palace, one Franois Prvost, signed solemnly as witness to the birth-certificate and as acknowledged godfather to the aforesaid morsel of humanity, which, as the certificate badly set forth in black and white for ever, was henceforth to be known for good or ill as Franois Boucher, first-born son, on the 29th of September, four days past, of the tipstaffs friend, Nicolas Boucher, matre-peintre, who stood hard by, and of his wife Elizabeth Lemesle. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 41947
Author: MacFall, Haldane
Release Date: Jan 30, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English