Two Putti with Grapes

The two putti in this drawing are related to Autum, one of the Four Seasons painted by Boucher in 1753 for the château de Fontainebleau (B. Lossky, ‘Le Plafond de François Boucher au Cabinet du Conseil du Château de Fontainebleau’, Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, XVII, 1967, nos. 4-5, pp. 257-264). Alastair Laing, to whom we are grateful for his assistance in cataloguing this drawing, is aware of several versions of this composition; he counts the present one counts among the two best; the other is in a private collection (Lossky, op. cit., pp. 260-261, fig. 8). According to Laing, a coarser version, sold at Sotheby’s, London, 8 July 1998, lot 80, may have been the drawing once owned by Madame Blondel d’Azaincourt, which was engraved by Gilles Demarteau; this print was first exhibited at the Salon of 1775 (P. Jean-Richard, L’Œuvre gravé de François Boucher dans le Collection Edmond de Rothschild, Paris, 1978, no. 849, ill.), while a workshop version or copy is at the Musée Grobet-Labadié in Marseille.