Description of the picture:
Landscape in the vicinity of Beauvais – Francois Boucher. 1740s Canvas, oil. Forty nine x fifty eight cm
Being one of the brightest representatives of the era of Rococo and neoclassicism, François Boucher is considered the creator of his own somewhat idealized and festive style, based on a free and easy style of writing. His favorite genres – pastoral, mythology and allegory demanded sophistication, sentimentality, exaggerated beauty. Even ordinary rural landscapes in the artist’s paintings turned into idyllic perfect plots.
The canvas “Landscape in the vicinity of Beauvais”, written in the 1740s, like other works by the master, is distinguished by its rare airiness and harmony. The people depicted in the picture are leisurely, their life is measured and clean. To convey this atmosphere of silence, the painter uses his favorite technique: the work does not scream with bright colors and contrasts, but speaks softly to the viewer with gentle, muted tones and transitions. The impeccable color palette of the picture, deep and calm, is achieved by a subtle contrast of emerald-golden tones of the lower part of the canvas with bluish-silver shades of the sky.
On canvas, François Boucher depicted the life of a small French village through his lofty dreams. The heroes of the picture are busy with their daily affairs: a young blonde girl, sitting in a boat, washes clothes. Nearby there is a young man in a wide-brimmed hat, according to the networks spread nearby, you can guess that this is a young fisherman. It seems that he just finished talking with a pretty washerwoman and involuntarily looked back towards the viewer. An improvised pier of stone slabs is visible in the water, on the edge of which a small dog stopped, timid from the sight of the water and not daring to move on. In an effort to convey the charm of rural solitude, the artist carefully painted the surrounding landscape: an overgrown stone bridge, an abundance of greenery and cozy houses with thatched roofs."
