Boucher was among the most prolific and influential artists in France during the reign of Louis XV. Once thought to be a portrait of the artist's wife, Marie-Jeanne Buzeau--a painter who made miniatures after her husband's compositions--this painting is instead part of a series of genre scenes Boucher created with erotic overtones, a type produced for the delectation of male patrons and collectors. The sensuously reclining fashionable woman is surrounded with furnishings and objects of luxury, including the day bed, an eighteenth-century invention that developed alongside trends in Parisian society for socializing in private homes. With its half-open drawer, unfolded letter left on top of a closed book, and a jumble of items strewn on the stool beneath her, the domestic setting prompts intrigue. Hanging from the wall-mounted cabinet that carries a porcelain statuette, teapot, and cups and saucers is another letter that bears the artist's signature.

Source: The Frick Collection: Essential Guide, 2024 

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   When Marie-Jeanne Buzeau (1716–after 1786) posed so pertly for this informal portrait ten years after her marriage to Boucher, she was twenty-seven and the mother of three children. She frequently served as model for her husband, and in later life she painted miniature reproductions of his more popular pictures and made engravings after his drawings. Besides offering such a candid image of the artist’s wife, the portrait provides a fascinating glimpse of a room in the apartment to which Boucher had moved the year before he signed this canvas on the rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honoré. The porcelain figurine and tea service on the hanging étagère reflect Boucher’s taste for the Oriental bric-a-brac so fashionable throughout the eighteenth century. In its composition the portrait is a witty parody of the classical Renaissance depictions of Venus by Giorgione and Titian, and as such the picture has acquired the sobriquet “Boucher's Untidy Venus.”

Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.

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