Print, Triomphe de Pomone (Triumph of Pomona), from Nouveaux morceaux pour des paravants (New Designs for Screens)

This design for a folding screen panel represents the allegory of Pomona, the Roman goddess of orchard fruits. It was etched and engraved as part of a series of folding screen designs. Boucher’s composition can be divided into three parts. The lower section shows a circular courtyard and a design for a fountain bordered by a shell-covered grotto with a grotesque mask. This serves as a pedestal upon which a shepherd, shepherdesses and donkey are arranged in picturesque composition in a bucolic setting that is filled with overflowing baskets of orchard fruits. In the background is a rustic landscape, complete with a cottage and a well. Leaves and vines frame the design, and the overall composition is a microcosm of the pastoral genre favored by Boucher. In this case, the pastorale has merged with the genre of mythological allegory and Boucher’s propensity for rococo iconography (in the manner of Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier) to produce a wholly ornamental composition. While this design probably was not realized, Boucher follows the example of artists such as Antoine Watteau, Claude Audran, Jacques de Lajoüe, and Nicolas Lancret who designed folding screens, as the latter became a ubiquitous part of French interior furnishings from the late seventeenth-century onwards.

Print, Triomphe de Pomone (Triumph of Pomona), from Nouveaux morceaux pour des paravants (New Designs for Screens); After François Boucher (French, 1703–1770); France; etching and engraving on white laid paper; 1921-6-203-5