Landscape with Figures

François Boucher

about 1726–1728

J. Paul Getty Museum

A red chalk drawing depicts a pastoral landscape with a village, trees, and two figures in the foreground. A church spire rises above the buildings on the left. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles In this early landscape, François Boucher aimed to create picturesque, poetic effects rather than fidelity to nature. To anchor his lush foliage of energetic chalk strokes, he built a strong underpinning of a winding road and solid buildings and filled the scene with props and details. The drawing is probably his only landscape on vellum. Boucher may have made this drawing, along with *Reclining Guitar Player,* for his first tapestry series for the Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory. He designed this series, *Les fêtes italiennes,* between 1734 and 1746, and Beauvais produced and sold more copies of