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Your galleryAre They Thinking about the Grape? (Pensent-ils au raisin?)
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Find the grapes passing between the two young lovers, then the small boy with the goats at left and the sheep lying at right.
Boucher based the scene on a pantomime staged in 1745, in which a shepherd boy falls in love for the first time. The pair are feeding one another grapes, a fruit linked with Bacchus and his pleasures, which hints that the meeting is less innocent than it looks. Such pastorals were fantasies for rich financiers and nobles and had little to do with the real work of the countryside.
Oil on canvas · Oval: 80.8 × 68.5 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Rococo
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Are They Thinking about the Grape? (Pensent-ils au raisin?)
- Artist
- François Boucher (French, 1703–1770)
- Date
- 1747
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Oval: 80.8 × 68.5 cm (31 3/4 × 27 in.); Framed: 96.6 × 84.5 × 11.5 cm (38 × 33 1/4 × 4 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Martha E. Leverone Endowment
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.