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- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Look at the parted lips and the quick turn of his head, then follow his hand down to the carrot and its feathery leaves.
Boucher rarely made finished works on paper and painted few portraits apart from royal patrons and his own family, so this pastel of a boy, perhaps an apprentice in his studio, is unusual. It may be one of his first works in pastel, then a new and adaptable medium. Boucher used the same model, carrot and all, in two or more of his pastoral paintings.
Pastel on buff laid paper · 30.8 × 24.3 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Rococo
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Boy with a Carrot
- Artist
- François Boucher French, 1703-1770
- Date
- 1738
- Medium
- Pastel on buff laid paper
- Dimensions
- 30.8 × 24.3 cm (12 3/16 × 9 5/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Helen Regenstein Collection
- 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.