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Look at the two reaching hands and the bulging arm, where rubbed black chalk shapes the shadows and white chalk the highlights.
Boucher drew this triton, a sea god, for his painting Sunrise, now in the Wallace Collection in London. The commission came in 1748, when the picture was planned as a design for a tapestry, and the finished painting is dated 1753. The firm modeling of the arm, shoulder and back shows the thorough academic training behind his work.
Black chalk, with stumping with traces of red chalk, heightened with white chalk and traces of graphite, on tan laid paper · 22.1 × 27 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Rococo
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Study of a Triton
- Artist
- François Boucher French, 1703-1770
- Date
- 1748/53
- Medium
- Black chalk, with stumping with traces of red chalk, heightened with white chalk and traces of graphite, on tan laid paper
- Dimensions
- 22.1 × 27 cm (8 3/4 × 10 11/16 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.