Mädchen mit Urne

Die Haltung des  "Mädchens mit Urne" taucht bei Boucher wiederholt auf. Sie wurde als Vorstudie für die alte Frau in dem 1750 datierten Altarbild "Das Licht der Welt" verwendet. Boucher zeichnete das Mädchen mit drei verschiedenfarbigen Kreiden auf getöntem Papier, wobei der schwarze Farbton die Konturen umreißt sowie die Binnenstruktur, vor allem die schweren Gewandfalten, plastisch modelliert, der Rötel schimmernde weiche Haut suggeriert und die hell glänzenden Weißhöhungen den Einfall des Lichts andeuten. Das Ölgemälde "Das Licht der Welt" (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon; http://collections.mba-lyon.fr/fr/search-notice/detail/1955-106-la-lum-52295§) wurde von der Marquise de Pompadour bei Boucher für ihren privaten Andachtsraum im Schloss Bellevue in Auftrag gegeben.

vgl. Christine Ekelhart, in: Klaus Albrecht Schröder (Hg.), Die großen Meister der Albertina (Kat. Best. Albertina, Wien 2008), Petersberg 2008, Nr. 140.

Chinoiserie and turquerie became increasingly fashionable in all fields of art in the eighteenth century. Since the constantly present “Turkish Threat” had been finally banished through the victory at Vienna in 1683, the idea of a barbaric, wild, belligerent people had been succeeded by an image of pleasure and sensual joie de vivre that inspired the imagination of Europeans: sumptuous luxury, exotic splendor, free love, polygamy, and the secret world of the harem made the Turks the epitome of paradise, a fairytale from the Thousand and One Nights. The most important source for depictions of Turkish themes in the visual arts of the Rococo era was the series of engravings, Recueil de cent estampes représentant différentes nations du Levant tirées sur les tableaux peints d’après nature en 1707 et 1708 [...] et gravées en 1712 et 1713, created at the suggestion of the French ambassador in Constantinople, Marquis Charles de Ferriol; a second volume was published in 1715. The engravings after paintings by Jean-Baptiste Vanmour show not only the highest representatives of the Turkish royal household and the ladies of the court making music or playing games, but also ordinary people. The direct successor to the Recueil Ferriol was Jean-Antoine Guer’s two-volume work, Mœurs et usages des Turcs [...], from 1746–47, with engravings by Claude Duflos the younger, nineteen of which were made after drawings by Boucher. These pictures, however, reflect less local Turkish color than French society, dressed à la turque in pleasing poses and a casual atmosphere. This mood determines also the pictorially executed drawing, Pascha in His Harem: despite the oriental-style clothing, the depiction resembles a place as Europeans would imagine it. The sheet is not one of the works for Mœurs et usages des Turcs but, according to Alastair Laing (in: New York, Fort Worth 2003–04), it was made earlier, around 1735–1739. The combination of pen and watercolor is more typical of Boucher’s graphic work in the 1730s. Furthermore, Laing points out the proximity to an oil painting previously attributed to Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, A Pasha with Three Women in His Palace, which, in turn, is part of a series of exotic hunting pictures with protagonists in Turkish costumes that has been dated to around 1736–1738 (New York, Fort Worth 2003–04, Nr. 39). The pose of the servant woman on the right recurs frequently in Boucher’s work: it is also found in the lost painting, Isaac Blessing Jacob, known through the engraving by Philipp Andreas Kilian.

The same posture is also seen in Girl with Urn, which was used again as a preparatory study for the old woman in the altarpiece, The Light of the World, dating from 1750. Boucher drew the girl using three different colors of chalk on tinted paper, whereby the black hue outlines the contour and internal structure and gives a three-dimensional effect particularly to the heavy folds of the garments; the red chalk suggests the soft, shimmering skin, and the brightly gleaming white heightening defines the incidence of the light. The oil painting, The Light of the World (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon), was commissioned by the Marquise de Pompadour from Boucher for her private devotional room in the Chateau de Bellevue.