Landscape with Figures

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 this tapestry series than any other. Before the Getty Museum purchased the drawing, the second Earl Spencer owned it.