Venus on the Waves

François Boucher depicted a mythological world of delicate sensuality and indolence. Putti and doves attend Venus, the goddess of love, as she lounges amid a luxurious heap of drapery, while an elaborately decorative sky occupies the upper half of the painting. The artist used a pastel palette of blues, pinks, mauves, and peach tones and loose, rapid brushstrokes more characteristic of his tapestry designs than of his finished oil paintings.

In 1768, Jean-François Bergeret de Frouville commissioned a set of six mythological subjects for his house in Paris. Together with delicate furnishings of the period, these colorful paintings created a room of Rococo refinement and vivacity. Boucher painted the works, including this one and its companion piece,  Aurora and Cephalus, just one year before his death. The other four paintings now belong to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.