Francois Boucher – The Pasha in His Harem

Francois Boucher, The Pasha in His Harem, c. 1735-1739, watercolour, ink, pen, grey wash

Gazing at the gorgeous Rococo paintings is like getting your hand inside a box of chocolate candies; it’s thrilling and it’s sweet. The Rococo artwork I have chosen for this post is a fascinating watercolour by Francois Boucher painted around 1735-39. The watercolour shows a sumptuously dressed pasha in his harem, surrounded by his stunning set of concubines. Beside him are three young women, three concubines, and in the background there is another one, attentively pouring some drink. The girls next to the pasha are gazing at him adoringly; he is their master and their God, the centre of their universe. The pasha is living the dream of many libertine men of the eighteenth century. I bet that Louise XV would have had his harem had it been a custom at the French court at the time. In the pyramidal composition of this watercolour the head of the pasha with its turban is the top of the pyramid. Sitting cross-legged at the centre of everything, the pasha needs only to move his head and his gaze would fall on another girl; he is like a butterfly on a meadow, flying from one flower to another, soaking in its beauty and its delicate, sweet scent. The pasha’s hand is reaching for the charms of the concubine on his right and he is casting his warm, loving gaze on her whilst the woman in the foreground is lying stretched beneath his feet with her breats exposed, longing to feel the warmth of that gaze as well.

The pink and yellowish tones of the watercolour are the same colour as the powder-coated turkish delight. The sweet delicacy of the colour fits the mood of the watercolour very well. And notice just how beautifully the fabric on their clothes and in the background is draped, the folds are carefully accentuated with bold strokes of ink which really gives them that palpable dimension and also the black harshness of the ink creates a beautiful contrast with the soft delicacy of all the pinks and yellows. Behind the pink drapery there are contours of a flower vase perched on the top of the marble column. It almost feels as if the scene is staged in way, as if it is a design for the play. Boucher is known for his paintings permeated with an undeniable eroticism and he has painted a few rather beautiful behinds, but this is the first time I had seen his erotic imagination transport him to the world of Orient and it is very interesting to me.

At the same time that the Habsburg Empire and the Balkans were fighting the evils of the Ottoman Empire, the artists in the west of Europe were enjoying their delightful reveries about the hidden and clandestine wonders of the Orient. Everything mysterious and forbidden tastes sweeter and this trend continued well into the nineteenth century when artists such as Ingres, Delacroix and Jean-Leon Gerome and many others would capture the vibrancy and opulence of the Orient. Still, unlike Delacroix’s real life sketches of the life in Morroco, Boucher’s watercolour is a Rococo fantasy, an idealisation, a make-belief, a dream; it doesn’t strive for authenticity.

Francois Boucher – Resting Maiden

Today we are going to take a look at a famous Rococo painting by Boucher; a painter that is almost synonymous with the era. The painting of a nude girl unites luxury and eroticism, is painted in sensuous pastel shades of yellow, pink and blue, and it epitomises Rococo’s pursuit of pleasure and hedonism.

Francois Boucher, Resting Girl (also known as:L’Odalisque blonde), 1751

Plump nude beauty. Seashell pink skin. Sumptuous interior. A rich and mesmerising amber-coloured fabric: yellow was a beloved colour for Rococo artists. All these things you are likely to find in any Rococo painting, especially if the painter is Francois Boucher himself. His painting “Resting Girl” is one of the first things that come to people’s minds when they think about Rococo. I know it was for me; this painting, Fragonard’s The Swing and portraits of Madame Pompadour. In this simple interior scene with a horizontal composition details are limited and everything draws the eye to the focal point and that is the girl. The gorgeous yellow fabric surrounds her like the green leaf surrounds the fragrant white lotus flower. She is lying on a sofa; her one leg rests on a pillow whose crisp whiteness you can almost feel, the other on the yellow fabric. On the floor are two elegantly discarded pink roses. There is an open book in the lower left corner, but she doesn’t seem to be reading it. We see her only from the profile, and yet we can sense her mood. She looks a bit startled, surprised, slightly worried. She is holding her hand under her chin, her lips are just slightly parted. Perhaps she saw someone she wasn’t expecting?…

Note: There are two different versions of this painting, but I think the one above is the prettier one and I am referring to that one. Still, the blue ribbons in the painting below do entrance me. The second version was made for Madame de Pompadour’s brother.

The second version: Francois Boucher, Resting Girl, 1752

You must all be wondering right now, who is the owner of this cute Rococo ass? I shall gladly tell you: Marie-Louise O’Murphy; one of the mistresses of Louis XV. She was the youngest of the O’Murphy sisters and her family was of Irish origin, but lived in Normandy. The story goes that one day Louise was at her sister’s house and Casanova himself happened to be there and he saw her stark naked. The image of her pretty teenage body left him so entranced that he demanded a nude portrait of her to be made. Of course the painter was Boucher, for who else painted such openly licentious and unashamedly erotic scenes? Casanova wrote this about the finished portrait: “The skilled artist had drawn her legs and thighs so that the eye could not wish to see more. There I write below: O-Morphi wasn’t a Homeric or either Greek word. Was simply mean Beautiful.” Greek word for beauty, “Omorphiá” is similar to Louise’s surname “O’Murphy”. Having been born in October 1737, Louise was very young when she posed for this painting and her body does look more developed, and yet, when the king Louis XV himself demanded to see her, he concluded that she is even better looking than in the painting.

Francoise Boucher, A Female Nude Reclining on a Chaise-Longue (Graphite, red and white chalk on paper), Sketch for the painting

Louis XV’s reign practically coincides with the existence of Rococo era in art, and he himself led a life full of extravagances and many love affairs so he is a good person to represent the mood of this art movement. His most famous mistress, Madame de Pompadour, is knows as “the Godmother of Rococo” and Boucher was her official portrait painter. Pink was her favourite colour and champagne glass was allegedly made according to the shape of her breasts. Need I say more: the woman loved the art of her time. No other era in art displayed such straightforward eroticism as Rococo, in no other era did the sexual conquests fill the canvases, the novels, the gossips. After centuries of religious art holding dominance, the 18th century brought a liberation, just like the 1960s did in a way.

In art before Rococo, nudity or half-nudity was justifiable and acceptable only if it served a purpose, if it was part of a religious (St Sebastian) or mythological scene (Venus). In Rococo an artist was finally allowed to paint a nude without putting it in a context. Still nature with jugs and apples needs no context, why would a nude body need one? In “Resting Maiden”, the subject is not another Venus; it’s just an everyday girl called Louise and her adolescent beauty captured for eternity. In the 1740s, Boucher painted a similar scene, this time using his wife as a model. Diderot was particularly disgusted with the painting and Boucher was accused of “prostituting his own wife”:

François Boucher, Brown Odalisque (L’Odalisque Brune), 1740-49

These paintings by Boucher can be seen as epitomes of the Rococo spirit because they are straightforwardly hedonistic and light-hearted, sensuous and pastel coloured but things didn’t stay so pink and light-hearted for a long time. As the century progressed, things changed, flirty and frivolous guests of the Rococo party were facing a hangover; dreams and escapism gave way to reality. Pinkness and liberation descended into decadence and the French Revolution of 1789, sharp like a guillotine, cut Rococo’s timeline in a second. It seems that every pleasure has its consequence. I feel that there is such fragility and silent wistfulness hiding underneath Rococo’s shiny pink exterior. On the inside, Rococo is as gentle as porcelain or antique lace; it idealises, it fuels daydreams, it yearns for an eternally lovely world with baby blue skies, it tried so passionately to avoid reality that it got swallowed by it.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Girl with a Dog, 1770

Fragonard’s painting above is yet another example of Rococo’s naughtiness. To end the post here are a few verses from Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Spleen” that perfectly capture that fragile appeal of Rococo:

I am an old boudoir full of withered roses,

Where lies a whole litter of old-fashioned dresses,

Where the plaintive pastels and the pale Bouchers,

Alone, breathe in the fragrance from an opened phial.

***

Je suis un vieux boudoir plein de roses fanées,

Où gît tout un fouillis de modes surannées,

Où les pastelliste plaintifs et les pâles Boucher,

Seuls, respirent l’odeur d’un flacon débouché.