Boucher présenté à Madame de Pompadour (Boucher presented to Madame de Pompadour), from "Le Monde Illustré"

Henry Linton

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Linton’s print reproduces a painting by Gérard that depicts the introduction of the painter François Boucher to Madame de Pompadour, a leading member of the French royal court and the official mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to her death in 1764. The relationship between Boucher and his patroness was fruitful and resulted in many commissions for the artist. Boucher’s art epitomized the ancien regime—the period preceding the downfall of the French monarchy at the end of the eighteenth century—the opulence of which was a source of much fascination in the nineteenth century. The painting was shown at the Paris Salon in 1861, and this illustration accompanied a review of the exhibition in the contemporary press.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.