Benjamin perronnet V5 - Flipbook - Page 24
1727, soit juste avant le départ de Boucher pour
Rome où il demeure jusque 1731.
La bataille de Maupertuis, plus communément
connue sous l’appellation de bataille de Poitiers,
a été livrée au cours de la guerre de Cent Ans,
le 19 septembre 1356 à Nouillé-Maupertuis,
près de Poitiers en Aquitaine. Le roi de France
Jean II le Bon cherche à intercepter l’armée
anglaise conduite par Edouard de Woodstock,
prince de Galles, qui est en train de mener
une chevauchée dévastatrice. Par une tactique
irré昀氀échie, Jean Le Bon conduit ses troupes,
quoique numériquement très supérieures,
au désastre et se fait prendre prisonner, ainsi
que son 昀椀ls Philippe, et de nombreux membres
éminents de la chevalerie française.
Study for a drawing, now in the Louvre, smaller in size (7.7
x 14.1 cm.) but more 昀椀nished, in red chalk, pen and brown
ink, grey wash. The latter was engraved in counterpart
by Maurice Baquoy (Fig. 2) to illustrate the chapter
devoted to King Jean II le Bon in volume V of the fourth
edition, published in 1729, of L’Histoire de France depuis
l’établissement de la Monarchie française by Father Gabriel
Daniel (1649-1728), 昀椀rst published in 1699. The drawing
in the Louvre is part of an album, from the collection of
Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774), comprising twenty-six
drawings, twenty-four of which are by Boucher and all
preparatory to vignettes engraved in the 1729 edition,
edited by none other than Denis Mariette (1666-1741), the
collector’s uncle. The drawings are all of the same size,
executed in either brown or grey wash, and are all squared
and incised.
Fig. 1. François Boucher, La bataille de Maupertuis,
dite de Poitiers, Paris, Musée du Louvre
Four other studies for drawings in the Louvre album are
known. Three of them (Fig. 2) appeared in 1953, attributed
to Fragonard, in a catalogue published by the Este Gallery
in New York; the other is in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum,
Cologne. These four drawings, like the present one, are
similar in technique (their preparatory tracings are in either
black chalk or red chalk) and size (roughly twice the size
of the Louvre series), and all display a dizzying verve, both
in the initial drawing in black chalk and in the pen work, of
an astonishing freedom that Boucher would rarely achieve
in his later works. In his drawings for the Louvre album,
Boucher contains this verve to give the engravers a small,
well-composed and legible drawing, easier to use. This
drawing, like the others for L’Histoire de France, must have
been produced in 1727, just before Boucher left for Rome,
where he remained until 1731.
The Battle of Maupertuis, more commonly known as the
Battle of Poitiers, was fought during the Hundred Years’
War, on September 19, 1356 at Nouillé-Maupertuis, near
Poitiers in Aquitaine. King John II the Good of France
sought to intercept the English army led by Edward
of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, which was leading a
devastating campaign. Jean Le Bon’s ill-considered tactics
led his numerically superior troops to disaster, and he
was taken prisoner, along with his son Philippe and many
prominent members of the French knighthood.
Fig. 2. Maurice Baquoy, d’après François Boucher,
La bataille de Maupertuis, dite de Poitiers, gravure
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