Halt at the Spring

In 1765 Louis XV made Boucher his First Painter, and that year Boucher signed and dated this canvas on the base of the stone vase at the right. The picture is older than its date. It began as a smaller religious painting, a Rest on the Flight into Egypt, with Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child at the left, and in that form it was shown at the Paris Salon of 1761. Boucher then had strips of canvas added at the top and sides, and the seams can still be made out. He painted the holy family away and turned the scene into country people stopping at a spring with their animals and baskets. By 1769 it belonged to Bergeret de Grancourt, a rich tax official and collector, who lent it to that year's Salon beside its companion piece, which also hangs in Boston. The pair crossed the Atlantic in the 1840s for Deacon House, a Boston mansion, and in March 1871 the heirs of Peter Parker gave this one to the Museum of Fine Arts, founded the year before.