The Bridge

Boucher painted this picture in 1751 as the companion to The Mill, which hangs in the same room of the Louvre. The two were made for one bedroom and meant to be seen as a pair, one built around a working mill and this one around a bridge.

A rough country bridge was one of his favourite motifs, and it travelled well beyond his paintings. In April 1753, two years after this canvas, the etcher Pierre-Quentin Chedel announced a print called The Rustic Bridge. It was made after a Boucher drawing of the old aqueduct at Arcueil, a village just south of Paris, and that drawing is now in the Albertina in Vienna. On this canvas Boucher signed his name and the year, F. Boucher 1751.