The Mill
Details
The story
In 1751 the young Cardinal de Soubise, Armand de Rohan, was remaking his apartments in the family's town house in the Marais, the Hôtel de Rohan, which is part of the French National Archives today. He was in his early thirties, a prince of the Church and bishop of Strasbourg, and for his bedroom he wanted country scenes by Boucher. This mill and its companion piece, a bridge, were painted for that room, and Boucher signed and dated this one in 1751.
Around the same years, in another part of the house, the painter Christophe Huet was covering a small room with monkeys dressed and busy like people, the Cabinet des Singes, which still survives in place.
The two paintings stayed with the building long after the cardinal. In the 19th century the Hôtel de Rohan housed the state printing works, and only in 1911 were the mill and the bridge taken down and moved to the Louvre.
