垂钓

Francois Boucher spent his career painting a countryside that never really existed, a soft, sunlit version of rural France where well-dressed young people fish and flirt and nobody does much work. This scene of a couple angling in a stream, a child beside them, is one of those idylls, and it was made for the Grand Trianon, the smaller palace in the grounds of Versailles where the royal family went to escape the stiffness of court. By this stage Boucher had reached the top of his profession, first painter to King Louis XV and the favourite artist of the king's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. She hung his work in nearly every house she lived in, and it was largely her taste that made these make-believe pastorals the fashion of the French court.