Venus on the Waves

François Boucher depicted a mythological world of delicate sensuality and indolence. Putti and doves attend Venus, the goddess of love, as she lounges amid a luxurious heap of drapery, while an elaborately decorative sky occupies the upper half of the painting. The artist used a pastel palette of blues, pinks, mauves, and peach tones and loose, rapid brushstrokes more characteristic of his tapestry designs than of his finished oil paintings. In 1768, Jean-François Bergeret de Frouville commissioned a set of six mythological subjects for his house in Paris. Together with delicate furnishings of the period, these colorful paintings created a room of Rococo refinement and vivacity. Boucher painted the works, including this one and its companion piece, [*Aurora and Cephalus*](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/599/francois-boucher-aurora-and-cephalus-french-1769/), just one year before his death. The other four paintings now belong to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.