Alfred Boucher (French, 1850-1934), ‘Diana the Huntress’, A Near Lifesize Statuary Marble Group.
Modelled nude with head turned looking to her left, striding forward holding the greyhound by its collar with her right hand and a giltwood bow in her left hand. On an integral carved base with foliage support.
Signed ‘A. BOUCHER’.
Boucher’s choice of pose is deliberately indebted to the celebrated mid-16th century painting of Diana the Huntress by an anonymous artist of the School of Fontainebleau. The painting is a mythical representation of Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of King Henry II, in the guise of the goddess Diana, who is shown nude, walking forward beside a greyhound, looking over her left shoulder and holding a bow. Another clear antecedent for Boucher’s ‘Diane the Huntress’ is the marble statue of Diana by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828) which was unveiled in 1777 (collection Museu Calouste Gulbenkian). Houdon’s Diana caused a scandal by her complete nudity, which although drawn from classical antiquity, was considered excessive. By the time that Boucher’s conceived his ‘Diana the Huntress’ at the end of the 19th century, he was inspired by Houdon’s version which by then was firmly established as a great masterpiece of French eighteenth-century sculpture. This sensuous depiction of Diana is in keeping with Boucher’s style of female nudes, of which the most famous is Volubilis which exhibit a fin-de-siécle fascination for the myriad of associations around the vulnerability of the nude.
Jacques Piette, Alfred Boucher 1850-1934: L’oeuvre sculpté, catalogue raisonné, Paris, 2014, p. pp. 166-167, no. A36.
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