Drawing

Drawing (c. 1750-53), in The Frick Collection, is part of a series of allegories of the arts, depicting the personification of Drawing — the foundational skill of all visual art. Boucher presents Drawing as an elegant female figure with appropriate attributes, the allegorical personification rendered with the same decorative beauty he brought to his mythological paintings. The Frick Collection's French paintings include this among several Boucher works that demonstrate the range of his decorative art.

Executed with decorative elegance and attention to luminous flesh tones, the work reveals François Boucher's characteristic approach to composition and surface. The treatment of light and the careful modulation of color create visual richness within a unified pictorial scheme.