One of the provinces of Rococo. China dreamed of François Boucher

Du 9 November 2019 to 2 March 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology of Besançon presents "One of the provinces of Rococo. China dreamed of François Boucher », an exhibition that invites you to dream. How best to celebrate the first anniversary of the reopening of the museum?

François Boucher, one of the most illustrious figures in the history of 18th century painting with Watteau and Fragonard, was also one of the most talented artists in the renewal of the decorative arts. At a time when China, this ancient and distant civilization, is getting closer to France through the commerce of art objects, Boucher becomes one of the collectors and the spokesperson: he paints many subjects inspired by China is spreading almost immediately in the Parisian decorations as well as in the collections of prints and, logically, through the decorative arts, porcelain, furniture and more tapestry.

The Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology of Besançon, which has been preserving François Boucher's ten boxes made in 1742 for the Manufacture of Beauvais for two centuries, presents an ambitious exhibition of one hundred and thirty national and international loans. poetic reflection on a problem never presented to the public: the creative process of an artist who knew, by an exceptional curiosity and inventiveness, to give birth to an original exotic repertoire and, in the words of the Goncourt brothers, "To make China one of the rococo provinces."