The Love Letter
Francois Boucher, The Love Letter, 1750, oil on canvas
As typical for Francois Boucher’s work, The Love Letter depicts beautiful women at play. They lounge and hang off of each other in the vast countryside with shiny satin dresses, fair white skin, perfect hair, and a carefree demeanor.
This piece follows the traditional rococo style. The soft pastels of their out-of-place dresses work to compliment the colors of the environment. The background fades into a vague swirl of sky and the natural world provides an ephemeral whimsical quality of fantasy.
These women are meant to depict a romanticized version of working class shepherdesses, whose idleness seems to extend to the guard dog, overlooking statue, and sheep. They preoccupied themselves with gathering flowers in a woven basket which spills over in a luxurious display. However, even this minor labor was physically cast aside to send a love letter by way of a blue ribbon tied around the neck of a delicate white dove.
However, make no mistake this painting was understood as an imagined world. These scenes actually became a point of aspiration for the elite. To get away from the rigidity of court life and to be able to lounge in nature was a fantasy this piece appealed to. Even the very concept of working-class people was co-opted and warped by their superiors into becoming something completely detached from the real people, something to serve them. This can be seen in the piece through the untarnished nature of their dresses and their clean bodies, which show a complete disinterest in the reality of working class people.
This work is a complete fiction of the elite, interested in the working class only in ways where they can experience it as an aesthetic delight.
By: Carolina