Fran�ois Boucher was regarded during his lifetime as the foremost draughtsman in France, ranked by his contemporaries among the greatest draughtsmen of all time. This exhibition of more than 80 drawings locates Boucher among his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, and shows his central role in defining a new style that was taken up by the French aristocracy and Royal court, and which subsequently spread through all the royal courts of 18th-century Europe. This style became known as the Rococo. Boucher's greatest predecessor, Antoine Watteau set the tone of the Rococo. There are eight drawings by Watteau in this exhibition and several examples of Boucher's engravings after Watteau, which enables us to follow the way the Rococo style expanded on the implications of Watteau's art.

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François Boucher Recumbent woman seen from behind. Collection École des Beaux-Arts, Paris