Francois BOUCHER
French 1703-1770
The enjoyable lesson
1748
oil on canvas
92.5 x 78.6 cm
Felton Bequest 1982
E1-1982

Boucher painted seven works based on the play Les Vendanges de Tempé by Charles-Simon Favart. It is the love story of the shepherdess Lisette and the 'Little Shepherd', centred around the trials that their relationship endured before they gained parental consent for their marriage.

The enjoyable lesson is from scene five, where the Little Shepherd is teaching Lisette how to play the flute. The erotic overtones of the scene are clearly not ignored by Boucher who posed the figures in an intimate and blatantly suggestive way.

Boucher was influential in rejuvenating the 'pastoral landscape', and he infused his scenes with a degree of sentimentality combined with an accomplished, rich painting technique.

These characteristics were taken to an extreme level by those who followed him and led to a backlash against his style of painting and made him an unjust target of criticism.