François Boucher, 'Pan and Syrinx', 1759

Pan and Syrinx

François Boucher

Room 35

About the work

Overview

This small and intimate painting is a cabinet picture intended for private domestic display rather than public exhibition. It illustrates a story from Metamorphoses, the epic poem by the Roman poet Ovid. The wood nymph Syrinx is chased by the god Pan to the river Ladon, where she begs one of the river nymphs to disguise her by changing her shape. The river nymph, with her back towards us, obliges by transforming Syrinx into reeds.

Boucher uses fluid brushstrokes to create a surface that has an almost jewel-like brilliance. The blues and greens complement the fleshy pinks of the women, who seem to glow against their dark surroundings. The painting’s mix of hedonism, overt eroticism and ambiguous sexuality may have particularly appealed to the libertine tastes of the royal court before the arrival of a more moralising tone in both art and art criticism in the 1760s.

In-depth

This small and intimate painting is a cabinet picture intended for private domestic display rather than public exhibition. It illustrates a story taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The wood nymph Syrinx is chased by the god Pan to the river Ladon, where she begs one of the river nymphs to disguise her by changing her shape. The river nymph, reclining on an urn with her back towards us, obliges by transforming Syrinx into reeds. According to the poem, Pan ‘thought he had caught Syrinx, instead of her held naught but marsh reeds in his arms.’

This story had previously been illustrated by many artists – you might want to compare Boucher’s painting with Hendrick van Balen the Elder’s version of the story, Pan pursuing Syrinx. However, Boucher takes some liberties with the poem. He does not follow the convention of including the river god Ladon, but instead represents the river with a nymph, enabling him to paint not one but two female nudes. And although Ovid’s story is one of sexual pursuit, there is little sense here of a frightened Syrinx actively trying to flee. Not only does she remain visible, even as Pan clutches an armful of reeds, but as she looks back over her shoulder at him her wide-eyed expression is as much coy as it is fearful.

Boucher may have been loose with his textual sources and with pictorial traditions, but his depiction of the story allowed him to reuse motifs and display his skilful technique. The reclining nude seen from the back was a figure he had often used, but several surviving chalk drawings, made from a model, also reveal his careful preparation for the painting, particularly the women’s poses. Boucher makes dramatic use of contrasts – for example, Pan’s dark skin and taut muscles contrast with the pale luminous tones and soft curves of the women’s bodies, which recall nudes by Rubens. As he lunges forward, Pan threatens to break into the protective oval cocoon formed by the sinuous outlines of the women, who become almost one body seen from both the front and from behind. This proximity, even merging, of the two nymphs suggests the possibility of a quite different sexual narrative. Not only does Syrinx seem as interested in her female companion as she is in Pan’s attention but he, like us, seems to intrude upon a private liaison between the two women.

The upward zigzag of the two cupids – one of whom holds the symbols of passion (an arrow and a flame) – further energises the composition. Boucher uses fluid brushstrokes to create a paint surface that in places has an almost jewel-like brilliance – look, for example, at the touches of bright white and blue in the draperies in the lower right corner. These colours, together with the greens of the reeds, complement the fleshy pinks of the women who seem to glow against their dark surroundings.

Pan and Syrinx was first owned by Armand-Pierre-François de Chastre de Billy, who was the king’s principal valet. The painting’s mix of sensual hedonism, overt eroticism and ambiguous sexuality may have particularly appealed to the libertine tastes of the royal court before the arrival of a more moralising tone in both art and art criticism in the 1760s.

Want to find out more?

Delve deeper and explore the catalogue entry for this painting.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Pan and Syrinx
Artist: François Boucher
Artist dates: 1703 - 1770
Date made: 1759
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 32.4 × 41.9 cm
Inscription summary: Signed; Dated
Acquisition credit: Presented by Mrs Robert Hollond, 1880
Inventory number: NG1090
Location: Room 35
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Ellen Julia Teed, Mrs Robert Hollond
Frame: 18th-century French Frame

Provenance

In the collection of Armand‐Pierre‐François de Chastre de Cangey, sieur de Billy (died 1784) by 1771; his sale, A.J. Paillet, Paris, 15 November 1784, lot 48, 651 livres to Quesnay (or Quenet); sale of Auguste‐Gabriel Godefroy (1728–1813), Le Brun, Hôtel de Bullion, Paris, 15–19 November 1785, lot 45 on 15 November, 660 livres, 1 sol to Hamon; possibly the painter Pau de Saint‐Martin’s posthumous sale, Charles Paillet, Hôtel de Bullion, Paris, 2 October 1820, lot 77; anon. sale (Count Sommariva?), P.E. Martin, expert, Paris, rue du Mont‐Blanc, no. 3, 11 April 1822 and following, lot 2, with an avant la lettre state of the engraving, 148 francs; possibly Sir William Jackson sale, Paris, 25–26 February 1848, lot 34 (bought in), and Hôtel des Ventes Mobilières, Paris, 12–13 March 1849, lot 4, but said by Ellen Julia Hollond (née Teed; 1822–1884) of 1 Upper Berkeley Street, London, and Stanmore Hall, Great Stanmore, Middlesex, to have been in her possession for forty years when presented by her in 1880.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Humphrey Wine, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth Century French Paintings’, London 2018; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2014

Rubens and His Legacy

Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR)

25 September 2014 - 4 January 2015

Royal Academy of Arts

24 January 2015 - 10 April 2015
2019

Renoir: The Body, The Senses

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

8 June 2019 - 22 September 2019

Kimbell Art Museum

27 October 2019 - 26 January 2020
2021

L'Empire des sens: de Boucher à Greuze

Musée Cognacq-Jay

28 January 2021 - 27 May 2021

Bibliography

1784

Paillet, Catalogue des tableaux, dessins, estampes,… qui composent le cabinet de feu M. de Billy, écuyer, ancien commissaire des guerres, & ancien premier valet de garde-robe du Roi, Paris, 16 November 1784
1785

M. Godefroy Auguste Gabriel Godefroy, 1728-1813 Sale Catalogue, Paris, 15 November 1785
1788

Charles de Wailly Sale Catalogue, Paris, 24 November 1788
1820

Pau de Martin Sale Catalogue, Paris, 2 October 1820
1881

National Gallery, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery: Foreign Schools, London 1881
1889

National Gallery, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery with Biographical Notices of the Painters: Foreign Schools, London 1889
1906

A. Michel, François Boucher, Paris 1906
1907

P. de Nolhac, François Boucher, premier peintre du roi, 1703-1770, Paris 1907
1913

National Gallery, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the British and Foreign Pictures, 81st edn, London 1913
1913

A. Thibaudet, La Poésie de Stéphane Mallarmé, Paris 1913
1927

C.J. Holmes, The National Gallery: France and England, Old Masters and Modern Art 3, London 1927
1946

Martin Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: French School, London 1946
1957

Martin Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: French School, 2nd edn (revised), London 1957
1972

L.J. Austin, 'Mallarmé and the Visual Arts', in U. Finke (ed.), French 19th Century Painting and Literature, Manchester 1972, pp. 232-57
1973

R. Shoolman Slatkin, François Boucher in North American Collections: 100 Drawings (exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 23 December 1973 - 17 March 1974; Art Insitute of Chicago, 4 April 1974 - 12 May 1974), Washington 1973
1974

W. Talbot, 'Jean-François de Troy: Pan and Syrinx', Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, LXI, 1974, pp. 250-9
1976

A. Ananoff and D. Wildenstein, François Boucher, 2 vols, Lausanne 1976
1980

A. Ananoff and D. Wildenstein, L'opera completa di Boucher, Milan 1980
1982

D. Sutton, François Boucher, 1703-1770 (exh. cat. Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 24 April - 23 June 1982; Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art, 3 July - 22 August 1982), Tokyo 1982
1985

M. Wilson, French Paintings before 1800, London 1985
1991

C.B. Bailey, Les amours des dieux: La peinture mythologique de Watteau á David, Paris 1991
1992

C.B. Bailey, The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David (exh. cat. Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 15 October 1991 - 6 January 1992; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 23 February - 26 April 1992; Kimbell Art Museum, 23 May - 2 August 1992), New York 1992
1999

V.H. Minor, Baroque and Rococo: Art and Culture, London 1999
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2005

D. Bruce, 'Boucher at the Wallace Collection" in:', Contemporary Review, CCLXXXVI/1670, 2005, pp. 156-62
2018

Wine, Humphrey, National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth Century French Paintings, London 2018

Frame

The maker of this frame is unknown, but it exemplifies the type of frame crafted in eighteenth-century Paris by the carver and furnituremaker Jean Cherin. Constructed in oak with recut gesso and water gilding, the double-sweep frame showcases the virtuosity of Cherin. The backswept lines are adorned with a fine guilloche motif, visible through the perforations of the centres and corner cartouches. The plain swept lines at the top are flanked by rounded cartouches with shell centres, rosette corners and ‘rinceaux’ (branches with foliage). The sight edge is decorated with neoclassical pearl and lamb’s-tongue mouldings.

The frame was adapted to fit Boucher’s Pan and Syrinx and regilded when it was purchased in 1880 by the former owner of the picture, Mrs Ellen Julia Hollond.

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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Not on display

François Boucher, 'Pan and Syrinx', 1759

About the work

Overview

In-depth

Key facts

Details

Provenance

Additional information

Source

Exhibition history

Bibliography

Frame

About this record

Images

More works by François Boucher