Are you still watching? - after François Boucher (2021)
oil paint on canvas91.5 x 122cm
François Boucher’s Rococo painting Resting Girl (Louise O’Murphy), 1751 has undergone a 2020s update. She lies across her sofa surrounded by hallmarks of our time: online food delivery, wine, ‘self-care’ and the ever-present mobile phone. Items of leisure and luxury, but also the expectations of how she should appear in public. She does not engage with the viewer or with what’s going on outside and even seems disengaged in what she’s looking at. In our viewing of her in this time, are we engaging with her the same way a viewer would’ve a nude female figure in 1751?
The painting referenced, François Boucher’s Resting Girl (Louise O’Murphy), 1751:
