  About the Artwork
  
  
  Virtuoso and impressively sized, François Boucher’s Birth of Venus was owned by not one but two other artists. Made with loose and confident strokes of the brush, it offers a masterclass in expressive, dynamic painting. The sophisticated pyramidal composition pulls the eye toward the mass of nude limbs that rise dynamically toward a cloudy sky. Boucher’s use of an elegantly restrained palette, privileging pinks, blues, and grays, further emphasizes his energetic sketchlike technique. The Birth of Venus was owned by Boucher’s son-in-law Jean-Baptiste-Henri Deshays, himself a noted painter, before it passed to another relation, Pierre-Antoine Baudouin, who was an accomplished draftsman.
  
  
  Title
  The Birth of Venus
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1765
  
  Artist
  François Boucher
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1703-1770
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  French
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 69 5/8 × 30 3/8 inches (176.8 × 77.2 cm)
  Framed: 81 1/8 × 40 3/4 × 3 1/4 inches (206.1 × 103.5 × 8.3 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  European Painting
  
  
  Credit
  Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar B. Whitcomb
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  29.445
  
  
  Copyright
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