The Triumph of Venus

1740

Oil on canvas, 51 1/4 × 63 3/4 in. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Venus rises from the sea foam, but the picture is really about blue and pink: colour is the point and the story the excuse.

Look at

The palette keeps to cool blue and pink: blue sky and drapery, pink cloth and flesh. The largest dark mass is the cloud and cliff at right.
The striped drapery loops across the top and the bodies curve round in a spiral, so the eye never rests.
The storm cloud at right has soft, blended edges. It melts into the pale sky beside it.

First exhibited at the 1740 Salon in Paris; the Swedish diplomat Carl Gustaf Tessin bought it from Boucher's studio and carried it to Sweden in 1741.
Sold with most of Tessin's collection in 1749; it reached the Nationalmuseum from the Swedish royal collection in 1865.

Image: Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (Nationalmuseum open access)