The present work is a newly discovered autograph version of one of the most charming compositions from the early career of François Boucher. The Surprise is an enigmatic erotic painting, its precise subject mysterious, although its overall intent relates to the themes of love and seduction for which the artist is celebrated. Until its recent discovery the primary example of the composition was held to be that in the New Orleans Museum of Art. That painting, of exquisite facture and quality, was acquired by the museum in 1964; its provenance goes back to 1865, when it appeared in the Pourtalés-Georgier sale as a work by Deshays. Several versions of La Surprise are recorded in eighteenth-century French auctions as by Boucher, but it is impossible to associate these with any surety with either the present work or that in New Orleans.

Boucher’s authorship of our painting has been confirmed by Alastair Laing and Jamie Mulherron upon firsthand inspection, and the painting will appear as an autograph work by Boucher in their forthcoming catalogue raisonné. A report by Jamie Mulherron, dated March 15, 2018, accompanies the present entry. In it he reviews the various eighteenth-century citations of the painting, the known versions of the composition, the present work’s technique and physical characteristics. He concludes that both the New Orleans painting and the present work are autograph, but states that it is impossible at this point to determine which was painted first.

In the catalogue for the exhibition “Intimate Encounters; Love and Domesticity in Eighteenth-Century France,” Richard Rand discusses the subject of the New Orleans Surprise, applicable as well to our painting:

“The subject of the painting is enigmatic, although thoroughly in keeping with the eroticized undercurrent that characterizes much genre painting during the regency and early reign of Louis XV… A woman, dressed only in her shift, reclines on a daybed in a stone room overlooking a garden; she is apparently startled by a man who pulls back a curtain to reveal his presence. She seems less concerned with being observed in a state of partial undress, however, than with the young girl at the foot of the bed, who reaches toward her imploringly, as if seeking to pet the cat that she holds in her lap. This cat, particularly in the way it is held by the woman, is very close to one that appears in an etching after Boucher entitled Les Caresses dangereuses. The quatrain included in the lower margin of this print warns of the natural treachery of all cats, who—like lovers—can turn in an instant on the object of their affections, an idea that is perhaps part of the meaning intended by The Surprise. Indeed, there is an underlying sense of danger in the painting, if only because the identities of the protagonists (parents with their child? a courtesan and her client?) and their actions are so mystifying. It is possible that the subject is drawn from a work of literature, perhaps one of the Contes of La Fontaine that were sometimes depicted by painters such as Lancret, Pater, and Boucher himself.”