North Carolina Museum of Art

Boucher painted Allegory of Music the same year he moved into artist's quarters in the Louvre. Later he would be named First Painter to the King. Like Oudry, whom he succeeded as Inspector of the Gobelins tapestry factory, Boucher was a designer of images for mural and furniture decoration as well as a masterful painter. The artist was much in favor for the decoration of rooms at Versailles and Fontainebleau for the King and Queen and for Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV and an influence on the culture of the royal court. The year before this painting Boucher sketched a series of designs for seatbacks showing children, probably similar erotes or Cupid-like figures personifying the arts, to be woven for Madame de Pompadour by Gobelins. The size and shape of Allegory of Music indicate it may have graced the space over a doorway; other overdoor paintings by Boucher are known. The erotes singing from sheet music are related to themes of love, often treated by Boucher as in the Museum's Venus Rising from the Waves. Both paintings contain the white doves, red roses, Cupid's arrows, and the torch, all symbolic of love. Boucher's vigorous application of paint can be admired in the unblended strokes of bright white in the doves and in the intense red touches on the faces and bodies of the erotes.