Detail of The Interrupted Sleep by Boucher in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2022

Title: The Interrupted Sleep

Artist: François Boucher (French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris)

Date: 1750

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: Overall 32 1/4 x 29 5/8 in. (81.9 x 75.2 cm); painted surface (irregular oval) 31 x 27 3/4 in. (78.7 x 70.5 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Jules Bache Collection, 1949

Accession Number: 49.7.46


In Boucher’s pastorals, the dirt and labor of peasant life was set aside in favor of elegant clothing and idyll romance. Such visions were the roots of Marie Antoinette’s adoption of simple dress and manners at her pleasure dairy, known as The Queen’s Hamlet, at the Château de Versailles. The simplicity of the subject belies the complexity of the composition, which is organized around a series of intersecting diagonals. Much admired at the Salon of 1753, this painting was one of a pair of overdoors from Bellevue, a château belonging to Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV and Boucher’s most important patron.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435738