Figure Group of Love Carried by the Three Graces (c. 1768–78): Art, History and Details

Figure Group of Love Carried by the Three Graces (c. 1768–78) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Sèvres Porcelain Factory (French, est. 1756); François Boucher (French, 1703–1770).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This figure group was likely modeled after the designs of François Boucher, whose designs appeared as figures or paintings on Sèvres porcelain. The scene represented is pulled from classical antiquity; the child wreathed in flowers is a physical manifestation of love and the women who hold him aloft are the three daughters of Zeus, Greek god of the sky.

Object facts

• Title: Figure Group of Love Carried by the Three Graces
• Date: c. 1768–78
• Creator attribution: Sèvres Porcelain Factory (French, est. 1756); François Boucher (French, 1703–1770)
• Culture: France, Sèvres
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: unglazed soft-paste porcelain (biscuit)
• Dimensions: Overall: 25.4 x 12.8 x 14 cm (10 x 5 1/16 x 5 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1966.235

A detail from the museum

The design of this figure group appeared among the 38 porcelain figure groups included in a service commissioned for Catherine of Russia in 1779.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Jenifer Neils. The World of Ceramics: Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Museum in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1982.
• Bourgeois, Émile. Le biscuit de Sèvres au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Goupil, 1909.
• Bourgeois, Émile, and Georges Lechevallier-Chevignard. Le biscuit de Sèvres: recueil des modèles de la manufacture de Sèvres au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: P. Lafitte, 1914.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.