The Departure of Jacob (c. 1755): Art, History and Details
The Departure of Jacob at the Cleveland Museum of Art: c. 1755, Pen and brown-black ink, brown ink wash, and red chalk wash, with black chalk on cream laid paper. Explore the work's context, creator attribution and collection history.
The Departure of Jacob (c. 1755) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is François Boucher (French, 1703–1770).
The work and its context
The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:
François Boucher was known for romantic, idealized pastoral scenes and produced relatively few religious works. This drawing, however, is believed to relate to the Old Testament story in which Jacob travels to Canaan with his family. Boucher used a limited palette of brown, red, and black to create dramatic shadows and highlights. The family is seen basking in the dappled sunlight that illuminates the mother and her baby as they rest beneath a palm tree. The sheet may have served as a preparatory study for a similar painting by Boucher that is lost today and known only through a reproductive engraving by the printmaker Elisabeth Cousinet-Lempereur.
Object facts
- Title: The Departure of Jacob
- Date: c. 1755
- Creator attribution: François Boucher (French, 1703–1770)
- Culture: France
- Type: Drawing
- Technique: Pen and brown-black ink, brown ink wash, and red chalk wash, with black chalk on cream laid paper
- Dimensions: Sheet: 34.8 x 23.1 cm (13 11/16 x 9 1/8 in.)
- Collection: DR - French
- Department: Drawings
- Accession number: 1981.58
A detail from the museum
The gesture between the couple in this drawing -- in which the man offers the woman a pear -- is seen in several other works by François Boucher.
Collection credit
Delia E. Holden and L. E. Holden Funds
Further reading listed by the museum
- Ananoff, Alexandre. François Boucher. Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 1976.
- Master Drawings. London: Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd., 1977.
- "The Year in Review for 1981." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (February 1982): 41-80.
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.
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