The Gardener 1741 - 1763

Francois Boucher created this print called 'The Gardener,' using etching and engraving techniques, sometime in the mid-18th century. The image presents a woman who is identified by the inscription as a gardener. But the figure's graceful pose and elegant dress don't match our expectations of manual labor. What's going on here? France in the 1700s was a deeply class-based society. Artists such as Boucher served the aristocracy, and a key function of art was to affirm the status of the ruling class. We can see how this worked by comparing 'The Gardener' with images of working-class people from the same period. In those images, labor is often idealized, but it is never glossed over entirely. Here, Boucher’s gardener is, above all, pleasing to the eye, and the artist takes great pains to soften any association with physical toil. Historians can compare the artistic representation of labor with records such as agricultural surveys and tax documents to shed light on the social function of images like this.