Venus and Cupid - Jean-Marie Boucher (1870-1939)

This white marble statue of Venus, gazing lovingly at a winged Cupid, was created around 1910.
The same marble model was sold by Sotherby's London in their auction "19th and 20th Century Sculpture '' on November 26, 1996 for £34,500.

Artist:
Jean Boucher was born in La Vallée in Cesson-Sévigné (Ille-et-Vilaine), to Joseph Boucher and his wife Marie Blanchard. He began his career as a locksmith in the Rue des Carmes in Rennes, but soon after fell in love with drawing and sculpture.

Charles Joseph Lenoir, a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, advised him to take drawing classes, so he enrolled in evening classes at La Halle aux Toiles. He was a student of Félix Roy who taught him the rudiments of this art, and quickly noticed the progress of his particularly gifted pupil.

He then entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes where he was a student of Albert Bourget, Émile Armel-Beaufils, Louis-Henri Nicot, Paul Le Goff, Pierre Lenoir, Francis Renaud and Eloi Robert.

He obtained a departmental scholarship to continue his studies in Paris, and in 1889 he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris in the studio of Alexandre Falguière, and later in the studio of Henri Chapu at the Académie Julian.

In 1893, he came eighth in the Prix de Rome competition on the subject of the Golden Age, and finished second in the Prix de Rome for „Cain after the Death of Abel“.

He produced monuments dedicated to Saints-Cyriens, Marshal Gallieni, Verdun, the American volunteers who died for France, the aviator Édouard Le Mounier, as well as Yves Guyot, Charles Le Goffic, the poet André Rivoire and the French poet Jeanne Loiseau who wrote under the pseudonym Daniel Lesueur.

On February 29, 1936, he was elected an official of the Academy of Fine Arts, replacing Hippolyte Lefèbvre.