tunes was that of Carle
van Loo, in whose honour his countrymen coined the verb _vanlotiser_--to
frivol agreeably--- on account of the popularity which he achieved as a
painter of elegant trifles. There is a picture by Carle van Loo in the
Wallace Collection entitled _The Grand Turk giving a Concert to his
Mistress_ (No. 451), painted in 1737, which is a fair example of his
proficiency in this direction, and there are one or two portraits
scattered about the country which he painted when over here for a few
months towards the end of his life. He died in Paris on the 15th July
1765, and Boucher was immediately appointed his successor as principal
painter to Louis XV.

Madame de Pompadour was more than a patron to him, she was a matron! She
made an intimate friend and adviser of him, and it is to her that he
owed most of his advancement at Court, which continued after her death.
The full-length portrait of her at Hertford House (No. 418) was
commissioned by her in 1759, and remained in her possession till her
death in 1764. It was purchased by Lord Hertford in 1868 for 28,000
francs. In the Jones Collection at the South Kensington Museum is
another portrait of her, and a third in the National Gallery at
Edinburgh, not to mention those in private collections. The two
magnificent cartoons on the staircase at Hertford House, called the
_Rising and Setting of the Sun_, she begged from the king. These were
ordered in 1748 as designs to be executed in tapestry at the Manufacture
Royale des Gobelins, by Cozette and Audran, according to the catalogue
of the Salon in 1753 when they were exhibited. They are characterised by
the brothers de Goncourt as _le plus grand effort du peintre, les deux
grandes machines de son oeuvre_; and the writer of the catalogue of
Madame de Pompadour's pictures when they were sold in 1766 testifies
thus to the artist's own opinion of them: "J'ai entendu plusieurs fois
dire par l'auteur qu'ils etaient du nombre de ceux dont il etait le plus
satisfait." They were then sold for 9800 livres, and Lord Hertford paid
20,200 francs for them in 1855.

Even without these _chefs d'oeuvre_ the Wallace Collection is richer
than any other gallery in the works of Boucher, with twenty-four
examples (in all), of which few if any are of inferior quality. But it
must be confessed that the abundance of Boucher's work does not enhance
its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with
Watteau and his sch