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François Boucher (French, 1703-1770), The Surprise (Woman with a Cat), 1730-1732. Oil on canvas. New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum purchase, Women's Volunteer Committee Fund.
Boucher’s painting The Surprise parallels the amorous preoccupations of the Rococo age. Tension is introduced into this blissful world by the presence of the voyeur who occupies the shadows behind the young woman. The voluptuous figure of the woman is alluring to the interloper and fascinating to the child; the cat, however, remains indifferent to the scene unfolding before it. Examination of the expected features, the delight in contrast in surface patterns and textures and the broken, flickering touch of the brush, identify The Surprise as an early work in Boucher’s oeuvre. His work signals a full retreat from the religious austerity of the Renaissance to the secular idealism of the Northern art world. Its sumptuousness at once embodies the spirit of the age while it appalled much of the liberal critical establishment and indeed heralded the demise of the ancien régime.
