Group of five Loves playing with doves, circa 1761 (door top)

Group of Five Loves Playing with Doves Clermont, Jean-François (known as Ganif); Boucher, François Playing with putti was one of the most popular decorative motifs of the Rococo period, and could be found in the homes of royal favorites as well as in most opulent interiors.Jean-François Clermont painted these little Amours in the style of those in François Boucher's "Jeux d'Enfants", engraved around 1738 by Pierre Aveline and Louis-Philippe de La Rue, and borrowed the arrangements of the putti groups from Gabriel Huquier's "Livres de groupes d'enfants", published between 1740 and 1750. Clermont personally executed a similar collection of six etching plates, "Le Nouveau Livre de Groupes d'Enfans. Inventés et gravés par F.Clermont", published "A Paris chés Buldet, rue de Gesvres au Grand Coeur". The putti in this album are very similar to the children on the doorstops in the Musée Cognacq-Jay, with plump, multi-fold bodies and pear-shaped heads tucked into their shoulders. They are often in the same positions and sometimes appear stereotyped. The artist probably possessed a series of sketches, a sort of repertoire of attitudes and physiognomies from which he drew, each time assembling different postures and expressions. The little Loves here play with doves, the traditional attributes of Venus. Inventory number: 1928.178