BOUCHARDON, EDME (1698-1762), French sculptor, was esteemed in his day the greatest sculptor of his time. Born at Chaumont, he became the pupil of Guillaume Coustou and gained the prix de Rome in 1722. Resisting the tendency of the day he was classic in his taste, pure and chaste, always correct, charming and distinguished, a great stickler for all the finish that sand-paper could give. During the ten years he remained at Rome, Bouchardon made a striking bust of Pope Benedict XIII. (1730). In 1746 he produced his first acclaimed masterpiece, “Cupid fashioning a Bow out of the Club of Hercules,” perfect in its grace, but cold in the purity of its classic design. His two other leading chefs-d’œuvre are the fountain in the rue de Grenelle, Paris, the first portions of which had been finished and exhibited in 1740, and the equestrian statue of Louis XV., a commission from the city of Paris. This superb work, which, when the model was produced, was declared the finest work of its kind ever produced in France, Bouchardon did not live to finish, but left its completion to Pigalle. It was destroyed during the Revolution.
Among the chief books on the sculptor and his art are Vie d’Edme Bouchardon, by le comte de Caylus (Paris, 1762); Notice sur Edme Bouchardon, sculpteur, by E. Jolibois (Versailles, 1837); Notice historique sur Edme Bouchardon, by J. Carnandet (Paris, 1855); and French Architects and Sculptors of the 18th Century, by Lady Dilke (London, 1900).
BOUCHER, FRANÇOIS (1703-1770), French painter, was born in Paris, and at first was employed by Jean François Cars (1670-1739), the engraver, father of the engraver Laurent Cars (1699-1771), to make designs and illustrations for books. In 1727, however, he went to Italy, and at Rome became well known as a painter. He returned to Paris in 1731 and soon became a favourite in society. His picture “Rinaldo and Armida” (1734) is now in the Louvre. He was made inspector of the Gobelins factory in 1755 and court painter in 1765, and was employed by Madame de Pompadour both to paint her portrait and to execute various decorative works. He died in 1770. His Watteau-like style and graceful voluptuousness gave him the title of the Anacreon of painting, but his repute declined until recent years. The Wallace collection, at Hertford House, has some of his finest pictures, outside the Louvre. His etchings were also numerous and masterly.
See Antoine Bret’s notice in the Nécrologe des hommes célèbres for 1771, and the monographs by the brothers de Goncourt and Paul Mantz.
BOUCHER, JONATHAN (1738-1804), English divine and philologist, was born in the hamlet of Blencogo, near Wigton, Cumberland, on the 12th of March 1738. He was educated at the Wigton grammar school, and about 1754 went to Virginia, where he became a private tutor in the families of Virginia planters. Among his charges was John Parke Custis, the step-son of George Washington, with whom he began a long and intimate friendship. Returning to England, he was ordained by the bishop of London in March 1762, and at once sailed again for America, where he remained until 1775 as rector of various Virginia and Maryland parishes, including Hanover, King George’s county, Virginia, and St Anne’s at Annapolis, Maryland. He was widely known as an eloquent preacher, and his scholarly attainments won for him the friendship and esteem of some of the ablest scholars in the colonies. During his residence in Maryland he vigorously opposed the “vestry act,” by which the powers and emoluments of the Maryland pastors were greatly diminished. When the struggle between the colonies and the mother country began, although he felt much sympathy for the former, his opposition to any form of obstruction to the Stamp Act and other measures, and his denunciation of a resort to force created a breach between him and his parish, and in a fiery farewell discourse preached after the opening of hostilities he declared that no power on earth should prevent him from praying and shouting “God save the King.” In the succeeding autumn he returned to England, where his loyalism was rewarded by a government pension. In 1784 he became vicar of Epsom in Surrey, where he continued until his death on the 27th of April 1804, becoming known as one of the most eloquent preachers of his day. He was an accomplished writer and scholar, contributed largely to William Hutchinson’s History of the County of Cumberland (2 vols., 1704 seq.), and published A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution (1797), dedicated to George Washington, and consisting of thirteen discourses delivered in America between 1763 and 1775. His philological studies, to which the last fourteen years of his life were devoted, resulted in the compilation of “A Glossary of Provincial and Archaic Words,” intended as a supplement to Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, but never published except in part, which finally in 1831 passed into the hands of the English compilers of Webster’s Dictionary, by whom it was utilized.
His son, Barton Boucher (1794-1865), rector of Fonthill Bishops, Wiltshire, in 1856, was well known as the author of religious tracts, hymns and novels.
BOUCHER DE CRÈVCOEUR DE PERTHES, JACQUES (1788-1868), French geologist and antiquary, was born on the 10th of September 1788 at Rethel, Ardennes, France. He was the eldest son of Jules Armand Guillaume Boucher de Crèvecœur, botanist and customs officer, and of Étienne-Jeanne-Marie de Perthes (whose surname he was authorized by royal decree in 1818 to assume in addition to his father’s). In 1802 he entered government employ as an officer of customs. His duties kept him for six years in Italy, whence returning (in 1811) he found rapid promotion at home, and finally was appointed (March 1825) to succeed his father as director of the douane at Abbeville, where he remained for the rest of his life, being superannuated in January 1853, and dying on the 5th of August 1868. His leisure was chiefly devoted to the study of what was afterwards called the Stone Age, “antediluvian man,” as he expressed it. About the year 1830 he had found, in the gravels of the Somme valley, flints which in his opinion bore evidence of human handiwork; but not until many years afterwards did he make public the important discovery of a worked flint implement with remains of elephant, rhinoceros, &c., in the gravels of Menchecourt. This was in 1846. A few years later he commenced the issue of his monumental work, Antiquités celtiques et an édiluviennes (1847, 1857, 1864; 3 vols.), a work in which he was the first to establish the existence of man in the Pleistocene or early Quaternary period. His views met with little approval, partly because he had previously propounded theories regarding the antiquity of man without facts to support them, partly because the figures in his book were badly executed and they included drawings of flints which showed no clear sign of workmanship. In 1855 Dr Jean Paul Rigollot (1810-1873), of Amiens, strongly advocated the authenticity of the flint implements; but it was not until 1858 that Hugh Falconer (q.v.) saw the collection at Abbeville and induced Prestwich (q.v.) in the following year to visit the locality. Prestwich then definitely agreed that the flint implements were the work of man, and that they occurred in undisturbed ground in association with remains of extinct mammalia. In 1863 his discovery of a human jaw, together with worked flints, in a gravel-pit at Moulin-Quignon near Abbeville seemed to vindicate Boucher de Perthes entirely; but doubt was thrown on the antiquity of the human remains (owing to the possibility of interment), though not on the good faith of the discoverer, who was the same year made an officer of the Legion of Honour together with Quatrefages his champion. Boucher de Perthes displayed activity in many other directions. For more than thirty years he filled the presidential chair of the Société d’Émulation at Abbeville, to the publications of which he contributed articles on a wide range of subjects. He was the author of several tragedies, two books of fiction, several works of travel, and a number of books on economic and philanthropic questions. To his scientific books may be added De l’homme antédilumen et de ses œuvres (Paris, 1860).