Flora Yukhnovich, the British artist identified for reframing 18th-century Rococo artwork for a recent viewers, will present two new works on the Wallace Assortment in London this summer time impressed by the French artist François Boucher and different Rococo masters.
Yukhnovich’s work will briefly substitute two works by Boucher on the prime of the grand staircase on the touchdown of Hertford Home, which homes the gathering, from June to October. Boucher’s two large-scale works, Pastoral with a Bagpipe Participant (1749) and Pastoral with a Couple close to a Fountain (1749), will likely be moved to a show area on the bottom ground. “I’ve been visiting [the Wallace Collection] since I used to be a pupil to immerse myself within the 18th century and to check the Boucher work,” she says in a press release.
![](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/cxgd3urn/production/a15b3e94acf0d2f6c613ef93d91172f64b816e3e-1920x1294.jpg?w=1920&h=1294&fit=crop&auto=format)
The touchdown at Hertford Home, with Boucher’s Pastoral with a Couple close to a Fountain, (1749) and Pastoral with a Bagpipe Participant (1749) partially seen on the left and proper respectively
Photograph: Trustees of the Wallace Assortment
Boucher, who was additionally a theatre designer, reinvigorated conventional pastoral and mythological scenes, filling his canvases with nymphs, goddesses and shepherdesses. Different main Rococo artists embrace Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) whose most well-known portray, The Swing (round 1768), is housed on the Wallace Assortment.
Victoria Miro, the gallery which co-represents Yukhnovich together with Hauser & Wirth, described the nuanced relationship between her follow and these historic works in a press release. “When seen from afar, Yukhnovich’s works is perhaps seen to be figurative, their suggestive brushwork carrying echoes of elaborate 18th-century scenes. But when approached extra carefully, the exactly organized construction offers technique to pure texture and color,” it stated.
![](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/cxgd3urn/production/b77d6d4b1233c229331166a6a0065bee3b2ad2ef-3414x4000.jpg?rect=0,0,3413,4000&w=1920&h=2250&fit=crop&auto=format)
Flora Yukhnovich, Thicker than Peanut Butter (2020)
© Flora Yukhnovich. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and Hauser & Wirth
Describing her method, the artist says: “I like the concept of mixing these two artwork historic moments which have develop into extremely gendered: the gorgeous Rococo imagery and the machismo of abstraction. However actually abstraction and figuration don’t really feel separate to me. They’re two totally different factors in the identical course of, a part of a spectrum which ranges from very free, abstracted marks by means of to tightly articulated figuration.”
Yukhnovich’s fluid canvases have additionally been a business success. In October 2021, Sotheby’s provided her 2020 portray I am going to Have What She’s Having throughout its up to date artwork night sale in London, with an estimate of £60,000 to £80,000. After a flurry of bids from Asia and the US, it offered for £2.5m (together with charges)—greater than 30 occasions the excessive estimate. On the secondary market her giant canvases command seven-figure sums.
![](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/cxgd3urn/production/4f4bba71e55778bff01a6a7107932bf9b6c4e8aa-2627x3000.jpg?w=1920&h=2193&fit=crop&auto=format)
Requested about her stratospheric market rise, she told the Telegraph: “There are specific components that really feel actually surreal. However every single day, I are available in right here [to her studio in Bermondsey], and I’m on my own all day. There are occasions when it looks like a loud noise. However principally, I simply try to preserve it as quiet as potential, as a result of all these issues, particularly out there, should not in my management.”
The Norwich-born, London-based painter studied portraiture on the Heatherley Faculty of Positive Artwork and, in 2017, earned her MA from the Metropolis & Guilds of London Artwork Faculty. She had her first solo exhibits at Brocket Gallery and Parafin in London. An exhibition of her works impressed by Dutch Golden Age still-life work is at present on present on the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (Ashmolean Now, till 14 January).