BOILLY, Louis Léopold

From the late 1780s onwards, after he had settled in Paris, Boilly painted an increasing number of small scale cabinet paintings that appealed greatly to private collectors. These paintings successfully combined the contemporary appetite for moralising, amorous or sentimental subjects with a meticulous technique reminiscent of the 17th century Dutch painters such as Gerard Terborch.

Boilly made his name in the early 1790s thanks to his frivolous scenes that captured the spirit of the late Rococo. After being censured for such subjects during the first years of the French Revolution, he produced a series of patriotic works. He soon returned to genre painting, however, and gained a reputation as a straightforward chronicler of early-nineteenth-century daily life in Paris. In this painting he precisely recorded the fashion of France’s Directory era.

In the same Salon of 1808 hung two other pictures that seemed a universe away from Gros’s epic conception but also alluded to the German campaign and its casualties. Louis-Leopold Boilly was known mainly as a painter of small, intimate narratives, humorous, sentimental and largely apolitical. As a young man he had painted a picture of a triumphant Marat but panicked that it would embroil him too far in revolutionary affairs; he had since steered clear of Napoleonic propaganda. When he returned to the realm of current affairs for his subjects, he did so from the perspective of ordinary people rather than Napoleon himself. The imperial armies had long been dependent on conscription, and as they were stretched further, there were many abuses, especially of the age limits. These, together with the recent carnage in Prussia, would have been much in the minds of those who stood before Boilly’s Departure of the Conscripts in 1807. Most of the raggle-taggle procession who pass beneath the Porte St Denis in Paris have a jaunty air, but it strikes a false note; the men are undisciplined and shabby, and are given a bitterly ironic echo in the single figure on the extreme right of a blind man led by his dog.

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This is a genre piece executed in the Neoclassical style.

Boilly became popular with his individual portraits and “crowd” paintings, of which the collective portrait of artists gathered in Isabey’s studio offers a combination.

This painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1798.

Boilly produced between 1800 and 1810 a set of ambitious portrayals, representing models in full and for the most part outdoors, inspired by English paintings in vogue by Reynolds and Gainsborough. In the present portrait the artist excels in the treatment of fabrics, playing with their different hues, nuancing the shine from the satin ribbons, fluffy lightness of feathers on the hat and the relief embroidery adorning the shawl.

Boilly is mainly known for his remarkable genre scenes. However, he also specialized in portraiture. In the first period of his career he painted only portraits in bust-length format, but later he introduced also full and three-quarter length portraits in which he placed the sitters in landscape settings.

The sitter of this portrait is not identified, in spite of the inscription on the stretcher which reads “Mme Vincent amie de Boilly.”

Jean Elleviou (1769-1842), an operatic tenor, was one of the most celebrated French singers of his time. He was famed for the remarkable sweetness and flexibility of his voice, and for his excellent diction.

Boilly’s portrait of Elleviou depicts the young singer in his role in Le Prisonnier or La Ressemblance, a comic opera in one act with music by Domenico Della-Maria and libretto by Alexendre Duval, which premiered at the Th�âtre Feydeau in 1798.

The painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon in July of 1798.

Boilly’s painting hinges on a family’s concern for a son absent on the German front during the Napoleonic war, as the boy’s grandfather and father study a map. There are touches of black humour in the foreground, where children play war games and pets squabble, but the overriding impression is of the apprehensive concern of people caught up in the tide of events.

There are only about fifteen known still-life paintings by Boilly. Their general compositions reveal Boilly’s emulation of Dutch 17th century still-life masters, from Ambrosius Bosschaert and his followers, to the works of artists such as Willem van Aelst and Rachel Ruysch. This painting depicts a still-life of flowers in a glass vase, two birds, a branch of blossoms and an insect all on a table.

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A young woman, traditionally identified as Boilly’s wife, examines a large portfolio amid the clutter of the artist’s studio, which includes an unpainted canvas, a plaster cast of a hand, and sculptures by other artists. She looks up from her task as if either she or we have intruded. The violin hanging from the back of the chair hints at the relationship between artist and sitter - musical instruments sometimes appear in paintings as symbols of romantic love.

The painting is in the tradition of bourgeois genre scenes, which examine the many sides of love. These works were greatly sought after by the public and collectors alike. A beautiful, elegantly dressed young woman looks out knowingly at the viewer as she receives the attentions of a suitor. On the table in front of her a luxurious gift box lies open.

This canvas is a typical example of Boilly’s depictions of young women, as illustrated by a comparison with the Hermitage’s The Painter.

Boilly painted frequently similar scenes in his period in Paris.

This painting, one of the many genre scenes produced by Boilly, depicts the departure of a young girl on a white horse. A couple, probably her parents say good-by to her.

The painting is signed lower left: L. Boilly.