BOZE, Joseph - b. 1745 Martigues, d. 1826 Paris

French painter and inventor. He was the son of a sailor and studied painting at Marseille before settling in Arles. In 1778 he moved to Paris, where he studied with the pastellist Maurice Quentin de La Tour. He attempted some technical improvements in the fixing of pastel and established a reputation for himself as an engineer and mechanic, his system for bridling and instantaneously unbridling four-horse wagons receiving the approval of the Académie des Sciences when tested at Versailles.

Boze was presented to Louis XVI by the Abbé de Vermont, confessor to the Comte de Brienne and Queen Marie-Antoinette. Thereafter, he had a fairly successful semi-official career executing miniatures and portraits of the royal family and the court, most notably his Louis XVI of 1784 (private collection) and the ravishing Jeanne-Louise Genet, Mme Campan, Marie-Antoinette’s Premiere Dame de la Chambre (1786; Versailles, Château). He also, from 1782, exhibited pastels and miniatures at the Salon de la Correspondance, Paris. These are mostly in an oval format and are of varying quality.

Self-Portrait

After moving to Paris in 1780 Boze exhibited this outstanding self-portrait in 1782 at the salon de la Correspondance, the only venue in which this self-taught provincial artist was permitted to exhibit. The expressive intensity of his personality won him a popularity that granted him the privilege to paint King Louis XVI, Queen Marie-Antoinette, and the royal family, both in pastels and in oils.