Louis-Leopold Boilly

LOUIS-LEOPOLD BOILLY La Bassée 1761 – 1845 Paris Louis-Léopold Boilly was one of the most important recorders of Parisian life during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. The son of a woodcarver, Arnould-Polycarpe Boilly (1764-1779), he lived in Douai until 1778, when he went to Arras to receive a possible instruction in trompe l’oeil painting from Dominique Doncre (1743-1820). In 1785 Boilly moved to Paris. Between 1789 and 1791 he painted six small scenes on moralising and amorous themes for the Avignon collector Esprit-Claude-François Calvet (1728-1810). He exhibited at the Salon between 1791 and 1824, receiving a gold medal in 1804. In 1833, having survived all the Revolutionary upheavals, he was admitted to the Légion d’honneur and the Institut de France. Boilly’s early works (1790-1800) are moralising, sentimental and amorous pieces in the tradition of Fragonard and Greuze. His exquisite touch and colouring recall the work of seventeenth century Dutch genre painters such as Metsu and Terborch, and he in fact owned an important collection of their work (sold Paris, 13th-14th April 1824). Boilly’s eroticism fell foul of the Comité du Salut Public in 1794 at the height of the Terror; his painting Lovers and the escaped bird was denounced by the artist Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Wicar and he was accused of painting subjects ‘d’une obscénité révoltante pour les moeurs républicaines’ (J. Soc. Pop. & Républicaine A., April/May 1794, pp.381-3). Boilly escaped the guillotine by painting The triumph of Marat, 1794 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille). Although a sharp observer of humankind, he was essentially apolitical. After 1800 Boilly turned to scenes of popular and street life, crowded with figures and acutely observed. These include The arrival of a stagecoach in the Cour des Messageries, 1803 and The entrance to the Ambigu Comic Theatre, 1819 (both Louvre, Paris). He had a gift for caricature both as painter and printmaker, parodying the absurd fashions which flourished despite Revolutionary austerity and, later, Napoleonic despotism. Boilly painted a number of exquisitely detailed group portraits, including A gathering of artists in the studio of Isabey, 1798 (Louvre, Paris) and incisive single portraits of famous contemporaries like Robespierre (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille). He also painted historical events such as The departure of the volunteers in 1807 (Musée Carnavalet, Paris), concentrating on the emotions aroused by conscription rather the propaganda aspects of the event. The work of Louis-Léopold Boilly is represented in the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the Musée Carnavalet, Paris; the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille; the Wallace Collection, London; the National Gallery, London; the Hermitage, St Petersburg; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Art Institute of Chicago.