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Lot Essay
In a fashionable Parisian interior a lady sits extravagantly en déshabillé while wistfully looking up at a portrait of a gentleman, presumably her lover. Dated to circa 1789-93 (Bréton and Zuber, op. cit.), this work is characteristic of the small, mildly risqué pictures Boilly produced during his early years in Paris that found considerable favour with contemporary collectors and reveal the artist’s life-long fascination with ‘the art of looking and the art of being looked at’ (F. Whitlum-Cooper, Boilly: Scenes of Parisian Life, exhibition catalogue, London, 2019, p. 10). It was these pictures and others of a more licentious flavour that prompted his fellow artist, the Jacobin zealot Jean-Baptiste Wicar, to publicly denounce Boilly on 22 April 1794, for producing ‘works of art of revolting obscenity for Republican morals … that dirty the walls of the Republic’. This resulted in the artist’s name appearing on the list of ‘obscene works’ that were presented to Robespierre’s infamous ‘Comité de Salut Publique’, the portentous consequences of which were perhaps avoided through Boilly’s expedient portrayal of the Triumph of Marat (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille), painted later that year.
This picture displays Boilly’s remarkably controlled technique and ability to meticulously render different materials and objects, notably here in the sumptuous silks of the protagonist’s dress, the blue ribbon tied to the guitar, and details such as the play of light on the glass bottles and gilding of the picture frame hanging above. Bréton and Zuber (op. cit.) note that the sculpture on the commode is probably a 1769 Sevres white biscuit model based on the ancient Roman marble of Cupid and Psyche in the Capitoline Museums, Rome. They suggest Boilly may have encountered the model at the atelier of Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828), whose celebrated sculpture of Le baiser donné was influenced by the Sevres model, and who sat to Boilly for the 1804 picture Jean Antoine Houdon sculpting the bust of Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace in the presence of his wife and daughters, now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.
This picture displays Boilly’s remarkably controlled technique and ability to meticulously render different materials and objects, notably here in the sumptuous silks of the protagonist’s dress, the blue ribbon tied to the guitar, and details such as the play of light on the glass bottles and gilding of the picture frame hanging above. Bréton and Zuber (op. cit.) note that the sculpture on the commode is probably a 1769 Sevres white biscuit model based on the ancient Roman marble of Cupid and Psyche in the Capitoline Museums, Rome. They suggest Boilly may have encountered the model at the atelier of Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828), whose celebrated sculpture of Le baiser donné was influenced by the Sevres model, and who sat to Boilly for the 1804 picture Jean Antoine Houdon sculpting the bust of Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace in the presence of his wife and daughters, now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.