La Mère de Famille
‘La Mère de Famille’ by Louis-Léopold Boilly relates to a grisaille trompe-l’oeil imitation of a print in the Musée de l’Hôtel Sandelin, Saint-Omer. Unseen on the market for over a century, it was acquired from Nicholas Hall by a Private Collection.
Provenance
M. Lartigue, acquired directly from the artist; bequeathed to
M. Pallu collection, Poitiers
His sale, Maître Pillet, Paris, 4 February 1863, lot 2
Marquis de B… Collection
His sale, Maître Duchesne, Paris, 14 June 1900, lot 9 (acquired by Sortais, almost certainly the Georges Sortais [1860–1925], painter, dealer, and expert in paintings)
Vicomte Albert de Curel (1827–1908), Paris
His sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3 May 1918 (postponed to 25 November 1918), lot 24
Private Collection, France, until 2025
with Nicholas Hall Ltd.
sold to a Private Collection
Bibliography
Henry Harrisse, L.-L. Boilly: peintre, dessinateur et lithographe. Sa vie et son œuvre (1761–1845), Paris, 1898, p. 119, no. 398.
Joseph Du Teil, ‘La collection Chaix d’Est-Ange’, Les Arts, no. 67, July 1907, p. 22, note 1.
Hippolyte Mireur, Dictionnaire des ventes d’art faites en France et à l’étranger pendant les XVIIIe et XIXe siècles: tableaux, dessins, estampes, aquarelles, miniatures, pastels, gouaches, sépias, fusains, emaux, eventails peints et vitraux, Paris, 1911, p. 268, 270.
Paul Marmottan, Le Peintre Louis Boilly (1761–1845), Paris, 1913, p. 226.
Annie Scottez-De Wambrechies, Boilly, 1761–1845: Un grand peintre français de la Révolution à la Restauration, Lille, 1988, p. 30.
Étienne Bréton and Pascal Zuber, Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845): Le peintre de la société parisienne de Louis XVI à Louis-Philippe, Paris, 2019, vol. II, p. 467, reproduced no. 68 P.
Essay
This work, unseen for over a century, perfectly illustrates the first phase of Boilly’s career and may be dated to the 1790s, a period when the artist sought commissions from the aristocracy and the upper bourgeoisie of the Ancien Régime. His clientele was particularly fond of contemporary genre scenes, such as those first commissioned by the Avignon aristocrat Antoine Calvet de La Palun (1736–1820). Boilly drew inspiration from gallant or moralising subjects reflecting the vogue for theatrical productions; some of his paintings even adopted the titles of popular plays. His Les Malheurs de l’amour (fig. 1), of almost identical dimensions to our painting, has the same title as a play first performed at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu in 1785. At the same time, collectors’ enthusiasm for 17th-century Dutch genre painting—by Ter Borch, Metsu, and van Mieris, whose works fetched spectacular prices at auction—profoundly shaped contemporary production. These intimate compositions of the Dutch Golden Age exerted a marked influence on painters such as Jean-Frédéric Schall, Marguerite Gérard, Michel Garnier, Pierre-Alexandre Wille, and Martin Drolling.
Close examination reveals several pentimenti. Most notable is the repositioning of the young woman’s shoe: beneath the blue hem of her gown, one perceives the shadow of an earlier placement. Another discreet adjustment appears at the cuff of the maid’s right sleeve.[1] Boilly’s meticulous revisions attest to his perfectionism.
Born in La Bassée, near Lille, Louis-Léopold Boilly trained in Douai and Arras before a decisive encounter with the theatre decorator Jean-Baptiste Lecrosnier[2], who helped him settle in Paris in 1785. His early years in the capital were uncertain, though the support of Anselme d’Outremont des Minières[3] and the comte d’Ablaing[4] proved valuable. Boilly first exhibited at the Exposition de la Jeunesse, place Dauphine, in 1788. One of his two paintings, Jeune femme jouant de la guitare[5], was noted by the Mercure de France (7 June 1788): ‘I saw with interest a small painting by M. Boilly representing a woman playing the guitar. It is of a pleasing tone; the woman’s face has an agreeable expression and the ensemble is attractive, though the color is somewhat bright’. In subsequent years, the exhibition moved from the open-air setting of the Place Dauphine to the new gallery built by the expert and dealer Jean-Baptiste Lebrun in his hôtel on the rue de Cléry. In a spirit of openness, Lebrun invited young artists—particularly genre painters—to exhibit there. The political upheavals of the Revolution would permanently alter the artistic landscape: the privileges of the Académie royale de peinture were abolished by the law of 21 August 1791, enabling non-academicians such as Boilly to participate in the first free Salon at the Louvre.
Meanwhile, Boilly executed no fewer than eleven paintings for Calvet de La Palun. Their correspondence reveals that the patron suggested ‘theatrical genre scenes’ as subjects. Boilly would prepare a preliminary drawing to submit for approval before completing the painting. These works share a similar format, with a limited number of figures conversing within a carefully defined interior.
La Mère de Famille adheres closely to these compositional models. Four figures inhabit a bourgeois interior. A young woman, seated on a Louis XVI armchair upholstered in crimson velvet, wears a voluminous white satin gown while a cat prowls nearby. The same armchair appears in Les Malheurs de l’amour (fig. 1). Two children flank her, each holding a bird. On a guéridon stands a silver or stoneware chocolate pot with its moussoir, used to froth hot chocolate, alongside two cups—suggesting an expected guest. A cane and a bicorne hat resting on the matching crimson chair imply that a man is already present. The young woman, wearing a hat adorned with a pink bow, appears ready to depart. Is she awaiting his company? Might he be her lover? By introducing a maidservant, Boilly underscores the relative affluence of the bourgeois household depicted. It is unclear whether the servant is leaving the room or entering with a dish of fruit. She wears an embroidered cap, a white apron protecting her dress, and sleeve garters; shown from behind, her slightly arched posture evokes a sense of déjà vu. Boilly, an attentive observer of his peers, collected engravings and frequently borrowed from them.[6] One can detect here echoes of Chardin’s compositions—La Blanchisseuse, La Fontaine, and La Pourvoyeuse—engraved respectively by Charles-Nicolas Cochin (the Younger) and François-Bernard Lépicié (fig. 2). The authors of the recent monograph on Boilly also note his other graphic sources. L’Amant favorisé derives directly from Blot’s engraving after Fragonard’s Le Verrou, and La Tasse de café repeats a figure from Jean-Jacques Le Veau’s engraving after Étienne Aubry’s La Bergère des Alpes. From Chardin’s prints, one might single out the recurrent motif of a maid at a half-open door, reinforcing perspectival depth—a device Boilly repeatedly employed in works such as La Toilette[7] and La Beauté comme une fleur ne dure qu’un jour[8], both dateable to the 1790s.
Related Works
Directly related to La Mère de Famille are a preparatory drawing (fig. 3) and a grisaille trompe-l’œil imitating an engraving (fig. 4). The drawing reproduces only the central portion of the composition and likely served as preparation for the grisaille, which repeats the same decorative elements. Entitled Ah ! ça ira and bearing the arms of the Virieu family, this trompe-l’œil formerly belonged to the Chaix d’Est-Ange collection before being sold in 1982 by the London gallery Noortman & Brod to the Musée de l’Hôtel Sandelin, Saint-Omer. The title, Ah ! ça ira, besides its literal meaning, ‘all will be fine’, alludes to the most famous anthem of the Revolution, ‘Ça ira’, which by 1793 had been turned into a violent anti-aristocratic marching song by the sans-culottes. That Boilly continues to paint such light-hearted Tableaux de mode during the French Revolution, as well as scenes of more gritty social realism, is remarkable; his choice of title for the grisaille reminds us he was aware of this irony. No engraved reproduction of the present painting is recorded, nor is a pendant known. Boilly did, however, reuse the title Ça ira for another composition paired with Ça a été, both engraved before 1795.
Are Appearances Deceptive?
Ambiguity abounds in this composition. During the final decades of the 18th century, artists cultivated equivocation and irony; Boilly was among them. In the exhibition catalogue Parfums d’interdit[9], Carole Blumenfeld observed that in the 1790s Boilly developed ‘a particularly subtle imagery in which the viewer must discern the ironic dimension of each situation’. In La Mère de Famille, the birds are free rather than confined to their cage, seemingly challenging the cat that eyes them: ‘Catch me if you can’. Such imagery may suggest that the young woman herself enjoys a similar liberty. To whom is this allusion addressed? The absent yet present man, signaled by his cane and bicorne hat? The two cups on the table indicate expectation. Is she preparing to leave with him? The chocolate—long reputed to stimulate desire—may serve as metaphor. The fruit borne by the maid, unmistakably apples, evokes love and temptation. Even the crimson upholstery of the armchairs—symbol of luxury and prestige—may subtly allude to power and passion.
In his review of the Salon of 1795, the writer and critic François-Joseph de La Serrie[10], discussing Boilly’s Portrait de femme[11], offered not so much a description as a philosophical meditation on feminine artifice and perception: ‘Here, LADIES, is a painter who must be dear to you. See how he labors to transmit to the memory of future centuries your tender ruses, your sweet leisure, your charming artifices, your precious fashions. Believe me, beloved sex, rosy-cheeked sex, yes, your pretty blonde wigs, your long Cyprian gowns, your voluptuous boudoirs, your enticing toilettes—all this, I say, thanks to Boilly’s brush, will earn you in every age the remembrance of hearts enamored of your charms and an immortality without limit’. Such words might well have been written for the present composition. They reflect the spirit of an age in which seduction and amorous intrigue animated literature—one thinks of Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782)—as well as the theatre, and perhaps the subtle iconography of La Mère de Famille. The Goncourt brothers later reproduced La Serrie’s text verbatim in their Histoire de la société française pendant le Directoire, recognizing in it the quintessence of Boilly’s art and its milieu.[12]
Pascal Zuber