1761 -1845 · Lille, Arras, Paris and chronicle of modern life

Incisive portraits, Parisian crowds and virtuoso illusion make Louis-Léopold Boilly the great visual chronicler of revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

Louis-Léopold Boilly was born in La Bassée, near Lille, in 1761. Trained in the North, notably with the trompe-l'oeil painter Dominique Doncre in Arras, he moved to Paris in 1785. He produced there first small portraits and gallant scenes whose smooth precision seduced an urban clientele. The Revolution profoundly transformed his subjects. Threatened in 1794 for the considered frivolous nature of certain works, Boilly responded with patriotic compositions and pursued a career capable of going through regime changes. Directory, Consulate, Empire and Restoration became the setting for continuous observation of Paris. Boulevards, cafés, theaters, salons, workshops and stages of carnival allows him to bring together dozens of figures with individualized attitudes. At the same time, he painted a considerable quantity of small format portraits where the gaze, costume and light were enough to characterize the model. The Portrait of Caroline Branchu and that of the sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon show this precise economy, while his self-portraits humorously question the construction of artistic identity. Boilly also practices drawing, lithography, caricature and trompe-l'oeil; he even popularized the term "trompe-l'oeil" at the Salon of 1800. Died in Paris in 1845, he left a truly sensitive archive of French society around 1800. The selection "Louis-Léopold Boilly" notably compares Carnival Scene and Self-Portrait. His reading favors color.

Boilly looks at the crowd like a collection of portraits: no face is anonymous, even in the heart of the Parisian spectacle.