Recently the Secret Victorianist
found herself back in London and on the hunt for nineteenth-century culture in
the British capital.
The National Gallery’s ‘Scenes of
Parisian Life’ exhibition is the first dedicated to lesser-known French painter
Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) in the
UK. It features around twenty paintings but what the exhibition lacks in scale
it more than makes up for in variety, demonstrating the range of Boilly’s
subjects and media.
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‘A Carnival Scene’ (1832) |
Looked
down on as ‘just’ a genre painter in his day without the support of the
establishment given lauded neoclassical history painters like Jacques-Louis
David (1748-1825), Boilly’s output was dictated by public taste and market
forces.
After
arriving in Paris in 1785, he did a brisk trade in scenes featuring young woman
in elegant interiors, often with a risqué edge. One of these, ‘Comparing Little
Feet’ (1791) was on display at the National Gallery. In it, two women strip off
their stockings, ostensibly to compare their shoe sizes.
However,
in the tumultuous time of the Revolution, Boilly found himself in hot water for
his brand of titillating art. He survived with his head but pivoted—to more
patriotic subjects, visual illusions and the Parisian crowdscapes for which he
is most remembered.
His
‘The Meeting of Artists in Isabey’s Studio’ (1799) (also on view) is a ‘who’s
who’ of the Parisian art world at the advent of the nineteenth century, including
31 painters, sculptors and architects and, of course, Boilly himself. Notably,
not a single woman is invited to this idealised meeting of the minds, despite
the Revolution being an unprecedented period of freedom for women artists.
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'The Meeting of Artists in Isabey’s Studio’ (1799) |
Crowd scenes featured in the exhibition include ‘The Barrel Game’ (1828), ‘The
Poor Cat’ (1832) and ‘A Carnival Scene’ (1832). All depict the colourful menagerie
of nineteenth-century urban life, with city-dwellers of every class side by
side. Hidden in the paintings are dramatic incidents that provoke a smile—a
child grasps at an apple, a man urinates against a wall, a boy picks a pocket,
a dog runs off with a carnival mask.
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'The Poor Cat’ (1832) |
Boilly’s
humour is distinctive, even if his expression in his self-portraits is usually
stern. He coined the term ‘trompe-l’oeil’ (a trick of the eye) for works in
which uses one medium to imitate another. His painting of crucifix appears 3D,
while his signature seems to be pinned beside it, a slightly blasphemous
advertisement.
Observing Boilly’s Paris is like reading Dickens’s London. Never has the nineteenth century
looked so alive.
‘Boilly:Scenes of Parisian Life’ is free and open to the public at The National Gallery until 19th May 2019. Visit if you can.
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'A Trompe-l'oeil: Crucifix of Ivory and Wood' (1812) |
‘Boilly:Scenes of Parisian Life’ is free and open to the public at The National Gallery until 19th May 2019. Visit if you can.
Do you
know of any New York-based nineteenth-century-focused exhibitions you’d like
the Secret Victorianist to review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook or by
tweeting @SVictorianist.
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