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In a room filled with easels, white plaster heads and statuettes, a box of paints, books, and papers, a young woman stands looking at a sketch and a young girl looks on, seated in an armchair, in this vertical painting. The scene is lit from the upper left, presumably from a window out of our view. Both women have smooth, pale skin, and their hair is swept up with curls framing their faces. They face our right in profile so their faces are in gentle shadow. They have straight noses, and their rose-pink lips are closed. They wear gowns with short sleeves, low, scooped necks, and floor-length skirts cinched under the bust. In the center of the painting, the young woman has chestnut-brown hair and wears a white gown tied with a sky-blue ribbon. She stands in front of a portfolio propped up against a tall easel. The portfolio is made of two stiff boards that tie together with pale blue ribbon to secure large sheets of paper. She rests her right hand, closer to us, on the front board of the portfolio and looks down at the sketch on a gray piece of paper she holds with her other hand. Next to her and closer to us, the younger girl sits in a gold chair upholstered with olive-green velvet. She faces our right almost in profile, and she looks up toward the drawing the other woman holds. The girl in the chair has blond hair and a gold-colored dress. Her feet are propped on a gold footstool, and she holds another portfolio on her lap. She supports the portfolio and holds a piece of paper with one hand, and a stylus or brush in the other hand, up by her chin. To the right of the easel, a wooden table holds a collection of plaster casts of faces, a hand, and small-scale bodies along with a glass vessel and a few other tools. Two translucent green bottles, boxes, a book, and a terracotta vase are collected on the footstool and the floor around the base of the easel. Garnet-red cloths are draped down the front of the table to our right and behind the girl on the chair. Next to her chair, in the lower left corner of the composition, is a wooden box with a paint palette and a handful of thin paintbrushes. A scroll of paper lies next to the box. A shelf at the standing girl’s shoulder height and behind the pair, to our left, is piled with white busts of a man, child, and woman, more figurines, and a brush in a small cup, all arranged across a moss-green cloth. The space with the girls and artist’s tools is enclosed by a large, dark brown form, presumably a canvas in shadow, that leans against the tall easels and mostly cuts off a view into the rest of the room. A glimpse of shadowy capitals is seen over the board, across the top of the painting, to suggest that a row of columns recedes into the space beyond. The artist signed the work as if he had painted his name on the floor next to the scroll, “L. Boilly.”

Louis-Léopold Boilly

A Painter's Studio, c. 1800

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 56

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 73.5 x 59.5 cm (28 15/16 x 23 7/16 in.)

framed: 93.3 x 78.7 cm (36 3/4 x 31 in.)

Credit Line

Chester Dale Collection

Accession Number

1943.7.1

Artists / Makers

Louis-Léopold Boilly (artist) French, 1761 - 1845

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower center at right of scroll: L Boilly.

Provenance

Possibly (anonymous sale [Prince Galitzin?], Paris, 18 December 1826, no. 140). André Vincent, Paris, by 1930;[1] (his sale, Galerie Jean Charpentier, Paris, 25 May 1933, no. 15);[2] purchased by (Étienne Bignou, Paris, France); sold 1933 to Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York; bequest 1943 to NGA.

[1] Lent by Vincent to an exhibition in Paris in 1930.

[2] The catalogue of the Vincent sale both confuses the provenance of this picture with that of its composition's other version, then in the collection of Baron Henri de Rothschild, and misidentifies it as The Young Artist, a painting actually at the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg. The Henri de Rothschild collection was evacuated to England during World War II, where a German bombing raid destroyed many of its pictures, including, it is believed, the "Rothschild version" of the NGA painting.

Associated Names

Bignou, Etienne
Dale, Chester
Galerie Charpentier
Sale, Paris
Vincent, André

Exhibition History

1800: Possibly Salon of 1800, Paris, no. 35

1930: Exposition Louis Boilly, Jacques Seligmann et Fils, Paris, 1930, no. 58

1965: The Chester Dale Bequest, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965, unnumbered checklist.

1995: The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1995-1996, pl. 151, 177, repro. (shown only in Washington in 1996, no. 19).

Bibliography

1913: Marmottan, Paul. Le Peintre Louis Boilly. Paris, 1913: 95-96.

1942: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 18, repro.

1943: Washington Times-Herald (18 July 1943): C-10.

1944: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1944: 18, repro.

1953: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1953: 22, repro.

1958: Benisovitch, Michel N. "Une Autobiographie du peintre Louis Boilly," in Essays in Honor of Hans Tietze. Paris, 1958: 370, repro. 369.

1965: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paintings & Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 23, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 15.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 9, repro.

1973: Wilenski, R.H. French Painting. New York, 1973: 155.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 32, repro.

1975: French Painting 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution. Exh. Cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1975: 321.

1979: Einstein, L. "Looking at Eighteenth Century Pictures in Washington." Gazette des Beaux-Arts, series 6, vol. 47, no. 1048-1049 (May-June 1956): 244.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 50, repro.

1995: Siegfried, Susan L. The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France. Exh. cat. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1995-1996. New Haven, Fort Worth, and Washington, 1995: no. 19, repro.

2000: Eitner, Lorenz. French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I: Before Impressionism. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2000: 4-13, color repro.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 352, no. 284, color repro.

2022: Aracil de Dauksza, Raphaël, and Damien Dumarquez. Peintures du XIXe siècle, Automne 2022. Galerie La Nouvelle Athènes, Paris, 2022: unpaginated, repro.