From the French Revolution to the July Monarchy: 21 portraits by Louis-Léopold Boilly

What does an artist do when his head is for the guillotine? This was the alarming situation facing Louis-Léopold Boilly in 1794 during the bloodiest period of the French Revolution. As a popular painter of portraits of minor aristocrats and scenes of a mildly erotic nature, the unfortunate Boilly was branded frivolous and accused of being an instrument of the ancien régime.

This was no idle charge. Being denounced as a counter-revolutionary had serious consequences. The poet André Chénier had been put to death for having a corrupting influence on the people. In Robespierre’s republic of ‘virtue and terror’, a decadent work of art could have you executed.

Thankfully, Boilly had a gift for self-preservation. Within days of his indictment to the Société Populaire et Républicaine des Arts, the ingenious artist had outmanoeuvred his accuser, a fellow painter named Jean-Baptiste Wicar, by creating with unprecedented speed The Triumph of Marat (1794). It was a glorious celebration of the radical journalist that more than adequately communicated Boilly’s republican sympathies.

The committee was appeased, and Boilly embarked on a new career as a painter of the people. Out went fashionable interiors and feathered hats, and in came Paris streets and sans-culottes. Before long, it was impossible to believe that Boilly’s deeply moral scenes of social injustice were by the same artist who had once alluded to an erotic encounter via the none too subtle depiction of a sausage and a sliced melon.

It is safe to say Boilly was a pragmatist. ‘But so many people were at this time,’ says Olivia Ghosh, Old Masters specialist at Christie’s in Paris. ‘Most aristocratic patrons had been beheaded or fled abroad, and here was this newly formed middle class with a little money to spend. He just rolled with the punches.’

Boilly was perfectly placed to take advantage of the commercial opportunities the revolution had created. Having been born into a respectable family of artisans in 1761, the young painter was apprenticed in Arras, where he established a reputation among the local dignitaries as an expedient portraitist. He learned that speed and diplomacy were the keys to a satisfied customer and claimed he could finish a painting in two hours. ‘They are like photographs,’ says Ghosh. ‘He offered a keen likeness that was ready to be taken away at the end of the day.’

To facilitate demand and the reduced purse of the middle classes, the artist kept the format simple, with a plain background. All the focus was on the sitter’s face and costume, which he scrutinised with forensic detail, capturing a likeness that verged on caricature.

By the time Boilly retired, in 1829, he estimated he had painted a staggering 5,000 portraits — which, if accurate, works out at well over 100 a year. Among those who graced his studio were the noted Republican Lazare Carnot and members of the Napoleonic nobility, such as the Duc de Frioul and the Duc de Trévise. However, for the most part his patrons came from the professional ranks: bankers, doctors and lawyers and their wives — good, solid townsfolk who wanted their small contribution to history remembered for posterity, just as the newly created Légion d’Honneur had been established to commemorate ordinary soldiers and citizens.

Offered in Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Sculptures, Online (until 12 June) are 21 portraits by Boilly that date from the French Revolution to the last years of the July Monarchy, a span of some 40 years during the most transformative and unstable period in French history. ‘Boilly keeps to the same formulaic style throughout, and there is something reassuringly regular about this when you think of the times they were going through,’ says Ghosh. The specialist also notes how the portraits reflect changing fashions and hairstyles: ‘You read a certain anxiety in this newly formed urban class — they want to be seen at their best.’

The artist’s habit of using a thick white ground to give his paintings a luminosity is not dissimilar to the way a commercial photographer uses soft lighting to create a dramatic effect. In the video at the top of this article, Christie’s specialist Bérénice Verdier discusses Boilly’s approach with Eloi Robert of Studio Harcourt in Paris, which has been making photographic portraits since the 1930s.

Boilly posed his sitters facing three-quarters to the right or left, perfecting the proportions over the years to give the subject their most self-assured presence. ‘The way he plays with shadows is similar to the techniques we use at Studio Harcourt,’ says Robert. ‘That small tone just under the eye that illuminates the sitter’s face is something we call “the beam of light”.’

Ghosh considers Boilly a forerunner of the modern era. ‘He understood that sense of self, something we associate with social media today,’ she says. ‘It is very democratising: everyone, regardless of their birth or rank, is treated the same. He was very much ahead of his time.’

Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Sculptures, Online is live for bidding until 12 June 2025. The sale is on view 5-10 June at Christie’s in Paris, alongside Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Sculptures (to be offered on 11 June)