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Lot Essay
Cited by the critic R.J. Durdent at the 1812 Paris Salon as ‘a small trompe l’oeil imitating ivory, and of a fine taste in drawing,’ Boilly’s Crucifix is a dazzling tour-de-force far more surprising and remarkable than the rather dry Salon critique suggests.
Depicting an ivory Crucifix attached to a wooden cross hanging on a plain plaster wall, on which it casts a strong shadow, the painting is designed with such uncompromising sparseness as to invoke the Jansenist severity of Philippe de Champaigne. The ivory figure of Christ is likely to have been copied by Boilly after a model traditionally attributed to François Girardon (1628-1715) and is similar to one that belonged to Bossuet now in the Musée de l’histoire, Hôtel de Soubise, Paris, and even closer to one copied in bronze in the early 19th century (with Galerie la Sculpture Françoise, Paris, as of 2011). Pascal Zuber and Etienne Breton have noted that while no ivory crucifix is recorded in the inventories of Boilly’s own collections, one does figure in the estate sale of his son, the painter Jules Boilly, 14-16 December 1874, lot 668.
Just to the left of the Crucifix, as if tucked under the edge of the picture’s frame, Boilly has painted an illusionistic cartellino with his name and address, as if to attract the attention of any potential client visiting the Salon and invite him to remove it. The painted device of a piece of paper advertising his details was employed by Boilly on any number of occasions – for example, on his famous trompe l’oeil tabletop in the Musée de Beaux-Arts, Lille – and connects him to a long tradition of illusionistic painting going back at least to the 15th century and the art of Giovanni Bellini. Boilly’s audacity in introducing such a bald commercial promotion into an otherwise pious Christian image must have appealed to his iconoclastic sense of humor, and its unexpected inclusion in the painting has the power to startle even today. Yet the painting also exudes a genuine religiosity, and in its gentle lighting and subtle and harmonious palette of whites, greys and brown evokes something of the spiritual resonance achieved by Jean-Baptiste Oudry in the most memorable of his trompe-l’oeil still lifes, The White Duck (1753; formerly Chomondeley Collection, Houghton Hall, Norfolk).
Trompe-l’oeil painting was popular in Flanders and the provincial centers of northern France, especially in Lille and Arras where Boilly was born and spent his youth and where he befriended Guillaume-Dominique Doncre (1743-1820), a successful local painter who specialized in the genre. Few painters anywhere had skills better suited for the genre than Boilly, who developed an uncanny naturalism, derived from the close study of 17th-century ‘little Dutch masters’ such as Ter Borch and Metsu, and honed through years of portrait painting. For Boilly, trompe-l’oeil was no low genre, and his efforts grew more complex and sophisticated in the early years of the new century. The present Crucifix was exhibited in the Salon of 1812 and the illusionistic calling card that Boilly added to it with witty swagger identifies his address as number 12, rue Meslée, where he first established a studio in 1808, so an approximate date of execution can be narrowly determined.
By depicting a sculpture so convincingly in oils, Boilly was consciously evoking the centuries-old paragone or dialogue between the respective representational merits of painting and sculpture, with Boilly necessarily holding up the painter’s side in the dispute. In the present work, Boilly challenges and upends our fixed notions of space by recreating with uncanny verisimilitude three-dimensions (sculpture), two-dimensions (painting), and ‘real life’ (the illusionistic cartellino).
The provenance of the Crucifix is unknown from the time of its Salon debut in 1812 until it was recorded in the 1864 catalogue of pictures at Northwick Park, Gloucestershire. It was most likely that it had been acquired by the 2nd Lord Northwick (1770-1859), who, during his lifetime, had put together a distinguished collection of paintings by Old Master and contemporary artists that were mostly housed at Northwick Park, his home near Moreton-in-Marsh, where he built a gallery in 1832.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné on Boilly by Etienne Breton and Pascal Zuber, for whose assistance we are very grateful.
Depicting an ivory Crucifix attached to a wooden cross hanging on a plain plaster wall, on which it casts a strong shadow, the painting is designed with such uncompromising sparseness as to invoke the Jansenist severity of Philippe de Champaigne. The ivory figure of Christ is likely to have been copied by Boilly after a model traditionally attributed to François Girardon (1628-1715) and is similar to one that belonged to Bossuet now in the Musée de l’histoire, Hôtel de Soubise, Paris, and even closer to one copied in bronze in the early 19th century (with Galerie la Sculpture Françoise, Paris, as of 2011). Pascal Zuber and Etienne Breton have noted that while no ivory crucifix is recorded in the inventories of Boilly’s own collections, one does figure in the estate sale of his son, the painter Jules Boilly, 14-16 December 1874, lot 668.
Just to the left of the Crucifix, as if tucked under the edge of the picture’s frame, Boilly has painted an illusionistic cartellino with his name and address, as if to attract the attention of any potential client visiting the Salon and invite him to remove it. The painted device of a piece of paper advertising his details was employed by Boilly on any number of occasions – for example, on his famous trompe l’oeil tabletop in the Musée de Beaux-Arts, Lille – and connects him to a long tradition of illusionistic painting going back at least to the 15th century and the art of Giovanni Bellini. Boilly’s audacity in introducing such a bald commercial promotion into an otherwise pious Christian image must have appealed to his iconoclastic sense of humor, and its unexpected inclusion in the painting has the power to startle even today. Yet the painting also exudes a genuine religiosity, and in its gentle lighting and subtle and harmonious palette of whites, greys and brown evokes something of the spiritual resonance achieved by Jean-Baptiste Oudry in the most memorable of his trompe-l’oeil still lifes, The White Duck (1753; formerly Chomondeley Collection, Houghton Hall, Norfolk).
Trompe-l’oeil painting was popular in Flanders and the provincial centers of northern France, especially in Lille and Arras where Boilly was born and spent his youth and where he befriended Guillaume-Dominique Doncre (1743-1820), a successful local painter who specialized in the genre. Few painters anywhere had skills better suited for the genre than Boilly, who developed an uncanny naturalism, derived from the close study of 17th-century ‘little Dutch masters’ such as Ter Borch and Metsu, and honed through years of portrait painting. For Boilly, trompe-l’oeil was no low genre, and his efforts grew more complex and sophisticated in the early years of the new century. The present Crucifix was exhibited in the Salon of 1812 and the illusionistic calling card that Boilly added to it with witty swagger identifies his address as number 12, rue Meslée, where he first established a studio in 1808, so an approximate date of execution can be narrowly determined.
By depicting a sculpture so convincingly in oils, Boilly was consciously evoking the centuries-old paragone or dialogue between the respective representational merits of painting and sculpture, with Boilly necessarily holding up the painter’s side in the dispute. In the present work, Boilly challenges and upends our fixed notions of space by recreating with uncanny verisimilitude three-dimensions (sculpture), two-dimensions (painting), and ‘real life’ (the illusionistic cartellino).
The provenance of the Crucifix is unknown from the time of its Salon debut in 1812 until it was recorded in the 1864 catalogue of pictures at Northwick Park, Gloucestershire. It was most likely that it had been acquired by the 2nd Lord Northwick (1770-1859), who, during his lifetime, had put together a distinguished collection of paintings by Old Master and contemporary artists that were mostly housed at Northwick Park, his home near Moreton-in-Marsh, where he built a gallery in 1832.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné on Boilly by Etienne Breton and Pascal Zuber, for whose assistance we are very grateful.