La bouillie pour le chats (The soup for the cats)

Boilly was one of the most successful portrait and genre painters in France from the final years of the Ancien Régime until the middle of the 19th century. His bourgeois and proletarian interiors offer fascinating insight into French life at that time. An almost identical version of the present painting was offered at Sotheby's, Monaco, 26 May 1980, lot 534, and later at Ader Picart Tajan, Paris, 25 June 1991, lot 73, on both occasions with its pendant, La Lecture. Etienne Breton and Pascal Zuber consider both that version and the present lot to be autograph and date them to Boilly's early career, probably while the artist was working in Paris. Boilly would later adapt the central standing female figure for his La Repasseuse, offered at Koller Auktionen, Zurich, 19 September 2014, lot 3096.

The present painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Boilly's paintings being prepared by Etienne Breton and Pascal Zuber.