Louis-Léopold Boilly (Born 1761) was born in La Bassée, France. He was the son of a wood-carver, and was a prolific painter who’s known for his genre scenes of Parisian society and life during the French Empire and the Revolution. He’s also noted for his pioneering use of lithography. Boilly painted portraits for a living before he moved to Paris in 1785. While in Paris Boilly began to paint the detailed subjective pictures of fashionable scenes that ended up in making him famous. In 1791, he began exhibiting at the Salon, gaining the favour of the new republican regime with his 1794 painting titled “The Triumph of Marat.” The painting was a flattering view of Jean-Paul Marat who was the revolutionary leader. 40 years that followed saw him painting a large number of works that depicted the most varied aspects of Paris’ everyday life. Such paintings as Departure of the Conscripts, Gathering of Artists in the Studio of Isabey, The Studio of Houdon, and The Arrival of the Stagecoach show his considerable skill at handling crowd scenes.
Boilly was a gifted creator of popular portrait paintings. He was a popular and a celebrated painter of his time. In 1804, the Parisian Salon awarded him a medal for his work in the Courtyard of the Messageries titled “The Arrival of a Mail-coach.” Boilly produced a humorous series entitled Grimaces in 1823. These were his first lithographs. He received the Legion of Honour in 1833. Altogether, Boilly executed some 5,000 small portraits and approximately 500 genre paintings. His genre paintings vividly documented French middle-class social life.
