A Game of Billiards (1807)

Louis-Leopold Boilly: A Game of Billiards 

This brilliant painting encapsulates the era of social change in France after the Revolution of 1789, with its affirmation of new tastes and norms of behavior. During the period of the Directoire and the First Empire, billiard halls became like clubs to which people came not only to play the game but also to meet friends, to make new acquaintances, to gossip and flirt. Here tidbits of family and society news were exchanged, the latest political and social events were discussed.

The main character of the painting is a woman playing billiards, which testifies to the liberal manners of Napoleon I's age, since before that only men were fond of this game. Boilly's fine observation and presentation of characteristic figures of different ages and social groupings, as well as his skill in conveying light, space, details of the interior and costume, rank him among the greatest genre painters of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Boilly's fine observation and presentation of characteristic figures of different ages and social groupings, as well as his skill in conveying light, space, details of the interior and costume, have something in common with the genre paintings of Dutch artists. Yet the treatment of the subject is perfectly in keeping with the canons of Neoclassicism, with its theatrical grouping of figures, idealised faces, its emphasis on drawing rather colour and with its smooth and glossy paint surface.
[text adapted from here.]