The Letter (1890)

Adrien Henri Tanoux: The Letter

Blind Man's Bluff

Pierre Jean Edmond Castan: Blind Man's Bluff

The Faïence Restorer (1848)

Paul-Narcisse Salières: The Faïence Restorer

Salières, who studied with the academic painter Paul Delaroche, made his exhibition debut at the Paris Salon of 1847 and showed this painting there the following year. This is ostensibly an unassuming scene of everyday life in the artist's native Languedoc region. But for many mid-nineteenth century viewers it would have evoked La cruche cassée (The Broken Pitcher), the iconic painting of lost innocence by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), then as now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. [Metropolitan Museum]

Children Playing with their Favorite Pets (1846)

Louis-Gabriel-Eugène Isabey: Children Playing with their Favorite Pets

The House Movers (1840)

Louis-Léopold Boilly: The House Movers

Another great scene from Boilly.

Politicians in the Tuileries Gardens (1832)

Louis-Léopold Boilly: Politicians in the Tuileries Gardens

The Entrance to the Turkish Garden Café (1812)

Louis-Léopold Boilly: The Entrance to the Turkish Garden Café

Crisply painted and teeming with detail, Boilly's picture transports us to Napoleonic Paris, where we stand on a shady boulevard outside the Jardin Turc (Turkish Garden Café), a popular establishment that offered its middle-class clientele pleasures formerly reserved for the aristocracy. Young and old, fashionable and not, Parisians gather here for an afternoon's leisure. Two young street performers entertain the crowd: one shows an elegant couple his tame marmot, while the other puts on a puppet show for children hardly younger than himself.

A resident of the Marais neighborhood, in which the scene takes place, Boilly included a self-portrait, in spectacles and a top hat, at the painting's rightmost edge.  [Getty Museum]

Scene de Cabaret

Louis-Léopold Boilly: Scene de Cabaret

Having finished the first decade of the 19th century, for the rest of this week I'll post some undated paintings, starting with this, another gem from Boilly.

An Elegant Interior with a Lady Reading (ca. 1810)

Marguerite Gerard: An Elegant Interior with a Lady Reading

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.]

The Card Sharp on the Boulevard (1806)

Louis-Leopold Boilly: The Card Sharp on the Boulevard

Here is another of Boilly's great genre scenes.  A great deal is going on in this picture, as in most of Boilly's canvases: the main figure of a huckster (the "card sharp") at the right spinning his web for a crowd of onlookers (no doubt seeking to separate them from their money), while at the left a prosperous looking gentleman is simultaneously propositioned by a prostitute and having his pocket picked by a young ne'er-do-well. Behind all of them are other people going about their business; a pastry shop is visible at rear left ("Patissier").

Bad News (1804)

Marguerite Gerard: Le Mauvaise Nouvelle [Bad News]

Marguerite Gerard (who we have seen here before) submitted to the Salon of 1804 this painting and its companion, Good News (below).

These paintings are done in a style very reminiscent of 17th-century Dutch genre painting: genteel ladies, dressed sumptuously, depicted in interior settings. Bad News in particular is a great genre scene: the lady of the house, receiving bad news via letter, is revived with smelling salts by a servant after swooning.