Louis-Léopold Boilly (; 5 July 1761 – 4 January 1845) was a French painter and draftsman. A creator of popular portrait paintings, he also produced a vast number of genre paintings documenting French middle-class social life. His life and work spanned the eras of monarchical France, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Empire, the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy. His 1800 painting Un Trompe-l'œil introduced the term trompe-l'œil ("trick the eye"), applied to the technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions, though the "unnamed" technique itself had existed in Greek and Roman times.

Life and career

thumb|right|An early (between 1804 and 1807) [[trompe-l'œil piece by Boilly, similar to his etymological Un trompe-l'œil of 1800]]

thumb|300px|left|[[The Triumph of Marat, 1794]]

Boilly was born in La Bassée in northern France, the son of a local wood sculptor. A self-taught painter, Boilly began his career at a very young age, producing his first works at the age of twelve or thirteen. In 1774 he began to show his work to the Augustinians of Douai who were evidently impressed: within three years, the bishop of Arras invited him to work and study in his diocese. While there, he produced a cascade of paintings – some three hundred small works of portraiture. before moving to Paris around 1787.

Style and works

thumb|Fine art Connoisseurs, c. 1823–1828, [[lithograph with hand coloring]]

Boilly's early works showed a preference for amorous and moralising subjects. The Suitor's Gift is comparable to much of his work in the 1790s. His small-scale paintings with carefully mannered colouring and precise detailing recalled the work of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painters such as Gabriël Metsu (1629–1667), Willem van Mieris and Gerard ter Borch (1617–1681), of whose work Boilly owned an important collection.

After 1794, Boilly began to produce far more crowded compositions that serve as social chronicles of the urban middle class. In these works, his observation of contemporary customs is slightly sentimental and often humorous. Boilly's portraits strongly characterize the sitters as individuals, and are usually painted in a sober range of colors.

His interest in caricature is most apparent in his suite of 98 lithographs titled Recueil de grimaces, published between 1823 and 1828.

Boilly remains a highly regarded master of oil painting. A major exhibition of his work, The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France, travelled to the United States where it was shown at both the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and the National Gallery of Art in Washington (1995). The Musée des Beaux Arts in Lille held a large-scale exhibition of Boilly's work during the winter season of 2011–2012.

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File:Various objects.jpg|Various Objects (c.1785), Oil on canvas, 28 1/2 x 23 3/4 in. (72.4 x 60.3 cm), Clark Art Institute

File:Portrait of La Fayette by Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1788.jpg|Portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette, 1788

File:Lille PBA Boilly autoportrait.jpg|Self-portrait 1793

File:Boilly La Toilette intime ou la Rose effeuillée.jpg|La Toilette intime

File:Lille PBA Boilly robespierre.jpg|Portrait of Robespierre, 1791

File:Boilly - Suitor.jpg|The Suitor's Gift, , Royal Scottish Academy

File:Louis Léopold Boilly - Portrait of Jan Anthony d'Averhoult (1756-1792) - Google Art Project.jpg|Portrait of Jan Anthony d'Averhoult, 1792, Centraal Museum

File:Sans-culotte.jpg|Simon Chenard as a Sans-Culotte, 1792

File:Portrait of a Woman MET DP-1419-01.jpg|Portrait of a Woman, Metropolitan Museum of Art

File:Louis-Léopold Boilly (French - Three Young Artists in a Studio - Google Art Project.jpg|Three Young Artists in a Studio

File:Paris art deco boilly houdon.jpg|The Studio of Jean-Antoine Houdon, 1804

File:Charles-Louis Havas by Boilly.png|Portrait of Charles-Louis Havas

File:Louis Léopold Boilly - The Young Harpist - 1977.152 - Yale University Art Gallery.jpg|Young Harpist, c. 1804–1806

File:Boilly L'effet du mélodrame.jpg|L'effet du mélodrame, 1830

File:L-L Boilly Une loge.jpg|Une loge, 1830

File:Louis-Léopold BOILLY, Un trompe-l'oeil avec un chat et une bûche de bois à travers une toile.jpg|Trompe-l'œil with a cat and a wooden log through a canvas, fish hanging from the stretcher

File:"Deux jeunes amies qui s'embrassent" de L.L. Boilly (musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris) (51992741281).jpg|Two Young Women Kissing, 1789-1793

File:Louis Léopold Boilly - Woman Showing Her Portrait - 32.2019.10 - Dallas Museum of Art.jpg|Woman Showing Her Portrait, 1790

File:The Sorrows of Love (painting).png|The Sorrows of Love, 1790

File:Boilly, Louis Léopold - Le Doux Réveil - J 7 - Musée Cognacq-JayFXD.jpg|Le Doux Réveil, 1795

File:The Artist's wife.jpg|The Artist's Wife in His Studio (c.1795–99), Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 15/16 in. (40.6 x 32.9 cm), Clark Art Institute

File:Boilly incroyable parade.jpg|Incroyable parade, 1797

File:Réunion d'artistes dans l'atelier d'Isabey - Louis-Léopold Boilly - Musée du Louvre Peintures RF 1290bis.jpg|Meeting of Artists in Isabey's Studio, 1798

File:Boieldieu.jpg|Portrait of François-Adrien Boieldieu, 1800

Image:Louis-Léopold Boilly 002.jpg|The Arrival of a Stagecoach in the Courtyard of the Messageries, 1803