Louis-Léopold Boilly

Following the death of the Marquis de Rozay, given by his widow to his agent, Monsieur Vimars (see note below);
in the family of the present owners for at least three generations

Pasted to back of the stretcher on which the drawing was attached, presumably when it was made, is a fascinating label, on which Monsieur Vimars, to whom the drawing was given by the Marquise de Rozay after her husband's death, has noted the identities of all the people depicted, and recorded that the portraits were made in 12 minutes each:

......faits à Rozay

1^er.  M^r. Le comte De Rozay, Décédé a Charenton 
2^e.   M^r. Le M^is. De Rozay, Décédé a Rozay
3^e.   M^r. Bénard ancien homme d'affairs du M^is. de Charleval
4^e.   M^r. Firrebarbe delaVille fils, ami
5^e.   M^r. Vimars ami et Régisseur des Propriétés de M^r De Rozay
6^e.   M^me. Chenard amie
7^e.   M^me. Gulierme Dareis, Dame de compagnie du Marquis de Rozay
8^e.   M^lle. Armenthine } 
9^e.   M^lle. Pauline        } filles naturelles [names deleted] d'un ambassadeur de Russie
10^e.  M^lle Le Sage de Rouen, agée de 12 .  Amie
11^e.  M^r. Chenard Artiste Violoncelle à Feydau, ami 
           ayant accèléré la sortie de Prison du Marquis, après le Régime de la Terreur
           aidé en Représantant du Peuple Goupilleau membre du Comité de Sureté / Générale de la Convention
12^e.   M^lle. Simone fille de M^r. et M^d. Chenard
13^e.   Le Pere Procureur de l'Abbaye de Mortemer Logé au
             chateau depuis la Supression des Couvents
14^e.   M^r. Sablet, Peintre en Miniature et Tableaux, Ami
15^e.   M^r. Boilly, peintre en Miniature et Tableaux et
            Paysages, ami, auteur des Portraits ci dessus faits
            a Rozay (ainsi que le sien sans le Voir) en 12 Minutes
            Pour chacun.   N^a. ce tableau m'a eté donné par M^d. la
            Marquise de Rozay après le décès de M^r. le Marquis dont elle etait....  Vimars

An extremely comparable, and very splendid, sheet of 16 similar head studies, also including Boilly himself in the lower right corner and his friend Sablet, is in the Prat collection.¹  Harrisse thought that drawing, which seems to have been executed circa 1790-96, represented the founders of the Société des Amis des Arts, a group that is said to have grown out of nightly gatherings of Boilly and his friends at the salon of the art dealer Paillet, in the Hôtel Bullion, a leading Paris auction room.  Here, the subject is rather different: the various personnages to be found in the household of the Marquis of Rozay and Charleval, in his castle at Rozay-en-Lieure, in Normandy.  Pascal Zuber has kindly proposed that Boilly may have been introduced to the Marquis during a visit to Normandy, by his great friend, the actor Simon Chenard, whose portrait is to be found in the lower left corner of the present sheet, and whose family Boilly recorded in another, similar composite sheet of drawn portraits, now in the Thaw Collection at the Pierpont Morgan Library.² 

As the fascinating label pasted to the reverse records, the cast of characters to be found at the castle included everyone from family members and friends, through artists and musicians, to a clergyman accommodated at the castle following the suppression of the monasteries, as well as two illegitimate daughters of a Russian ambassador, whose presence at Rozay is otherwise unexplained.  The label was written by one of the people depicted, Monsieur Vimars, who was the Marquis's 'Régisseur des Propriétés', and to whom the drawing was presented by the Marchioness, following her husband's death.  Vimars also recorded that Boilly made all the portraits on the page in just twelve minutes each.

Unfortunately, there is no date recorded on the drawing or the label, but to judge by Boilly's own face, he was a little older when he made this drawing than when he executed that in the Prat Collection, but the costumes are not so very different, so the present drawing should perhaps be dated around 1798 (a dating that has been kindly confirmed by Pascal Zuber).  That was also the year in which Boilly painted one of his most remarkable group portraits, Réunion d'artistes dans l'atelier d'Isabey (Paris, Louvre).³

Although such a composite sheet of portraits is of the utmost rarity in Boilly's work, there are parallels with works of a slightly different type, which he produced in some numbers, namely sheets - and prints - of character heads and caricatures, which he generally made rather later in his career.  What Susan Siegfried described as "his most arresting exercise in this genre..", a large painting of Thirty-five Expressive Heads, was painted around 1823-28.⁴ 

1.  P. Rosenberg, Passion for Drawing. Poussin to Cézanne, Works from the Prat Collection, exhib. cat., Los Angeles county Museum, et al., 2004, no. 49
2.  Inv. EVT 10; Boilly (1761-1845), exhib. cat., Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 2011-12, no. 35
3.  Inv. R.F. 1290 bis; exhib. cat., Lille, op. cit., no. 68
4.  S. Siegfried, The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly, Modern Life in Napoleonic France, New Haven/London 1995, pp. 121-122, fig. 101; exhib. cat., Lille, op. cit., pp. 246-251