Jules Léopold Boilly

Sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Vente de dessins anciens des écoles française & hollandaise, 17 May 1907, lot 4 (as Portrait de Louis Boilly, peintre);

Private Collection, France

P. Marmottan, Le peintre Louis Boilly (1761-1845), Paris 1913, p. 216

In this large and beautifully preserved pastel, an elegant-looking hunter is depicted walking through woodland, holding in his left hand his gun while his right hand rests on a powder flask. He wears an exquisitely rendered, large chapeau de paille de forme tromblon, as the 1907 sale catalogue records (see Provenance). His chocolate-brown hunting jacket contrasts smartly with his chamois-colored moleskin trousers and leather leggings, and is further complemented by the natty blue, red, and white silk scarf, tied loosely around his neck. The sartorial details of his dress, stylish and swagger, suggest that this is very much a ‘fancy’ picture. The hunter appears as though he has just spotted his quarry beyond the picture plane and his equally impeccable gundog stares at his master, in readiness for action.

The sitter has traditionally been identified as the artist’s father, Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845), painter of manners and morals at the turn of the nineteenth century. Paul Marmottan, art historian and collector of Boilly, first published the drawing as Portrait de Louis Boilly, peintre in his 1913 monograph on the artist (see Literature).

Despite the physiognomy of the subject being similar to recorded portraits of him, Louis Boilly was not a sportsman. He was famously near-sighted and is generally portrayed wearing spectacles. It is more likely that his son, Jules, has simply made a stylish picture of a hunter “en costume de chasseur”, as the 1907 sale catalogue describes it, with his English springer spaniel, reflecting the Anglophile taste of the time, rather than an imaginary portrait of his father on a shoot. Brilliantly rendered in pastel and of great scale, this elegant portrait of a sportsman with his dog is the masterpiece of the young Julien-Léopold Boilly.