Description
Marie-Élisabeth Godard d’Aucourt de Saint-Just, shown here, belonged to a wealthy French shipbuilding family. Louis Léopold Boilly probably created this drawing to present for approval the preliminary composition of d’Aucourt’s painted portrait. The grid overlaying the drawing suggests a direct transfer to canvas; the image changed dramatically in the painting, where d’Aucourt appears in a grotto, unoccupied. That composition aligned with gender norms at the time that placed women in the natural world rather than the cultural sphere. Perhaps still interested in the drawing’s costume and interior, Boilly later reused them in a sheet depicting a working-class milliner, or hatmaker.
Provenance
Henri-Auguste-César Serrur [1794–1865], Paris (after 1807-1865); (his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, January 15, 1866, no. 149) (1866); Henri Binder (1898); (his sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, December 5, 1936, no. 10) (1936); Private collection, Paris (after 1936-1972); (sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 12, 1972, no. 16) (1972); (Galerie Nathan, Zurich, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH) (?-1974); Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1974-)
Accession Number
1974.93
Medium
black chalk and gray wash heightened with white chalk, squared in black chalk, on blue wove paper
Dimensions
Sheet: 46 x 37 cm (18 1/8 x 14 9/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Credit Line
Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
Tags
Drawing Neoclassical & Romantic (1751–1850) Paper French
Background & Context
Background Story
Louis-Leopold Boilly (1761-1845) was a French painter known for the precisely observed genre scenes of Parisian life that make him one of the most important painters of the transition from the 18th to the 19th century in France. Woman in Front of a Fireplace from c. 1805-07 depicts a woman in front of a fireplace in the precisely observed, intimate manner that distinguishes Boilly's best genre scenes. The c. 1805-07 date places this in Boilly's most productive period, when he was producing the precisely observed genre scenes of Parisian domestic life that are his most accomplished works, and the intimate fireplace subject shows his talent for depicting the private moments of domestic life with precise observation.
Cultural Impact
Woman in Front of a Fireplace is important in the history of French genre painting because it demonstrates the precisely observed, intimate manner that Boilly brought to domestic genre scenes as one of the most important painters of the transition from the 18th to the 19th century. Boilly's precisely observed domestic genre scenes—depicting the private moments of Parisian domestic life with the precise observation that is his most distinctive contribution—represent one of the most accomplished traditions in French genre painting, and the c. 1805-07 painting shows this tradition at its most intimate.
Why It Matters
Woman in Front of a Fireplace is Boilly's intimate genre: a woman in front of a fireplace rendered in the precisely observed manner of one of the most important painters of the transition from the 18th to the 19th century. The c. 1805-07 painting shows the precise observation of private domestic moments that makes Boilly one of the most accomplished genre painters.
