Biography

French painter and printmaker, known for his genre scenes of Parisian life and society during the Revolution and the French Empire. He is also noted for his pioneering use of lithography. The son of a wood-carver, Arnould Boilly (1764-79), he lived in Douai until 1778, when he went to Arras to receive instruction in trompe l'oeil painting from Dominique Doncre (1743-1820).

He painted portraits for a living before moving to Paris in 1785. There, he began to paint the detailed anecdotal pictures of fashionable scenes that were to make him famous. He began exhibiting at the Salon in 1791. He gained the favour of the new republican regime with his painting "The Triumph of Marat" (1794), a flattering view of the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat.

Over the next 40 years, Boilly painted numerous works depicting the most varied aspects of everyday life in Paris. Paintings such as Gathering of Artists in the Studio of Isabey (1798), The Arrival of the Stagecoach (1803), The Studio of Houdon (1804), and Departure of the Conscripts (1808) show his considerable skill at handling crowd scenes. In 1823, he produced his first lithographs, a humorous series entitled Grimaces. Altogether, he executed about 500 genre paintings and some 5,000 small portraits.

He exhibited at the Salon between 1791 and 1824 and received a gold medal at the Salon of 1804. From the beginning, his genre subjects were extremely popular with the public and collectors. In 1833, at a time when his popularity was declining, he was admitted to the Légion d'honneur and the Institut de France.