Boilly has long been recognised as the most significant painter of everyday life in Napoleonic France. His portraits and genre scenes provide delightful illustrations of the period. In this book, Susan Siegfried argues that Boilly’s paintings should be read not just for their documentary detail but also for their wider cultural significance--for the light they shed on social and sexual tensions of the era.

Boilly provides us with the most vivid visual representation we have of the politics of everyday life during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire.He had an uncanny sense of the topical, forged in response to the tremendous upheavals of this fascinating period. But his work is no mere passive "photographic" record of the world around him. Rather it brings into view the myths and prejudices through which people at the time tried to come to terms with the world they inhabited. In other words, understanding Boilly’s paintings raises important questions about the culture and society of his time relating to issues of gender, class, and the politics of art.

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  PERSONA AND STATUS

  Beginnings and Endings

  Private Painting

Painting for the Public

Boilly’s Own Conception of his Social Identity

The Artist as Nomadic Capitalist

2 AN ARTIST NEGOTIATES THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The Purification of Genre Painting

Entrepreneurship and the Market

Political Portraits

The Triumph of Marat

IMMORALITY AND THE DIRECTOIRE

The Mores of the Directoire

Speculation, Prostitution, and Social Satire

Public Morality and the Urban Poor

PORTRAITURE AND IDENTITY

The Artist as Public Man

Masculinity and Femininity

Painting for Money

Grimaces and T&es d’expression

SPECTACLE AND LEISURE

Crowd and Spectacle

Fragmented Spaces

The Sexual Innuendoes of Leisure

VIEWING AND SPECTATORSHIP

Picturing the Audience

Eroticized Viewing: Women and Boys

The Game of Trompe l’oeil

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

Photograph credits