Young women portrait - Jules BOILLY

Title : Young women portrait

Artist : Jules BOILLY (Paris 1796 - 1874)

Technique : Oil on canvas

Dimensions : 110 x 89 cm

Signed and dated lower right - 1831

Reading the name Boilly automatically brings to mind those thousands of small portraits made by Louis Léopold, the father, which are commonly found in groups, well ordered on walls, which their pretty similar frames make harmonious. Jules Boilly, the son, also produced portraits, following the talent and reputation of his father. He opted for his own formats depending on the orders but remained stuck to compositions not exceeding seventy centimeters. The majority are his graphite and chalk drawings, easily reproducible in engravings.

Our portrait, of a more than generous format, is a recent rediscovery which completes the corpus of Jules Boilly in his great years of production, at the age of thirty-five. This work of great grace presents a young girl in an interior, dressed and hairstyled in the pure fashion of Charles X, holding in her hand a small fan with a gold frame. The rendering of the material of the gloves and the transparency of the veil covering the arms is remarkable.