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Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) Les Amateurs de Café Hand-colored lithograph Paris: 1826 12 x 9 inches Red Tag Price: $250 
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This print appears to be poking fun at the well-dressed subjects, who are comically unaware of their bad table manners.
Boilly was trained as a trompe-l'oeil painter and moved to Paris in 1785. He is known for his scenes of Parisian leisure, political subjects, still lifes, caricatures and humorous lithographs such as this one. During his lifetime, his meticulously realistic paintings and his prints were extremely popular with the public and collectors. He exhibited at the Salon between 1791 and 1824 and received a gold medal at the Salon of 1804. In 1833, he was admitted to the Légion d'honneur and the Institut de France, but his work fell out of favor shortly thereafter. Boilly was the subject of a major exhibition of 46 paintings from museums around the world, organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas in 1996. Condition: Generally very good with the usual light toning and soft creases. References: "The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France," 2000, http://www.nga.gov/past/data/exh709.htm "Grove Dictionary of Art, Artists' Biographies," Macmillan: 2000, http://www.artnet.com/library/00/0096/T009637.asp |