Louis-Léopold Boilly

Charles Wilmers Esq., 11 Connaught Square, London;
His deceased sale (Sold by order of the Executors), London, Christie's, 12 March 1948, lot 40, for £2,600 to C. Duits;
Mr and Mrs Hugh F. Packenham Borthwick Norton;
Thence by descent to Mrs Eva Sardinia Borthwick Norton (d. 1988), of Southwick House, Purbrook, Hampshire, by 1952;
Bequeathed by her Executors to The Royal Scottish Academy in 1990.

From the late 1780s onwards, after he had settled in Paris, Boilly painted an increasing number of small scale cabinet paintings that appealed greatly to private collectors such as the Marquis de Montesquieu.  These paintings successfully combined the contemporary appetite for moralising, amorous or sentimental subjects with a meticulous technique reminiscent of the 17th century Dutch painters such as Gerard Ter Borch. The gentle sentimentality of his genre scenes was frequently enhanced by their delicate innuendo or erotic undertones, and the present work is a fine example of this. Superficially an innocent painting of a young girl at her desk, it is, on closer inspection, a comment on the private life of a well-to-do young lady. Boilly makes several intimations: a canvas is turned to the wall to hide its subject, while the statue of Cupid and the dog both hint at the subject of love, and the girl herself gestures to the top drawer of the desk, opened just enough to incite interest in its contents (love letters?) from the inquisitive eye.

Both Etienne Bréton and Pascal Zuber have studied transparencies of this painting, and have confirmed that it will be included in their forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the works of Boilly.