Louis-Léopold Boilly

Collection of the artist;

His sale, Paris, 13-14 April 1829, lot 9 (with its pendant Et vous serez heureuse en ménage);

Collection of Baron Tupinier, in 1930;

Anonymous sale, Ader-Picard-Tajan, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 15 December 1980, lot 9;

With Didier Aaron, Paris, in 1980, 1998 and 2003;

Where acquired by the present owner.

Paris, ancien Hôtel de Sagan, Galerie Jacques Seligman, Louis-Léopold Boilly, June 1930, no. 57;

Paris, Musée Marmottan, Louis Boilly, May-June 1984, no.31;

Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Livres d’enfants, livres d’images, 1989-90, no.6;

Angoulême, Les Plateaux, Le petit chaperon rouge dans tous ses états, 1992.

H. Harrisse, Louis Boilly, Peintre, dessinateur et lithographe (1761-1845), Paris 1898, p. 102, no.196;

P. Marmottan, Le peintre Louis Boilly (1761-1845), Paris 1913, pp. 165-166;

J.S. Hallam, The Genre Works of Louis-Léopold Boilly, Washington 1979, p. 300;

E. Breton and P. Zuber, Louis-Léopold Boilly 1761–1845. Le peintre de la société parisienne de Louis XVI à Louis-Philippe, Paris 2019, vol. II, pp. 731-732, no. 958 P.

Sometimes given the title The grandmother’s tale, or Reading aloud, this painting depicts, at very close range, a group of children listening raptly to the story being told to them by an old woman, probably their grandmother. Himself the father of numerous offspring, Boilly enjoys describing the emotions that the children feel as they listen to the story’s dénouement: the fear in the eyes of the two boys leaning their heads on their older sister’s shoulder, the terror expressed by the wide-eyed blond toddler, and the fascination felt by the boy wearing a cap, who stares fixedly at the old woman.

Boilly focuses on the connection between these two figures, facing each other in the foreground. In profile, the grandmother, with all her wisdom and experience, seems to want to convey to the lively young boy, who is probably impatient to discover the world, the deeper meaning of the tale and the lessons he can draw from it.

Also worth noting is the interest that the artist shows in the physical contrast between the extreme youth of the chubby little children, with their pink complexions, and the extreme old age of the wrinkled and toothless storyteller, who is almost like a witch from one of Perrault’s fairy tales. In this context, the melancholy expression of the teenage girl stands out. As she gazes at the old woman, she seems to be contemplating the fleeting nature of youth.

The painting is said to be inspired by Petit Poucet (Hop-o’-My-Thumb in English versions) but although the number of children is identical in the painting and the fairy tale, Petit Poucet and his brothers are not eaten by the ogre and the phrase ‘And the ogre ate him up’ does not appear in the text. The title probably makes a more general reference to old tales in the oral tradition featuring ogres (or wolves) devouring little children, such as Little Red Riding Hood and Petit Poucet, which became famous after Charles Perrault adapted them in 1697, in Les contes de ma mère l’Oye (The Tales of Mother Goose).

There exists a preparatory drawing, reproduced in the catalogue raisonné (E. Bréton and P. Zuber, op. cit., vol. II, no. 957D). Closely associated with popular imagery, And the ogre ate him up was quickly circulated as an engraving. The publisher Aubert included it in Grimaces, the famous series created by Boilly – a fitting addition, because of the study of expressions and the contrast between the ages. A lithograph of the composition, in reverse, was also produced by Constant in 1824 (op. cit., vol. I, p. 306). Some forty years later, Gustave Doré, whose first publisher was Aubert, was inspired by it for the frontispiece of his edition of the Contes de Perrault.

It was right at the end of the eighteenth century that Boilly’s work began to include paintings and drawings that grouped and superimposed on the same plane various expressive and often comical faces. Examples include, from 1800, the trompe-l’œil An artists’ reunion, grisaille imitating a print (op. cit., vol. II, no. 477P). The present canvas can be dated to 1824–1825, a period when Boilly was creating many works exploring this theme. In the Grimaces, Boilly, who often used himself as a model, went as far as caricature, and sometimes even flirted with the grotesque.

Boilly was certainly inspired by the research on physiognomy conducted by the Swiss Johann-Kaspar Lavater (1740–1801), who thought that people’s physical appearance, especially their faces, revealed their personalities. Lavater’s work became very popular in France in the nineteenth century. At the same time, the fashion for phrenology, which attempted to explain character from the study of bumps on the skull, also reflected the growing interest in psychology. Some artists were influenced by it, for example Balzac, who wrote long descriptions of character, and Géricault, who painted a series of portraits of the insane.