Nobody drowns in Boilly's crowds!

About the exhibition devoted to Louis-Léopold Boilly's Parisian chronicles at the Musée Cognacq-Jay until 26 June.

You have to see the little pink and chubby faces of these two children in Pierrot costume, their big eyes with an irresistible gaze, at the bottom right of the "Carnival Scene" painted by Louis-Léopold Boilly in 1832, and just above them the charming face of a woman wearing a big blue hat, to measure all the talent of this French painter and engraver as a miniaturist. Kept in England, this work of art had not been seen in France since the 1833 Salon! It is understandable that it is one of the great discoveries of the exhibition "Boilly (1761-1845), Parisian chronicles", which is being held until 26 June at the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris.

But this oil on canvas, measuring 61 x 107 cm, depicting an entertainment scene as Louis-Léopold Boilly was so fond of, with a foreground lit up as if by the limelight, near the Porte Saint-Martin theatre, is far from being the only attraction of this walk in the footsteps of an outstanding chronicler. Guillaume Morel proposes an itinerary for the magazine Connaissance des arts, and it is an enchantment. For the virtuoso artist, prolific and unclassifiable, makes the capital the setting for his paintings. This is a great opportunity to walk along the Pont Royal, for example, with small groups of people in Directoire costume, strolling along the cobblestones of one of the three oldest bridges in Paris as if there were no landscape around, or that it was entirely shrouded in mist. This oil on glass in panoramic format (25 x 69 cm), entitled "Le Passage du pont Royal" (The Passage of the Royal Bridge), could well have been used for a magic lantern projection, so much so that the man who was at once the portraitist of Parisians, the painter of urban scenes, the inventor of striking trompe-l'œil and the author of piquant caricatures was a fan of optical instruments!

As a privileged witness of a city and a population in full transformation, Boilly really knew how to add his gift of observation to his talent as a painter to become the chronicler full of mischief of the effervescence of the Parisian streets, with a predilection for the rise of leisure. However, we will also appreciate seeing his interior, including the dining room in the rue Saint-Benoît where he painted, among other things, his touching "Self-portrait of the artist wearing glasses": this was the last of the dozen or so Parisian addresses known to the man who arrived in the capital from his native North at the age of 24, never to leave it again.

The exhibition focuses on Boilly's links with Paris and brings together 130 paintings, drawings, sketches, miniatures, paintings on glass, lithographs and optical objects. Shows, small trades, artists' studios, hushed interiors, crowded streets... It is impossible not to notice that for Boilly, everything is a pretext for portraits. So if some of the places represented in his paintings no longer exist, such as the Madelonnettes prison or the courtyard of the Messageries, the comparison of the Champs Elysées of yesterday with those of today is worth the diversions! As for the human expressions, they remain visibly eternal... For make no mistake: Boilly is not the neoclassical painter with a touch as smooth as it seems. The caricature is there, delightful, and it creeps in everywhere. And on closer inspection, there is even some Hitchcock in Boilly: in fact, the artist surreptitiously slips himself into almost all his paintings!