Author: BOILLY, L[ouis-Leopold]
Title: Les Grimaces
Description: Paris: chez Delpech, [1823]. Les Grimaces BOILLY, L[ouis-Leopold]. Les Grimaces. Paris: Delpeche, [1823-28]. Five superb hand colored lithograph plates each measuring 10 7/8 x 8 1/2 inches; 277 x 216 mm. 1. Les Grimaces 2. Les Grimaces 5 3. Les Grimaces 2 4. Les Grimaces 6 5. La Félicité Parfait "The series Recueil de Grimaces, published over the course of five years, included ninety-six lithographs..Boilly's popularity during the Restoration was largely due to this series. The interest in expressive heads had precedent in France.. During the late eighteenth century, physiognomy, the art of reading inner character by means of facial expressions, was popularized by engravings illustrating Lavater's well-known Essays on Physiognomy, which may well have influenced the format of Boilly's Recueil de Grimaces' "(Beatrice Farwell, The Charged Image: French Lithographic Caricature). The son of a wood-carver, Louis-Léopold Boilly lived in Douai until he was seventeen years of age, when he went to Arras to receive instruction in trompe-l'oeil painting at Domenica Doncre before moving to Paris in 1785. Between 1789 and 1791 he executed eight small scenes on moralizing and amorous subjects for the Avignon collector Esprit-Claude-François Calvet (1728-1810), including The Visit (1789; Saint-Omer, Musée Hôtel Sandelin). He exhibited at the Salon between 1791 and 1824 and received a gold medal at the Salon in 1804. These paintings thoroughly observed and reflected all aspects of urban life, its costumes and its habits, between the revolutionary period and the Restoration. In 1823, Boilly produced a series of humorous lithographies entitled Grimaces. .

Keywords: French Caricature Prints


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