Subject: aristocrate aristocrat, nobleman
Culture: French
Setting: French Enlightenment, late Bourbon dynasty, France 18thc
Manchester Art Gallery > Dandy Style: 250 Years of British Men's Fashion *
"Jean Baptiste Perroneau French, 1715-1783 Portrait of a Man, about 1747-48 Oil on canvas" ...
* Dallas Museum of Art
"Louis-Leopold Boilly French, 1761-1845 A Family Admiring a Portrait of a Lady in an Interior c. 1790 Oil on canvas ...
As a young woman shows off her portrait, an older man examines it -- or possibly the woman herself -- through the lens of his glasses. Louis-Leopold Boilly was a prolific portraitist, and he also frequently included portraits within his genre scenes, as he does here. The appearance of the portrait generates a complex circulation of glances and gestures that do not form a clear narrative or help us decide how the figures are interrelated. The highly finished surface of the painting and attention to the minute details of clothing and accessories are typical of French painting at the end of the 18th century."
