Woman in Front of a Fireplace (c. 1805–7): Art, History and Details

Woman in Front of a Fireplace (c. 1805–7) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Louis Léopold Boilly (French, 1761–1845).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Marie-Élisabeth Godard d’Aucourt de Saint-Just, shown here, belonged to a wealthy French shipbuilding family. Louis Léopold Boilly probably created this drawing to present for approval the preliminary composition of d’Aucourt’s painted portrait. The grid overlaying the drawing suggests a direct transfer to canvas; the image changed dramatically in the painting, where d’Aucourt appears in a grotto, unoccupied. That composition aligned with gender norms at the time that placed women in the natural world rather than the cultural sphere. Perhaps still interested in the drawing’s costume and interior, Boilly later reused them in a sheet depicting a working-class milliner, or hatmaker.

Object facts

• Title: Woman in Front of a Fireplace
• Date: c. 1805–7
• Creator attribution: Louis Léopold Boilly (French, 1761–1845)
• Culture: France, early 19th Century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk and gray wash heightened with white chalk, squared in black chalk, on blue wove paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 46 x 37 cm (18 1/8 x 14 9/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1974.93

A detail from the museum

The Egypt-inspired decor throughout the interior seen in this drawing was especially fashionable in early 19th-century France.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Atelier de Serrur, peintre d’histoire: Ses œuvres et sa collection particulière. Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1866.
• Harrisse, Henry. L.-L. Boilly, peintre, dessinateur et lithographe: Sa vie et son œuvre, 1761–1845. Paris: Société de Propagation des Livres d’art, 1898.
• Catalogue des tableaux anciens, pastels, dessins anciens [. . .] provenant de la collection de M. B. Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1936.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.