Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00011043Woman in Front of a Fireplace
About the Artwork
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.
Provenance
after 1807-1865: Henri-Auguste-César Serrur [1794–1865], Paris 1866: (his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, January 15, 1866, no. 149) 1898: Henri Binder 1936: (his sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, December 5, 1936, no. 10) after 1936-1972: Private collection, Paris 1972: (sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 12, 1972, no. 16) ?-1974: (Galerie Nathan, Zurich, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH) 1974-: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1974. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 11-April 6, 1975). Treasures on Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 10-July 24, 1988). Rococo, Revolution, Restoration. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 11-September 24, 1989). French Drawings from the Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 13, 1994-March 12, 1995). Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-June 11, 2023).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Louis Léopold Boilly (French, 1761–1845)
- Date
- c. 1805–7
- Medium
- 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.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
- Accession no.
- 1974.93
More by Louis Léopold Boilly in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00011043
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