Circle or Follower of Louis-Léopold Boilly (French, 1761-1845), "A Young Woman of the Commune, Directoire, or Early Empire", c. 1790-1810, oil on canvas, unsigned, 21 in. x 26 in., ebonized panel frame of the period.
Note: This charming painting here depicts its sitter in costume and coiffure very strongly reminiscent of Boilly, but with a barely-noticeable severity of handling that sets it apart from his tenderness and delicacy. This painter favors a considerably wider mouth than Boilly; the slightly hooked nose is painted more simply; and the very expressive eyes are not quite as naturalistically rendered as Boilly's. The hair and costume exhibit a linear precision distinct from Boilly's effects of softness and warmth, while the half-length format here is somewhat more inclusive than Boilly's shorter bust-length depictions. This lady is very expensively dressed, with an embroidered shawl, textured gown, and copious lace trimmings on her blouse and cap (which even includes a stitched circlet of laurel leaves, presumably as a Revolutionary emblem). She wears a beaded necklace absolutely identical to those of several of Boilly's sitters, and the ribbons tying her bonnet are handled in a closely analogous way. This wonderful image, in other words, exactly parallels the career, sitters, and style of Boilly, but is recognizably by a different hand-one that perhaps expresses even more directly the incipient unease of the suddenly large class of "citoyens" facing the turbulent years of the Terror.
References: Susan L. Siegfried, The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France, New Haven, 1995, esp. p. 120, color figs. 94 and 95; Marie-Claude Chaudonneret, "Boilly," Grove Dictionary of Art, Jane Turner, ed., 34 vols., vol. 4, p. 241.