The Arcades at the Palais-Royal
Louis Léopold Boilly
1761–1804
- Medium
- Pen and black ink, and brush and gray wash, with gray gouache, over black chalk, on ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- 36.5 × 45.7 cm (14 3/8 × 18 in.)
- Genre
- ink or chalk wash
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
drawings (visual works)black chalkpaintchalkchalk sticksinkgouachewashink or chalk washprints and drawinginorganic materialwatercolorcoating (material)paper (fiber product)water-base paint
About
This remarkably frank image flouted the norms of acceptable subject matter. Here, Boilly depicted the prostitutes—and the men who solicited them—who gathered in the arcade of the Palais-Royal in Paris. Better known for his charming genre paintings, Boilly was denounced in 1793 by a French revolutionary tribunal for painting pictures “of revolting obscenity to republican morals.” He survived and even in 1804, under the Napoleonic government’s somewhat looser standards, he was pushing the boundaries of propriety.
