Oil on canvas painting by Louis-Léopold Boilly.
Painted in 1812, this painting is currently located at the Kimbell Art Museum.
Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) was a prolific French painter renowned for his genre scenes and portraits that captured the spirit of French society during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Boilly painted many portraits during the Napoleonic and revolutionary periods of France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His artistic works provided an insight in to the life of Parisians during that period.
This painting likely shows family friend, Monsieur Gaudry, a civil servant, instructing his daughter in geography.
The sphinx and pyramid in the cartouche of the map probably refer to Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition of 1798-1801. The globe at the back of the desk is displaying the continents of Europe and Africa.
All of these geographical contexts hint about the nature of the lesson.
References
Hallam, J. S. (1981). The two manners of Louis-Léopold Boilly and French genre painting in transition. The Art Bulletin, 63(4), 618-633. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.1981.10787925
Wright, B.S. (1996). Exhibition Review: The Art of Louis-Leopold Boilly. Modern Life in Napoleonic France. Eighteenth-Century Studies 30(1), 97-98. doi:10.1353/ecs.1996.0044.
