Art Institute of Chicago

The Arcades at the Palais-Royal

Louis Léopold Boilly

Date

c. 1804

Medium

Pen and black ink, and brush and gray wash, with gray gouache, over black chalk, on ivory laid paper

Culture

France

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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.

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