If the pants fit... - portrait of the singer Jean Elleviou, by Louis-Léopold Boilly

Elleviou in his role in Le Prisonnier or La Ressemblance, circa 1798.

Jean Elleviou (Pierre-Jean-Baptiste-François Elleviou; 14 June 1769, Rennes – 5 May 1842, Paris), French operatic tenor, one of the most celebrated French singers of his time. The son of a surgeon, he rebelled at having to follow in his father's footsteps and fled to Paris, where he fell in with actors and musicians. But just as he was about to make his stage debut, he was apprehended by the police and returned home to Rennes. There he was forced to resume his medical courses but, after only a few months, he convinced his father that he should be allowed to finish his studies back in Paris. Where, once again, he abandoned them. Though he made his debut in 1790 at the Comédie Italienne as a baritone in Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny’s Le Déserteur, a year later he performed in a tenor role in Nicolas Dalayrac’s Philippe et Georgette.

He went on to create forty some roles during the next twenty years, in operas by Grétry, Dalayrac, Monsigny, Boieldieu, Méhul, Isouard, and others. According to contemporaries, he possessed a very sweet and flexible voice, excellent diction, and had a handsome figure and charming stage presence which made him a great favorite with Parisian audiences. He toured in Italy in 1795 and throughout France in 1795-97, returning to Paris to perform at the Opéra-Comique (the newly renamed Comédie Italienne). Of a capricious and irritable nature, he also became more and more financially demanding. Fortunately, he married a very wealthy woman from Lyon. And after he retired in 1813 - at the height of his fame and only forty-four years old - he devoted his time to his properties in Lyon. He was eventually elected mayor of his commune, then general councilor of the Rhône. He died of apoplexy at the age of seventy-three.

Boilly’s portrait of Elleviou depicts the young singer in his role in Le Prisonnier or La Ressemblance, a comic opera in one act with music by Domenico Della-Maria and libretto by Alexandre Duval, which premiered at the Théâtre Feydeau on 29 January 1798.  The painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon in July of 1798 as, “Portrait du C[itoy]en. Elleviou, Artiste du théâtre de L’Opéra-Comique national, représenté dans le costume de son rôle dans la jolie pièce du Prisonnier.” Two years later, at the Salon of 1800, Boilly exhibited a trompe l’oeil painting depicting various drawings and prints including at center an “engraving” that reproduces his earlier portrait of Elleviou.  (The artist also included his own self-portrait in the composition at lower left.)

Trompe l’oeil by Boilly, circa 1800.

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Engraving by Pierre Audouin after the portrait by Henri François Riesener, circa 1800.

The original portrait by Henri François Riesener.

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As the title role in Jean de Paris, opéra-comique, music by Boieldieu and libretto by Saint-Just, circa 1812. (2 images.)

As Diego in Picaros et Diego ou la Folle Soirée, opéra-comique, music by Dalayrac and libretto by Dupaty, circa 1803.

As the title role in the opera Joseph, music by Méhul and libretto by Duval, circa 1807.

As Richard in Le Roi et le Fermier, opéra-comique, music by Monsigny and libretto by Sedaine, circa 1806.

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Two portraits presumed to be of Elleviou. (Which, to me - though both are charming - seems unlikely.)

Portrait by Désiré-Adelaïde-Charles Maignen de Sainte-Marie, 1809.

Miniature de Charles Berny, 1813.

Les autres dans l'atelier - how does one get any work done...?

In the studio of the artist, by Wilhelm August Golicke, 1832. The model is in the background,
dressing or undressing, but her little shoe is in the foreground by the posing platform.

The artist in his studio, by Gerrit Dou, circa 1628. I wonder about the rather ominous fellow in the doorway....

Frith in his studio painting Alexandra, Princess of Wales for "The Marriage of the Prince of Wales", by John Ballantyne, 1863.
Ballantyne's likeness of the Princess is no better than Frith's turned out to be.

Tsar Nicholas I and the artist, by Bogdan Willewalde, 1883. Painted almost thirty years after the death of the
Tsar, who appears to be actively "assisting" the artist; if the Tsar wants to help, who's going to tell him no?

The artist in his studio and his man Gibbs, by George Morland, 1802. What a dreary studio! But the drawings above the grate are charming.

L'Atelier de Houdon (Houdon modelant le buste de Laplace dans son atelier), by Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1804.

The painter in his studio, by Jan Miense Molenaer, circa 1633.

Im Atelier, by Moritz Stifter, 1890. Whose children have been brought in by the babushka'd crone?

Im Atelier des Malers, by Jan Josef Horemans II, circa mid-eighteenth century. The fellow at center is grinding pigment to make paint.

Atelier of the artist Venetsianov, by Alexander Alexeyevich Alexeyev, 1827. A young serf girl looks to have been put to work as a model.

The studio of Ingres in Rome, by Jean Alaux , 1818. The painter holds a violin rather than a paint brush, and a cat sleeps by the open door.

 

Viewing large - David and Boilly (and Joséphine)

"Le Sacre de Napoléon", 1807. The painting contains well over one hundred figures, each of them an actual portrait.

The painting was put on display in the Louvre three separate times between 1808 and 1810, the public's interest was so great.

Officially titled "The Consecration of the Emperor Napoléon I and Coronation of the Empress Joséphine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804", but commonly known as the "Coronation of Napoleon", Jacques-Louis David's monumental canvas - approximately twenty by thirty-two feet - was finally completed in November of 1807, nearly three years after the solemn event itself. It was quickly sent to be put on display in the Louvre, where the public came in droves to view it. Louis-Léopold Boilly, the great chronicler of Parisian life at the turn of the nineteenth century, commemorated the contemporary enthusiasm for the great commemorative work.

"The Public Viewing David's 'Coronation' at the Louvre", 1810. By comparison, Boilly's painting is a mere 24 by 32 inches.

One could obtain a guide identifying the important personages in David's painting. Some of the figures above are consulting their guides.

The artist scattered portraits of real figures among the crowd, including his own; Boilly is the grey-haired fellow in the group at far right.

David's masterpiece - still drawing crowds - as it hangs in the Louvre.

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Though this painting is commonly understood to represent and is usually referred to as the coronation of Napoléon, it isn't. David had originally planned to show that extraordinary Corsican at the very moment of his coronation - when he unexpectedly snatched the crown from the Pope and crowned himself - but later chose to portray the newly-minted emperor in the act of crowning his beloved and soon-to-be-ex- wife. At any rate, Joséphine is the heart of this vast work, visually, and the graceful, bejeweled Empress is both literally and figuratively the point on which the whole composition is centered.

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View the images larger below.

Sketches of Redouté and Serangeli, by Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1798

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (10 July 1759, Saint-Hubert, Belgium – 19 June 1840, Paris), Belgian painter and botanist, perhaps the most important and celebrated painter of flowers of all time; he was nicknamed "The Raphael of flowers", and his botanical illustrations have been widely reproduced. Early in his career, he was appointed court artist to Marie Antoinette, but it was under the patronage of the Empress Joséphine, as her official artist, that he completed his greatest work and achieved his greatest fame.

Joseph Joachim Serangeli ( 1768, Rome - 12 January 1852, Turin), Italian artist who worked in the Neoclassical style, painting historical and mythological subjects and portraits. In 1790, he went to Paris and began his training at the Academy, three years later joining the studio of David. He opened his own studio in 1805, and completed several important commissions under the Empire. He divided his time between France and Italy, but two years after the fall of Napoléon, he returned permanently to Italy, where he eventually worked at the court of Savoy.

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Louis-Léopold Boilly (5 July 1761, La Bassée – 4 January 1845, Paris), French painter and draftsman. Also an adept portrait painter, he is best known for the prodigious number of genre paintings he produced which vividly document French middle-class social life of the times. His life and work spanned several of the most dramatic eras in French history, from the ancien régime, through the Revolution and the First Empire, and through to the rule of the second king of the Bourbon Restoration, Charles X.

These sketches were only two of many that Boilly made in preparing his group portrait of 1798, Réunion d'artistes dans l'atelier d'Isabey, which depicts many of the young artists then living in Paris, gathered together in the painter Isabey's studio.

The finished portraits of Redouté and Serangeli can be seen at far left and far right, respectively.