precise detailing recalled the work of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painters such as Gabriël Metsu (1629–1667), Willem van Mieris and Gerard ter Borch (1617–1681), of whose work Boilly owned an important collection. After 1794, Boilly began to produce far more crowded compositions that serve as social chronicles of the urban middle class. In these works, his observation of contemporary customs is slightly sentimental and often humorous. Boilly was also well respected for his portraiture. By the end of his lifetime he had painted about 5,000 portraits, most of which were painted on canvases measuring 22 cm x 17 cm (8 5/8 in. x 6 5/8 in.). He worked quickly, and boasted of requiring only two hours to complete a portrait. He painted both middle class sitters and prominent contemporaries such as Robespierre. Boilly's portraits strongly characterize the sitters as individuals, and are usually painted in a sober range of colors. Boilly used his great skill in depicting textures to produce numerous illusionistic works, including paintings in grisaille that mimic prints. In the Salon of 1800 he exhibited a painting that depicted layers of overlapping prints, drawings, and papers, covered by a sheet of broken glass in a wooden frame. His title for the work, Un trompe-l'œil ("a trick played on the eye"), marked the first use of that term to describe an illusionistic painting. Although art critics derided the painting as a stunt, it caused a popular sensation, and trompe-l'œil entered the language as a name for an entire genre. His interest in caricature is most apparent in his suite of 98 lithographs titled Recueil de grimaces, published between 1823 and 1828. Boilly remains a highly regarded master of oil painting. A major exhibition of his work, The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France, travelled to the United States where it was shown at both the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and the National Gallery of Art in Washington (1995). The Musée des Beaux Arts in Lille held a large-scale exhibition of Boilly's work during the winter season of 2011–2012. Selected works References Further reading The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France by Susan L. Siegfried (Yale University Press, 1995) Romanticism & the school of nature : nineteenth-century drawings and paintings from the Karen B. Cohen collection by Colta Feller Ives (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000) External links Biography and links to many