#The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France

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Fathers as nurturers during the Napoleonic era

Portrait of Monsieur Gaudry giving his daughter a geography lesson, 1812, Louis-Léopold Boilly

The Gaudry portrait is even more a portrayal of “the good father” than a lesson in political geography. The painting provides evidence of a reorientation of the father’s role within the family that had taken place from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries. In her study of archetypal family structures during the Revolutionary period, Lynn Hunt traces “the rise and fall of the good father” and his eventual replacement, as an ambivalent figure, by republican fathers “who were now officially depicted as friendly, supportive, and interested in their children.” While the gradual transformation of the king into a good father began before the Revolution (as manifested in the portrait of Louis XVI, and not a tutor, instructing his son in geography), it was not until the Napoleonic period that a positive image of paternalism was explicitly rehabilitated, as Boilly’s commission for a portrait of the yet-childless Napoleon as père de famille so clearly indicates. In the meanwhile, children assumed new importance as the affective center of gravity in representations of families, a shift that is indicated by the painting’s focus on the demure Mlle Gaudry. Rather than reading the Gaudry portrait in twentieth-century terms, as an expression of “unusual sensitivity and psychological insight,” Boilly’s portrayal of an affectionate and respectful relationship between father and daughter is better understood as conforming to a new social construction of the family that came to the fore during the Napoleonic period, in which fathers assumed new roles as nurturers or guides.

Source: The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France, Susan Siegfried, pp, 115

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So I found this neat drawing of Napoleon by Louis-Léopold Boilly in 1812.

From the book The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France by Susan L. Siegfried.

It’s part of a larger drawing, and I very messily outlined Napoleon’s frame so I could see him better ;)

The piece is called “A Family Imploring the Emperor” in which Napoleon is granting someone clemency.

#my pics #outline done on app not on the physical book just to be clear #napoleon bonaparte #Napoleon #Louis-Léopold Boilly #Boilly #Susan L. Siegfried #Siegfried #napoleonic era #napoleonic #paris #france #french history #first french empire #french empire #The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France #The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly #art #French art #1800s #19th century #19th century art #drawing #illustration #history