Boilly Scenes of Parisian Life

This is a modest catalogue of a curious but beguiling exhibition. Its curiousness arises from the provenance of eighteen of the works on show. Out of twenty-one exhibits, one was loaned by a dealer, Jean-Luc Baroni, another the National Gallery’s A Girl at a Window (for long banished to the lower ground floor reserve). A third work, The Meeting of Artists in Isabey’s Studio (1798), is the largest, most elaborate, and also probably Boilly’s most ambitious painting, whose presence in London on loan from the Louvre was something of a coup. However, the rest came from the Ramsbury Manor Foundation, created out of the estate (£450 million) of Harry Hyams (1928–2015), a property developer, best known for the thirty-five-storey Centre Point in central London. Hyams created an extensive collection of art as well as vintage cars. His home, Ramsbury Manor (Wilts), is being converted to display these to the public. In the meantime, selections of his collection, which hitherto were inaccessible, are being loaned for public display.

Art · Art history · Estate · Exhibition · Painting · Political science · Studio · Visual arts · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Law