Boilly Louis-Leopold

 Louis-Léopold Boilly was the most gifted genre painter in France during the Napoleonic era and one of the period's most prolific portraitists. Boilly exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon (the State-sponsored exhibition of contemporary art) between 1800 and 1814 and won the recognition of a gold medal of the first class in 1804. This double portrait, shown both at the Salons of 1812 and 1814, depicts Monsieur Gaudry, a civil servant, instructing his daughter in geography. Boilly, as a close family friend, observed the girl's lessons many times. Even the little dog can be identified as "Brusquet," much admired in the family because his constant barking had once succeeded in scaring away a band of thieves who had broken into the Finance Ministry. Historical geography was promoted as a field of study for both boys and girls in Napoleonic France, the maps of whose territories were subject to frequent revision with each new conquest. Here the sphinx and pyramid in the cartouche of the map no doubt refer to Napoleon's Egyptian expedition of 1798-1801; the globe shows Europe and Africa. Moreover, The Geography Lesson portrays a theme popular in the Dutch seventeenth-century paintings that Boilly emulated: the proper duty of parents to nurture {nu NOT to} and instruct {in NOT de} their children.