An abbot holding a letter; and A gentleman with a dog

This pair of paintings will be included in the forthcoming supplement of the catalogue raisonné of the works of Louis-Léopold Boilly, being compiled by Etienne Bréton and Pascal Zuber. Occasionally Boilly would paint highly finished preparatory studies for his figures, which he would then use to populate his genre scenes, as appears to have been the case for the present pair. The figure of the abbot appears in Boilly's trompe l’oeil painting imitating a print entitled L’Affligeante Nouvelle (private collection), and the gentleman with his dog appears in both Le Vieux Jaloux (location unknown) and L’Amant Jaloux (Musée de l’hôtel Sandelin, Saint Omer, inv. no. 255 CM; see E. Breton and P. Zuber, Boilly: Le peitre de la société parisienne de Louis XVI à Louis-Philippe, II, Paris, 2019, cats 89 P, 91 P, 115 P, 116 P and 308 P).