Why is this painting black and white? Boilly’s ‘A Girl at a Window’ | National Gallery
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- Опубликовано: 29 янв 2024
- Artist Louis-Léopold Boilly was an 18th-century master of illusionism. Here, National Gallery curator Francesca Whitlum-Cooper looks at his amazing black and white painting 'A Girl at a Window' to ask why it’s pretending to be a print.
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The National Gallery houses the national collection of paintings in the Western European tradition from the 13th to the 19th centuries. The museum is free of charge and open 361 days per year, daily between 10am - 6pm and on Fridays between 10am - 9pm.
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Splendid! It’s not something you would deduce from the painting without knowing the historical context. Great video!
Isn't it fascinating? Glad you enjoyed it!
I like how you lead us through the various points, not just factually but visually. Logically leading us to see through the artist’s eyes as he creates his painting. Well done.
" This not a print " . The Treachery of Images....Absolutely amazing ! Thanks.
Haha a sneaky painting!
The narrator is exquisite. The painting is as well. Beautiful! Oh so easy to understand
7:00 I love this! It’s like he looked at this painting and said “opposites”. Bird cage left, his on right. Rabbit changed to carrots. From dead birds to bird watching. Bird on right changed to fish. Girl on left changed to boy, main subject not looking at you, looking directly at you. people standing to people sitting 😂
Wow! What a stunning work, why is Boilly not a better known artist? His skill is amazing
So glad you enjoyed! Hope this video helps make him a little better known :)
Grisaille is and was also used as an underpainting, could this not just be an unglazed grisaille ?
Grisaille is how you learn tone; colour comes later as it adds to the complexity...that's 'old school' art school.🙂
great video. making a black-and-white painting means that artists don't have to worry about color, green, blue or yellow etc. they can just focus on dark & light.
In one of my first trips to London, at the end of the 90s, I visited the NG. I just loved this painting! I still have a postcard of it and a small phone book with the fishes motive printed all over. I carried it with me on my handbag for many years!
That's such a lovely way to hold onto your memory of your visit! Thanks for sharing with us.
It’s a study he worked up to look like a brilliant print which would sell for more money than paintings at the time.
Boilly was known for being able to paint a portrait in one hour, a sort of snapshot. I have about 20 or more of his engravings from the period. Karl Lagerfeld used to collect his portraits, sadly they are out of my range !
Absolutely love these deep dives into lesser known works of art, that also becomes a lesson in art history.
Incredible that in 2024 I can think/say that this is still stunning to look at.
It's holding up the test of time really well.
I believe that the painting includes the artist's signature also on the stone wall beneath the black curtain above the type lettered one noted above the white line.
Thank you so much for the informative, educational and enjoyable explanation. Well done.
What an absolutely beautiful painting. I have often given thought to painting a subject using such a limited palette; it is far more difficult than it would seem. I would love to own a print of this painting pretending to be a print.
That made the painting more interesting. Good talk. Thanks.
I might be repeating myself a bit here because I've said this about your videos before, but this was yet again a brilliant production. I loved everything about it, from the music to the fascinating history told in such a masterful way and also the skill in filming this. There should be proper RUclips Video Awards every year, if there were such a thing, these videos on this channel should win a number of them. Please tell every person involved in producing these that these are so appreciated, they will be watched for years and years as people way in the future would appreciate them just as much as they do today, a work of art, like the paintings you talk about. Thank you!
Thank you so much for your kind comment, Liesl! We really appreciate it ❤️
There is also a theme of "confinement" -- the bird is confined in the cage, the fish are confined in their bowl, the carrots are confined by the string they're suspended by, the bottle's contents are confined by the bottle, and the girl is confined by the room, and by the very confined role society allows her. There is also the theme of being inside, looking out. The bird is inside the cage looking out; the fish are inside the bowl looking out, the boy and the girl are inside the room looking out.
Lovely observations, thanks for sharing
A fascinating observation - thank you for commenting!
The satin ribbon on her bonnet is astonishing.
Absolutely marvellous artworks with such great innovation and technical skill !! Paintings done by a true great artist!! Thank you so very much for explaining the artworks and the history behind them so beautifully and in such great details!!🙏🙏👍👍🥰🥰❤️❤️
Thank you for watching!!
Great educational video as always! Keep them coming♥️🎨🇬🇧
I've always adored this painting whenever I saw it, I felt very drawn to it. So its wonderful ro hear some of the context surrounding it. Thanks!
Thank you so much for sharing with us such a beautiful view on a beautiful piece of art ❤
Thank you.
I really enjoyed this episode.
I always enjoy hearing the background story behind a painting.
The presenter was brilliant & I hope to see more.
Once again thank you
I would never have known about this 'print', or even guessed it without your Talk! Thank you very much for sharing your studies.
Superb review of this enigmatic painting - I am loving this series of talks - Francesca is a natural in front of camera and so engaging - more please .
great interesting story about the background of the picture. Thanks a lot
Absolutely amazing!! A true masterwork!! The contemporaneous context makes it all the more intriguing!! Excellent work walking us through this!!
Thank you for watching! ❤️
This, to me, is absolutely, succinctly, spot on!
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Thank you for this wonderful explanation. 🌷🌺
Fascinating - a masterpiece of explanation.
Thank you for watching, Susan!
Wonderful art and lesson!
Thank you for making and sharing this video, it has expanded my knowledge and enjoyment of art ❤️
Our pleasure, Meredith!
Thank you for this deeper look into what we are seeing!! So very interesting :)
Thank You! Very interesting video.
Always enjoy her talks!
As a dude/scientist/hobby photographer now also a "commentator on RUclips", this is both fantastic and inspirational.
Wonderful painting with a good explanation
Thank you for introducing me to this work.
Excellent Presentation...
Yep this is exactly why comic art contests have you do black and white. Although the problem is sumi iro is a very dark orange.
Thank you, I learned so very much! The fish bowl is just a small part of the painting, yet incredible. I was thinking that the telescope may indicate how sophisticated this family is as it could not have been common to own one
The shades of grey depicts the mastery of the artist, from the sheen of the silk, to the scales of the fish... mesmerizing.
Fabulous! ❤❤❤
Brilliant!! Inspiring! Thank you so much
Thank you for watching!
Fantastic!
I once conducted a one man show of half Black & White fine art photos shot in 4x5 inch negatives of very high quality and the other half in color also 4x5. The staff recorded the visitor preferences. The majority preferred the B&W. 95% of the retina of your eye records only B&W. The richness of perception is greatest without color in the image. I stopped shooting color from then on. That is the secret to the Fine Art of B&W reception among mankind.
Beautiful 🤩
Thank you for the subtitles.
excellent commentary and love this painting so much!
0:51 Ps, that’s more like kinda dried foxtail millet pinned on the wall to me, one of the oldest domesticated cereal crops in Eurasia
Another scenario could be that Boilly re-dated a value study for the larger full color painting displayed in the Salon, as well as added the print-referencing framing device.
I'm slightly confused by the remark, "...to paint only in black and white as an artist is to set yourself an incredible challenge..", as the value study (grisaille) was so basic to a French Academy education. In fact a student could not graduate to the use of color until they had mastered the technique, as it was essential to indirect painting.
Louis-Léopold Boilly was a cartoonist and a caricaturist, a sort of artistic dilettante. He had much in common with Henry Fuseli.
Both were 'more about their personality' than their craftsmanship. They were both stylists. You can imagine Daumier being heavily influenced by Boilly's work.
All of Boilly's oeuvre has that 'uncanny valley' quality ( With his cartoonish faces and elongated limbs ) that was his signature caricaturist style.
Thanks for the video
Boilly was lithographer, designer and miniaturist. Realistic images in black and white and grays that he mastered.
I love the National Gallery - it's one of the few art gallery's in London that actually shows genuine art.
Truely, this painting is an eye Tricking, I havent't noticed the blue frame until Francesca mentioned it at 2:20 that it was also part of the picture, I thought The Blue Frame is part of the Golden frame that holding the picture
Thanks very much.
Phenomenal
This is the 18th century "hold my beer"
Hard to wrap my head around how easy it is to just dismiss (for lack of a better term) this as a beautiful image in passing, but with context it's an unbelievably masterful work of art
Thank you
thank you for that wonderful analysis. I wonder if there is any actual black or white in that painting or if it's a thousand shades of grey like a pencil or charcoal sketch. But to do that in oils (I presume) is remarkable.
This video and breakdown is really great.
Personally I find black and white to be far easier to work with than colour.
So interesting!
She looks like the very first anime painting in history 😂
It makes me feel like he discovered pop art centuries before it happened! A painting of a print when prints were common and popular with lower classes.
So Lichtenstein was following Boilly's lead? Very cool!
Lovely
Inspiring.
Hmmmm this is a really cultured painting, very very nice
Fascinating commentary on this artwork. It actually reminded me of Jean Simeon Chardin's painting "Soap Bubbles," but U found that it was painted in 1733-34. so a bit before Boilly's "A Girl at a Window." Still, I wonder if Biolly might have been inspired by Chardin or at least familiar with "Soap Bubbles?" (Perhaps I'm just looking for a connection that doesn't exist!)
So when looking at the signature, I noticed something that looks like a removed bit of text (on the bottom left cornerstone of the window). Maybe a signature..?
My personal view is the artist may have thought " what if i create an artwork which views the viewer instead ?" The painting is viewing you , which is unique.
I believe the painting is in color but captures the scene at night, during a full moon. Humans can’t really see colors in the moon light. A hint is in the reflection of the moon that is just partially obstructed by some thin clouds. The moon is reflected by the edge of the fishbowl, the bottle and all shiny surfaces, especially her eyes. The boy is not looking at the moon, possibly at a star, or a planet. She is using the lunette to guide him to set the telescope with a much smaller field of view, but with greater magnification, just as it is done today. A hint of colour is in her blond hair that comes through beautifully on just few strands that even the partial obstructed moon cannot hide. I am amazed, looking from the future into the past moment of astronomical discovery through a window pretending to be just a print of a painting.
I have been asking myself for some time why an almost perfect illusion of 3D is achievable in “ Grisaille”, but not in colour (often, I can’t even convince people that this is the case). I’m not sure if that question is addressed here.
I had the idea that we can see what that boy sees through his telescope. This girl in the window. Otherwise, it looks weird because they don't interact with each other on the painting
paintings becoming lost sounds absolutely devastating, im wondering how much we are missing out on
There's a later Boilly painting called "The Amateur Print Collectors" that shows some nicely-dressed folks looking with interest at a print that they are perhaps considering buying or have just bought. The print is totally obscured behind the subjects so that we can't see any of its content. And the painting, while not monochrome, is in a rather muted palette.
A very forward thinking... His own niche. Collectable.
I think the best optical trick is that it's supposed to be black and white, yet it's painted with colours. I see a lot of yellows but also some blue and green, very desaturated though.
You keep the print and I will keep my originals with me.😆
Actually I suppose before photography people never saw black and white although ironically we associate monochome with historical things
Great commentary overall, but as a painter I have to say that painting in black and white is much much easier than painting in color and even famous painters painted in black and white first and then used glazes to colorize them. This technique is also used today by many top illustrators.
Grisaille was my thought right away... but you're right... it's the blue border and historical context that proove it.
On the topic of "looking", this painting is full of references to the idea!
The direct gaze of the woman.
The child who observes with curiosity.
The telescope pointed outwards, giving a telescopic view.
The telescope pointed inwards, which could either represent a microscopic view, or perhaps introspection.
An opera glass, which separates spectator from actor.
The bird with its bird's-eye view.
The fish in the bowl with their fisheye perspective.
The whole scene framed within a window.
And what is our role in this..? 👀
🙏
The restricted palette, in this case greytones, simplifies painting because it it just a matter of value;
I like to imagine the color painting isn't lost, just 'made into a print' in too literal terms.
I'm still working on "why is there a fishbowl on the windowsill..."
All the different details make me feel like when I look at an ai image, and at a glance it's kind of whatever, but then you look closer and it's like "hol' up, what's going on here"
8:29 digital artists do it all the time-
We do it to then easilierly color everything afterwards
I don't quite understand why you think painting using only shades of gray would be harder than painting in colour.. With shades of gray you only need two paints on your pallette and combine these in varying levels (though it looks like he used two different white colour pigments since the dress is faintly cream yellow; maybe it was always faintly yellow on purpose or the pigment used to paint the dress has yellowed more with age than the pigment used for the highlights. Maybe the large areas such as the dress used a cheaper pigment that was a little less intensely white and he only used the expensive bright white pigment for the extreme highlights such as the reflexes?) While if you paint in colour you need a bunch more colours; and you need to colour match a lot more.
While the lecture is perfect in a technical-art historical sense and perfectly presented, I wondered about what the allegory is that it tries to depict, its metaphors, or storytelling.
In the comments before me, @thewol7534 writes about "confinement" and the same day, @Foxweed comments about the "looking" aspect.
I would add that, in the context of the French Revolution, this might be referencing the confinement of citizens in their social classes, hoping to be freed by the revolutionary movement from the oppressing yoke of the "noble" classes that keeps them locked in their social class. On the other hand, assuming these two in the painting are of considerable wealth (as per the attributes), they may be "noble" children on the lookout for the revolutionary movement that might confine them, or worse.
My thought, Moonlight 🎉
After viewing the image on the National Gallery website, I can’t get past how much he compromised the anatomy of the far side of her face to make her gaze appear level.
If she turned to face the viewer, her left (facing) eye would be an inch or two higher.
It is easier to work in just black and white, much harder to manage a full color palette. It seems a strange thing to say that it requires more artistry and is a way to show off his talent.
he was virtuoso alright!
Yes, this painting is definitely about perception and reality. We are like fish, trapped in our medium, with some sort of external reality, being distorted and hidden from our understanding. We perceive this reality through many lenses. We imbue it with glazings of color and layers of meaning. But at the core of the nature of things, there’s just the tension between two opposites. Black and white. Positive negative. One and zero. And we in the cage looking through a window at a sky, knowing it is there we belong.
Why are some great paintings so small?
The painting is about the fish in the bowl (and the bird in the cage).
And the boy and the telescope and the lady vanishes. Seriously, for me, the lady slips out of the painting. Her gaze I think is meant to be central, but it makes no impact. Paintings can look radically different than they do on video, though, so . . .
I don't feel the interior of the false frame ought to be described as black and white-in photo editing software, notable color differences are visible. Much of the stonework and background is red. The telescope is blue. The fishbowl is emerald. The girl is creamy yellow. These are clearly not mere stumbles in the pursuit of mixing a neutral gray, as they are distributed with spatial coherence and seem appropriate for their subjects. I was hoping Fran would help us better understand the deceptive use of color in this Boilly. Instead, it feels as though the topic was brushed over in favor of (admittedly fascinating) historical context.
But it doesn't look like very much like an imitation of a print to me, in the sense that it doesn't seem really etched I mean, which often is the case with these prints. I think his other illusionist painting is far more convincing in this regard. But if optical devices do so promintently figure in the painting, can't it be an allusion to a defect of the eye for instance? Color blindness or such? (Late neurologist Oliver Sacks mentioned once a case of total color blindness, which is scarce, but nevertheless exists).