Madame Saint-Ange Chevrier

Boilly painted this portrait in 1807, placing it squarely in the Napoleonic period when his reputation as a portraitist of Parisian bourgeois and artistic society was at its height. The title 'Madame Saint-Ange Chevrier' suggests a woman from the professional or upper-middle milieu of imperial Paris — the world Boilly documented with his genre scenes of Parisian life as well as his formal portraits. Unlike the grandiose imperial portraiture of David, Boilly specialized in intimate, precisely observed likenesses where personality came through careful attention to eyes, posture, and the small details of fashionable dress. The genre classification as 'Religious' appears to be a data error — the work is clearly a portrait.

Boilly's portrait technique is characterized by minute finish and smooth blending that gives his canvases a porcelain-like surface quite different from the broader brushwork of contemporaries like Gros or Géricault. Careful observation of the sitter's specific features — neither idealized nor caricatured — reflects the same analytical eye that made his crowd scenes so remarkable.