The Sorrows of Love

Boilly painted The Sorrows of Love around 1790, a sentimental genre scene depicting a young woman in a state of romantic distress — the title's 'sorrows' suggesting the conventional language of late eighteenth-century sentimental culture that pervaded literary and visual art in the decades before the Revolution. Boilly's treatment is characteristic of his gift for domestic psychological observation: the specific gesture, the particular quality of contained sadness rather than theatrical despair, and the careful rendering of the domestic interior all contribute to an image of private emotional experience that engages the viewer's empathetic response without demanding obvious moral instruction.

Boilly renders the intimate scene with the smooth, polished finish and precise detail that characterize his genre paintings. The small scale and jewel-like quality create an effect of precious intimacy appropriate to the sentimental subject.