A PORCELAIN PLATE

The present plate is painted after Les Petits Ramoneurs by the French artist, Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845). The work was included in Boilly's album of ninety-four caricatures, Recueil de grimaces, which was published between 1823 and 1828. Each hand-coloured lithograph in the suite depicts a group of five figures, each with a face drawn in an exaggerated expression. A comparable plate by the Imperial Porcelain Factory is painted after Boilly's Ah! le chic-en-lit, lit, lit, which was also included in Recueil de grimaces (N.B. von Wolf, (ed. T.N. Nosovich), Imperatorskii farforovyi zavod, 1744-1904, St Petersburg, 2003, p. 171, pl. 259).