This finely preserved watercolour is the first in a set of three compositions, narrating episodes in the burglary of a bourgeois interior, though the third in the chronological order of execution. The three compositions, as is often the case with Boilly, exist in multiple versions: all three are painted in colour,¹ while the last two are also painted en grisaille,² drawn³ and engraved.⁴

The scene depicted in the present work shows three criminals preparing to enter the house, with the leader of the trio precariously lifting himself up on a box to check the inside of the room through an open window. His co-conspirators are too engrossed in their conversation to notice that they are themselves being watched by two men, no doubt suspicious of their intentions. Boilly depicts the thugs in an almost caricatural manner, wearing shabby clothes, one of them holding a large bag in which to hide their ill-gotten gains.

The coloured paintings of the second and third episodes - the thugs entering the room and then arrested at gunpoint - were exhibited at the Salon of 1804 and were probably painted by Boilly shortly before. Six years later, the painter signed the two versions en grisaille in imitation of prints, inscribed “I^re scène” and “II^me Scène”. The aquatints of the same compositions were produced around 1825 by Gror and are also numbered as first and second episodes, showing that by that date, Boilly had not yet executed the present composition. In the auction he organised of both his collects ion and his paintings in 1829, only the two 1804 paintings were included and were bought by Boilly himself. The third coloured painting (fig. 1) was thus probably painted shortly after. The three were then included in Boilly’s 1845 posthumous sale as lots 7 to 9. The present sheet was probably drawn at the same t.mes as Boilly painted the first episode, around 1830.

The present watercolour as well as the wash drawings after the second and third episodes of the burglary, drawn around 1804, were owned by Baptiste-Marie-Simon, second son of Louis-Léopold Boilly from his first wife Marie Madeleine Desligne (1764-1795). His estate was inherited by his daughter-in-law, the widow of his son Eugène, an obscure painter who studied with Léon Coignet and died before 1874. It was Eugène’s widow who lent the present drawing to the 1889 Centennial exhibition organised in Paris at the occasion of the Exposition Universelle.

1. The first episode in a private collects ion - see H. Harrisse, L.L. Boilly, peintre, dessinateur et lithographe: sa vie et son œuvre (1761-1845), Paris, 1898, no. 499; episodes two and three untraced - see Harrisse, 1898, nos. 27 and 28

2. Williamstown, Mass., The Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, inv. no. 2007.10 and location unknown - see Harrisse, 1898, nos. 607-608

3. Sale, New York, Christie’s, New York, 12 January 1995, lot 150

4. In aquatint and in colour by Gror, the first composition inscribed “I^re. scène de Voleurs”. According to Harrisse (p. 218), copies were produced by Jean-Marie Gudin and Domenico Landini.