LOS ANGELES, CA.- The
J. Paul Getty Museum announced the acquisition of
L’Entrée au Jardin Turc (The Entrance to the Turkish Garden) by Louis
Léopold Boilly, one of the few important paintings by the artist still in
private hands. Crisply
painted in glowing colors and teeming with anecdotal detail, Boilly’s
picture transports viewers to the heart of Napoleonic Paris, outside the
entrance to the city’s most celebrated café, the Jardin Turc.
Located in the Marais at 28, boulevard du Temple, the establishment
offered its middle-class clientele pleasures once reserved for the
aristocracy. Founded in 1780, the Jardin Turc comprised an elegant garden,
restaurant, and café housed in a series of tented pavilions whose crescent
finials and oriental decor reflected an eighteenth-century taste for
turquerie.