Joseph Boze (7 February 1746 – 17 January 1826) was a French portrait painter and pastellist mostly active during the ancien régime and the French Revolution.
Boze was born in Martigues on 7 February 1746, the son of a sailor. He studied painting in Marseille, Nîmes and Montpellier[1] before moving to Paris in 1778.[2] There he became a portrait painter at the court of King Louis XVI, to whom he was possibly introduced to by the Abbé de Vermond,[1] a confidant of Marie-Antoinette at the court. He is believed to have been influenced by Quentin de la Tour.[2]
He exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1791, where he received negative reviews.[2] Boze initially supported the French Revolution, having joined the Jacobin Club. He painted portraits of numerous leaders of the Revolution, including Maximilien Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat, and Camille Desmoulins, and French military officers such as Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette and Louis-Alexandre Berthier. Under the constitutional monarchy he remained loyal to Louis XVI, and in 1792 acted as an intermediary between him and the Girondins. He was arrested as a counter-revolutionary during the Reign of Terror, but was released in 1794. He signed a petition in 1799 to have the name of fellow painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun removed from the list of émigrés.[2]
Little is known about his life during the subsequent Consulate and the Empire, though he was attested to be living in Paris's quartier de la Sorbonne in 1805 and 1811.[2] In 1817, he was granted a pension by King Louis XVIII in the Bourbon Restoration. Boze died in Paris on 17 January 1826.[2]
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