Joseph Boze (1745–1825/26)

•  Joseph Boze was a French portrait painter and pastellist.
• Boze was born in Martigues, the son of a sailor.

• He studied painting in Marseille, Nîmes and Montpellier before moving to Paris in 1778.

• 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, a confident of Marie-Antoinette at the court. 

• He exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1791.

• Boze initially supported the French Revolution, having joined the Jacobin Club.

• He painted portraits of numerous leaders of the Revolution, including Robespierre, Marat and Desmoulins, and French military officers such as Lafayette and 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. 

• In 1817 he was granted a pension by King Louis XVIII in the Bourbon Restoration.

• Boze died in Paris on 17 January 1826. 

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