1685-1766 French Jean Marc Nattier Gallery Brother of Jean-Baptiste Nattier. As well as being taught by his father, he trained with his godfather, Jean Jouvenet, and attended the drawing classes of the Academie Royale, where in 1700 he won the Premier Prix de Dessin. From around 1703 he worked on La Galerie du Palais du Luxembourg. The experience of copying the work of Rubens does not, however, seem to have had a liberating effect on his draughtsmanship, which was described by the 18th-century collector Pierre-Jean Mariette as cold. Nattier was commissioned to make further drawings for engravers in the early part of his career, including those after Hyacinthe Rigaud famous state portrait of Louis XIV (1701; Paris, Louvre) in 1710, which indicates that he had established a reputation while he was still quite young. Although he was offered a place at the Academie de France in Rome on the recommendation of Jouvenet, Nattier preferred to remain in Paris and further his career. In 1717 he nevertheless made a trip to Holland, where he painted portraits of Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine (St Petersburg, Hermitage). The Tsar offered Nattier work at the Russian court, but the artist declined the offer. He remained in Paris for the rest of his life.  Related Paintings of Jean Marc Nattier :. | Muse of Comedy | Madame de Maison-Rouge as Diana | Madame Sophie of France | Madame Victoire of France | Peter I |
Related Artists:
Olivier, Woldemar Friedrich
German, 1791-1859 .Painter and draughtsman, brother of Heinrich Olivier and Ferdinand Olivier. He first studied in Dessau under the court sculptor Friedemann Hunold (1773-1840), a pupil of Johann Gottfried Schadow, before teaching himself to paint. Following the return of his brothers from Paris, he toured the Harz with Ferdinand in 1810 and in 1811 moved with him, via Dresden, to Vienna. There he drew nudes and antiquities at the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste. In 1813-14 he participated in the uprising against Napoleonic occupation in the Letzow volunteer corps, along with his friends from Vienna, Theodor Kerner, Joseph von Eichendorff and Philipp Veit. After Kerner fell at Gadebusch (26 August 1813), Friedrich sketched him on his deathbed (Dessau, Anhalt Gemeldegal.).
Jean Alaux
(1785 - 2 March 1864) was a French history painter and Director of the French Academy in Rome from 1846-52. Alaux was born in Bordeaux, the son of a painter, and the second of four brothers who were all themselves painters. he received his first lessons in art from his father, but went on to formal training with Pierre Lacour, then Pierre-Narcisse Guerin. He was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1807. From 1808 he entered works for the Prix de Rome but his energies were diverted when his elder brother, Jean-Francois Alaux (1783-1858), asked him to help with a large "neorama" (a type of Panorama) he was working on. Jean eventually won the Prix de Rome's first prize in 1815, with a work entitled "Briseis weeping over the body of Patroclus", a scene inspired by The Iliad of Homer. He subsequently became a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome from 1816 to 1820 (later becoming its director).
Meulen, Steven van der
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, active 1543-1568 Netherlandish painter active in England. He was a pupil of Willem van Cleve the younger (c. 1530-1564) in 1543 and was admitted to the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1552; by 1560 he had travelled to London, and he was naturalized in 1562. Van der Meulen brought with him a deep knowledge of the portrait style of Anthonis Mor. This sombre, shadowed style appealed to patrons at the English court who could not travel to Antwerp to sit to the greater artist. Early in 1561 an English merchant, John Dymoch, had visited Sweden in connection with negotiations for a marriage between Queen Elizabeth and Erik XIV, taking with him a Netherlandish painter described as 'Master Staffan', and it seems likely that this was van der Meulen. The King was much pleased with the resulting portrait of himself, for which he paid 100 daler