(Lyon, 24 May 1728 - Lyon, 26 April 1808) was a painter and designer, known for his exquisite and delicate landscapes, but whose importance lies primarily in the engravings done after his drawings, and their influence in spreading the Rococo style and particularly the taste for chinoiserie throughout Europe. Pillement had an unusually cosmopolitan career. In 1743, at the age of 15, he moved from Lyon to Paris where he was employed as an apprentice designer at the Gobelin factory. In 1745 he left for Spain, where he remained for 5 years. There he found employment in various cities as both a designer and painter. A landscape dated 1748 reveals rustic themes he was to repeat often: sun bathed shepherds leading their goats and sheep to a cascading stream, a water mill, rocky elevations covered in lush vegetation, and the poeticized relics of an ancient bridge. In 1750, at the age of 22, he moved to Lisbon, where he enjoyed continuing success. The lure of travel compelled him to decline an offer to become First Painter to King Joseph of Portugal ?, and in 1754 he left Lisbon for London. Pillement then spent eight years in England, fully exploiting the English taste for landscapes. There he was inspired by the paintings of, among others, Nicolaes Berchem. During this period he became acquainted with David Garrick, the famous actor, and his Austrian wife Eva Maria Weigel, who became avid collectors of his work. In 1763 Pillement then traveled to Vienna, where he was employed at the Imperial Court of Maria Theresa and Francis I. In 1765 he left Vienna for Warsaw, where his many projects included decorating the Royal Castle in Warsaw and the Ujazdowski Castle, his largest project, commissioned by Stanisław August Poniatowski. He also later worked in Saint Petersburg, the Piedmont, Milan, Rome and Venice. 1768-1780 Pillement again worked in France, where he was employed by Marie Antoinette in the Petit Trianon. 1780-1789 he was once again on the Iberian Peninsula, and in 1789 moved to Pezenas in the Languedoc. In 1800 he returned to Lyon, where he continued to paint while also designing for the silk industry and giving lessons in the Academy founded by Napoleon.  Related Paintings of Jean-Baptiste Pillement :. | Portrait of Maurits Huygens | Peasant dance | The Trial of the Rebels | Early Morning in Paris | Maesta (mk08) |
Related Artists:
Victor Dubreuil
French-born American Painter, active 1886-ca.1900.
Charles Cottet
Charles Cottet (1863-1925), French painter, was born at Le Puy-en-Velay and died in Paris. A famed post-impressionist, Cottet is known for his dark, evocative painting of rural Brittany and seascapes. He led a school of painters known as the Bande noire or Nubians group (for the somber palette they used, in contrast to the brighter post-impressionist paintings), and was friends with such artists as Auguste Rodin. Cottet studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and under Puvis de Chavannes and Roll, while also attending the Academie Julian (where fellow students formed Les Nabis school of painting, with which he was later associated). He travelled and painted in Egypt, Italy, and on Lake Geneva, but he made his name with his sombre and gloomy, firmly designed, severe and impressive scenes of life on the Brittany coast. Cottet exhibited at the Salon of 1889, but on a trip to Brittany in 1886 he had found his true calling. For the next twenty years he painted scenes of rural and harbor life, portraying a culture Parisians still found exotic. He is especially noted for his dark seascapes of Breton harbors at dawn, and evocative scenes from the lives of Breton fishermen. He was close friends with Charles Maurin, and his group included the painter Felix-Émile-Jean Vallotton. Cottet has often been associated with the picturesque seaside symbolism of the Pont-Aven School, though Vallotton famously painted Cottet as a leader of Les Nabis, beside Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Ker-Xavier Roussel, in his Five Painters (1902-3; Kunstmuseum Winterthur). Cottet was more explicitly the leader of his own small movement, the Bande noire of the 1890s, which included Lucien Simon and Andre Dauchez, all influenced by the realism and dark colours of Courbet.
kilian zoll
Kilian Christoffer Zoll (29 september 1818 - 9 november 1860) was a Swedish artist. He belonged to the Dusseldorf school of painting and painted genre pictures, landscape, portraits, children and altarpieces. Zoll studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm 1835-1839. Within the Academy, Zoll and his fellow students mostly treated mythical and historical subjects, but as soon as he became independent he devoted himself to genre painting. He travelled and made sketches through Sweden; Skåne, Halland, Småland and Dalarna. He participated in the academy exhibitions 1850, 1853, 1856 and 1858 with a total of 19 oil paintings. His paintings from this period address topics such as Children playing with a cat, Grandma's joy, Old Woman at the Spinning Wheel. In 1854 he traveled to Dusseldorf in the company of a fellow artist Bengt Nordenberg. In Dusseldorf he studied art together with another Swedish artist Marcus Larson - together they executed several paintings. He returned to Sweden in 1855. He and Nordenberg tried to get a travel grant from the Swedish Academy of Arts, but he could not get it because he was older than the rules allowed. The following year he went back to Dusseldorf, now married, and returned to Sweden 1858. Once again, he traveled through the province of Halland in artistic studies and had planned to return to Dusseldorf. He, however, fell ill and died before then.