(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 :. | Sitzende Frau mit blauer Bluse | Susanna and the Elders dy | St Paul at Malta vet | La Charette | Therbusch Nicolas de Pigage |
Related Artists:
Louise Moillon
(1610-1696) was a French painter in the Baroque era. She became known as one of the best female still life painters during her time, and worked for King Charles I of England, as well as the French nobility. Moillon came from a strict Calvinist family. Her father, brother Isaac, and stepfather were both paint dealers and artists themselves. According to the RKD, Louise (also known as Louisa) learned to paint from her father Nicolas Moillon and Francois Garnier. She gained her particular style of still life painting from the Academie de Saint-Germain-des-Pres. She usually signed her paintings with Louyse Moillon. Moillon lived and worked in France her whole life.
Mary Beale
English Baroque Era Painter, 1633-1699 was an English portrait painter. She became one of the most important portrait painters of 17th century England, and has been described as the first professional female English painter. Beale was born in Barrow, Suffolk, the daughter of John Cradock, a Puritan rector. Her mother, Dorothy, died when she was 10. She married Charles Beale, a cloth merchant from London, in 1652, at the age of 18. Her father and her husband were both amateur painters, her father being a member of the Painter-Stainers' Company, and she was acquainted with local local artists, such as Nathaniel Thach, Matthew Snelling, Robert Walker and Peter Lely. She became a semi-professional portrait painter in the 1650s and 1660s, working from her home, first in Covent Garden and later in Fleet Street. The family moved to a farmhouse in Allbrook, Hampshire in 1665 due to financial difficulties, her husband having lost his position as a clerk of patents, and also due to the Great Plague in London. For the next five years, a 17th-century two storey timber-framed building was her family home and studio. She returned to London in 1670, where she established a studio in Pall Mall, with her husband working as her assistant, mixing her paints and keeping her accounts. She became successful, and her circle of friends included Thomas Flatman, poet Samuel Woodford, Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson, and Bishops Edward Stillingfleet and Gilbert Burnet. She became reacquainted with Peter Lely, now Court Artist to Charles II. Her later work is heavily influenced by Lely, being mainly small portraits or copies of Lely's work. Her work became unfashionable after his death in 1680.
William Andrews Nesfield
British Painter, 1793-1881 was born in Lumley Park, County Durham. In 1808, after the death of William's mother, the family moved the few miles to Brancepeth where his father became rector of St Brandon's Church. His stepmother was Marianne Mills of Willington Hall, whose nephew was the noted architect Anthony Salvin. William's younger sister in fact married Salvin. Nesfield was educated at Durham School, then located on Palace Green, before entering the army. He fought under Wellington in Spain and at Waterloo and also served for two years in Canada. He retired in 1816 and took up a career as a painter of watercolours, particularly of waterfalls, earning the praise of John Ruskin in Modern Painters. While still exhibiting at the Old Water Colour Society, Nesfield began work as a professional landscape architect, with the encouragement of Salvin. From 1840 until his death he was responsible, either singly or with his sons Arthur Markham and William Eden for no fewer than 259 commissions in the British Isles.