Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros

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Dancing Maltese sailors

Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros (born July 21, 1748 in Moudon , † February 10, 1810 in Lausanne ) was a Swiss painter , watercolorist , etcher , gouache painter and engraver .

biography

Ducros was to become a merchant. However, he was trained by his father, a drawing teacher in Yverdon-les-Bains , and practiced drawing as a dilettante. In 1769 he went to Geneva , where he attended a private academy with the Flemish painter Nicolas-Henri-Joseph de Fassin. In Geneva he met the wealthy art collector François Tronchin. Ducros became friends with the Geneva painter Pierre-Louis De la Rive, with whom he copied the Dutch paintings from Tronchin's collection between 1773 and 1776 .

In the summer of 1776 he traveled to Italy accompanied by the copper engraver Isaac-Jacob La Croix. He lived in Rome and in 1778 went on a study trip to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and to Malta . In four months of hiking he created almost three hundred watercolors. Ducros lived in Rome from 1777 to 1793.

In 1782 Ducros opened a studio that also served as a shop. In addition to his own works, he sold works by other artists such as Francesco Piranesi and Louis Jean Desprez .

In 1783 he received an order from the Grand Duke of Russia, Paul Romanov , for two paintings, and in 1783 from Pope Pius VI. for a painting. From 1784 the Swedish King Gustav III bought from him . From 1786 the rich art collector and antiquarian Richard Colt Hoare was one of the best customers.

From the 1790s, after the unrest after the French Revolution, Ducros, suspected of Jacobinism , was watched by the Inquisition police. In February 1793 he was expelled from the Papal States. He had to give up his studio and business and fled to Abruzzo for a few months . Since he could not return to Rome, he moved to Naples until 1799 .

Financial difficulties forced Ducros to return to Lausanne in 1807, where he gave private lessons in drawing and unsuccessfully proposed to the Vaudois government to establish an academy for painting. He had better luck in Bern, where he exhibited his work and benefited from the support of Sigmund Wagner, a notable collector and art dealer. The authorities of the city of Bern appointed Ducros professor of painting at the academy in September 1809. He died in his sixty-second year before he could take office.

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personal data
SURNAME Ducros, Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter, watercolourist, etcher, gouache painter and engraver
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1748
PLACE OF BIRTH Moudon
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1810
Place of death Lausanne