Jean-Baptiste Pillement

Paysage avec troupeau (in the Louvre)

Jean-Baptiste Pillement (born May 24, 1728 in Lyon , † April 26, 1808 there ) was a French painter and graphic artist . He was active almost everywhere in Europe and thus contributed to the spread of "goût hollandais", the French interpretation of Dutch painting.

His oeuvre consists largely of landscapes, although he was also active as a decorator. Most of the landscapes were created in the 1780s, when Pillement also discovered marine painting . Quite a number of works from this period are pastel drawings, which is why Pillement is considered to be the most important landscape painter of the 18th century using this technique. His landscapes are filled with the artificial and artistic, with an imaginative form of representation of nature, which to a certain extent abstracts from individual appearance. On the other hand, Pillement knew how to capture light, atmospheric effects and mood values in a very sensitive and differentiated way.

On his numerous travels, Pillement made sketches of entire views and individual motifs, which he took up more or less modified in his paintings. Many of these drawings were published as stitch portfolios, their titles indicating that they were intended as a kind of motif treasure and collection of templates: “Recueil de vues de rochers de mer”, “Recueil de differentes conversations champêtres” or “Livre de different vues de fermes d 'Angleterre'. From 1767 Pillement published a five-volume engraving catalog under the title "Oeuvre de Jean Pillement, peintre et dessinateur célèbre"

Life

Jean Pillement first worked in Beauvais and Paris, then from 1745–50 in Madrid and Lisbon, from there he moved to London for several years, where he mainly worked as a graphic artist. In 1763 he traveled to Italy and Vienna, where he was offered a position at the recently founded Academy in St. Petersburg. From Vienna, Pillement went to the court of the Polish king in Warsaw in 1765. After a two-year stay, he returned to France in 1767, but repeatedly visited London and also made trips to Holland, Germany and Switzerland. Finally he worked again in Portugal and Spain from 1785 to 1789, in order to finally let the revolutionary period in the French provinces pass and after 1800 to spend the last years of his life in his native town.

Beginnings in Beauvais and first stay in Portugal

In 1743, at the age of fifteen, Pillement came to the Manufacture de Beauvais, a tapestry manufacture that, unlike the Manufacture de Gobelins in Paris , which worked for the royal family, served private orders. At the time, both were headed by Jean-Baptiste Oudry , who established a painterly style there, which the apprentices - including Pillement - received in an instruction in composition, perspective and use of color based on painting training.

After only two years in Beauvais, Pillement set out for Spain and Lisbon in 1745, where he stayed until 1750. During this time he was already devoting himself to his favorite motifs: for example a wooden bridge roughly timbered between boulders, bodies of water falling over rocks in flat cascades, shepherds and their animals in a peaceful and light landscape.

Graphic career in England

When Pillement moved to England in 1750, he moved to the center of European printmaking production. In addition to numerous independent productions, he also provided illustration templates, for example for Robert Sayer's The Ladies' Amusement . The prints after Pillement apparently met the taste of the English public, because they were published several times, such as the 1759-60 reissued season series from 1757, some of which were printed with French lettering to be offered in Paris. In the following period Pillement toured England and Holland, because in 1759 he published a series of six under the title "Livre de Diférente [sic] Vüe de Ferme d'Angleterre". And the “Quatre Vues des Environs de Flessingue” testify to the trip to Holland.

Pillement's stay in England seems to have been very successful: during this time he exhibited landscapes to the Society of Artists twice - in 1760 and 1761 - and in the meantime worked for the well-known actor David Garrick , who had a country house on the Thames in 1755 bought near Hampton. Pillement supplied paintings for the representative salon, the large staircase and a smaller room, which was decorated with fifteen Pillements landscapes sunk into the wall paneling. Later, too, Pillement maintained contacts in England, exhibited several times at the Society of Artists and the Free Society, and in 1774 organized a large auction of his own works in London. In London, Pillement published a work on the Chinese drawings.

Activity at the Austrian and Polish courts

From England he first traveled to Italy and, after a very short stay, to Vienna. There he created 18 monochrome landscape pastels for Maria Theresia's Blauen Hof in Laxenburg from 1763–65 , eight of which have survived today. In 1765, commissioned by Maria Theresa, he decorated the oval ballroom in Niederweiden Castle with illusionistic wall paintings with oriental and exotic subjects.

Although Pillement was offered a post as director of the recently founded Academy in St. Petersburg during his stay in Vienna , he preferred to travel to the court of the Polish King Stanislaus August Poniatowski in 1765 . He became the largest collector of Pillements, because he is said to have owned 16 paintings, 30 drawings and over a hundred engravings by him and even cataloged them himself. Poniatowski awarded the artist the title of “Premier peintre du Roy de Pologne” and Pillement's works were also popular among the nobility. During his stay in Poland, Pillement apparently toured the country, as evidenced by drawings from the Danzig area and the Pomerellen . However, these drawings do not show any peculiar Polish motifs and can only be located there thanks to the labels.

Work in Paris and second stay in Portugal

After his return from Poland he tried to establish himself in Paris and exhibited several times. However, these activities brought only one official commission: three works for the Petit Trianon Marie Antoinette , who appointed him her personal painter in 1778.

At the beginning of the 1780s, Pillement toured Switzerland, as was the fashion at that time in the entourage of Rousseau's “Nouvelle Heloise” . This is evidenced by two drawings from 1781 from Pillement's sketchbook, which are labeled “fait à Basle”.

After Pillement moved from Paris again to Lisbon, a jagged, mostly polygonal, occasionally round, white and brown brick tower regularly appears in his landscapes from the 1780s. The severe earthquake of 1755 made reconstruction work necessary, which resulted in orders and employment for many artists: Pillement worked in Queluz (Sintra) and for the Dutch ambassador and art collector Jan Gildemeester.

When the artist left Portugal in 1786 for the first time in the direction of Spanish Cadiz, he left numerous works in various collections of Portuguese art lovers: among them were the English-born merchant Joao Allen and the confessor Dom Pedro III , José Maria Moyne. Even in the absence of the author, these paintings continued to have an impact on the development of local landscape painting; Francisco Vieira, Luis Paret y Alcazar and Joaquim Marques are among Pillement's most famous Portuguese successors.

Last years of life in Lyon

In 1789, the year of the Revolution, Pillement returned to France from Spain and settled in his sister's house in Pézenas . He spent his very last years after 1800 in his hometown Lyon, where he was appointed to the associated École des Beaux-Arts after the reopening of the Grande Fabrique there - a silk scarf factory.

Exhibitions

Paris 1776, 1777, 1782, 1783

London 1773, 1779, 1780, 1783

Primary literature

A New Book of Chinese Ornaments / Jean-Baptiste Pillement (1755)
Recueil des Tentes chinoises. - Paris: Levier, 1770
Différentes Figures Chinoises. - London, 1758
Livre de Chinois. - London, 1758
Les Cinq Sens Chinoises de Nature - London, 1759
Petits ornements choisis. - London
Families Chinoises. - London, 1759
Scènes Chinoises. - London, 1759

Secondary literature

Jean Pillement / Georges Pillement (1945)
Smith-Gordon, Maria. - Pillement / Maria Gordon-Smith. -, 2004
Jean Pillement: paysagiste du XVIIIe siècle, 1728-1808: dans le cadre du centenaire de l'installation du Musée des beaux-arts dans l'Hôtel Fabrégat, 1903-2003: [catalog de l'exposition] of 18 octobre on 21 decembre 2003, Musée des beaux-arts de Béziers, Hôtel Fabrégat. - Béziers: Musée des Beaux Arts, 2003
Gruber, A. (1992) The History of Decorative Arts, Classicism and the Baroque in Europe, p. 249.
Jean Pillement at the court of king Stanisław August of Poland (1765 - 1767) / Gordon-Smith, Maria
English engravings of picturesque views after Jean Pillement (1728 - 1808) / Gordon-Smith, Maria
Jean Pillement at the imperial court of Maria Theresa and Francis I in Vienna (1763 to 1765) / Gordon-Smith, Maria
The influence of Jean Pillement on french and English decorative arts: part one / Gordon-Smith, Maria
The influence of Jean Pillement on French and English decorative arts: part two; representative fields of influence / Gordon-Smith, Maria
Jean Pillement, 1728 - 1808 et le paysagisme au Portugal au XVIIIème siècle / Fundação Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva
I fiori del Catai: introduzione alla figura e all'opera grafica di Jean-Baptiste Pillement ei suoi rapporti con la contemporanea produione di tessuti d'arte in Europe / Cionini, Nicola
Mitchell, Peter: Jean Pillement Revauled, in: Apollo 107 (1983), pp. 46-49

Web links

Commons : Jean-Baptiste Pillement - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

personal data
SURNAME	Pillement, Jean-Baptiste
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French painter and printmaker
DATE OF BIRTH	May 24, 1728
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lyon
DATE OF DEATH	April 26, 1808
Place of death	Lyon