Jean-Baptiste Pillement

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Jean-Baptiste Pillement - Landscape with cattle (Louvre)

Jean-Baptiste Pillement (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, born in Lyon, had an unusually cosmopolitan career. He moved from Paris, working for the Gobelin factory to Lisbon, where the need to rebuild after the disastrous 1755 earthquake had created many opportunities. There he was working in Queluz (Sintra) and for the Dutch consul, the known art collector Jan Gildemeester.

Pillement spend eight years in England, fully exploiting the English taste for landscapes. There the paintings by Nicolaes Berchem inspired him. Pillement came acquainted with David Garrick, a famous actor, and his Austrian wife Eva Maria Weigel, collectors of his work in England. Pillement went to Vienna and in 1765 he went to Warsaw, decorating the Royal Castle in Warsaw and the Ujazdowski Castle, his largest project, commissioned by Stanisław August Poniatowski. He also worked in Saint Petersburg, the Piedmont, Milan, Rome, Venice. Pillement travelled to Paris to work for Marie Antoinette in the Petit Trianon.

During the French Revolution in 1789 Pillement moved to Pézenas in the Languedoc. At the end of his life he went back to Lyon, where he designed for the silk industry and gave lessons in the Academy founded by Napoleon.

Pillement's illustrations are a mixture of fantastic birds, flora & fauna, large human figures and chinoiserie. His designs were used by engravers and decorators on porcelain and pottery, but also on textiles, wallpaper and silver. Pillement had discovered in 1764 a new method of printing on silk with fast colours (recorded in his Memoirs). One of his prime vehicles was the single print marketed independently of an album. He published many albums, one is: Œùvre de fleurs, ornements, cartouches, figures et sujets chinois (1776).