Portrait Of A Painter, Presumed Jean-georges Wille

Portrait of a painter, presumed JG Wille
French school of the 18th century

Our portrait presents a draftsman, painter with his sketchbook and a brush. He wears a beautiful shimmering and richly embroidered costume which indicates his success and a certain notoriety. The lace of the jabot and the sleeves is of good quality and very fine. The powdered wig and the rollers allow us to date this portrait around 1770 at the end of the reign of Louis XV.

This man in his fifties is reminiscent of Johan-George Wille (1715-1808) known as Jean-Georges Wille, whose portrait we know by Jean-Baptiste Greuze in 1763, exhibited in the collections of the Jacquemart-André museum in Paris. Jean-Georges Wille was born in Germany in 1715, he quickly showed a predisposition to drawing and developed a passion for engraving at a very young age. He arrived in Paris in 1736, he met Nicolas de Largillierre who had him engrave 2 paintings. He gradually became one of the most famous Parisian engravers.

Wille was court engraver to Kings Frederick II, Frederick V of Denmark and, above all, Louis XV. Naturalized French in 1758, he was elected to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1761.

His son Pierre-Alexandre Wille (1748-1834) became a draftsman, engraver and painter under the guidance of his father. He is best known for genre scenes and portraits, he is a prolific artist but his work is little known. He produced 2 pencil portraits of his father, one dated 1774 sold on the Parisian art market in 2015 and another dated 1786 in the collections of the Louvre.
We believe that this portrait could be a portrait of Jean-Georges the father by Pierre-Alexandre the son.

Oil on canvas, old relining,
Dimensions: 64.5 x 52 cm
Old frame in gilded wood
Frame dimensions: 86.5 x 74.5 cm