Jean-baptiste Pillement, Country Landscape With Figures

Jean-Baptiste Pillement (attr.)
Lyon, 1728 - 1808

Country landscape with figures, herds, classical ruins
Oil on canvas cm. 59 × 73
In a gilded wooden frame for a total of cm. 73 × 85

In very good general condition, relined.

The painting, from a foreign private collection, was purchased in 1956 from the Giroux gallery and auction house in Paris (see the copy of the catalog page with the photograph and description of the painting). It represents a family of peasants resting, with their animals, at the edge of a stream at the foot of imposing architectural ruins, among which stands out an elegant sculpture resting on a column. In the background a small town with a fortified wall.

During his lifetime, Jean-Baptiste Pillement was famous for rococo landscapes, such as the painting he presents here, and for Asian-inspired subjects. He specialized in fictional scenes from the Near and Far East, popular throughout Europe in the 1700s. Although Pillement traveled widely, he never ventured into the Orient, a region of the world which nevertheless inspired his art. Growing up in Lyon, Pillement trained with a local artist before venturing to Paris. In the French capital, he worked briefly at the Gobelins tapestry factory and was exhibited in the Rococo style exemplified by painters Jean-Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. In 1745, he left for Madrid, where he stayed for a long time. He lived in London for ten years, exploiting the English taste for imaginative landscapes and rococo motifs widely used by textile designers. He traveled to Austria, Germany, Poland and Portugal, cementing his reputation as a prolific printmaker and interior designer. Pillement was court painter to Marie-Antoinette at Versailles.