A French rococo portrait painter with a Dutch name: This is not as unusual as it sounds at first. Migration across national borders has always existed, especially among professionals and especially in artistic circles. Just think of Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known not only in Spain as "El Greco".
Already the grandfather of Louis Michel van Loo was a famous artist and emigrated from Amsterdam to the South of France. His father Jean-Baptiste van Loo was born in Aix-en-Provence and took on commissions to paint public buildings at a young age. Louis-Michel himself was still born in Toulon in 1707, shortly before the family left this city due to a siege in the "War of the Spanish Succession". Louis-Michel learned the craft of painting from his father in Turin and Rome. His own second educational journey to both cities lasted four years from 1728 to 1732. His metier was detailed, colourful portraits - as colourful as the uniforms and gala toilets of the Rococo period, which as an art movement dominated almost all princely courts of Europe from around 1700 to 1770.
In 1737 he went to Madrid on recommendation - King Philip V needed a new court painter and a colleague, the important portrait painter Hyacinthe Rigaud , recommended van Loo. As I said: careers across state borders were not unusual at that time. Van Loo stayed in Spain for 15 years until 1753, where he immortalized not only Philip V himself, but also his wife Elisabetta de Farnese, the Infanta (Princess) Maria Teresa Rafaela and the family of 14. After Philip's death in 1746, King Ferdinand VI and his wife Maria Barbare de Braganza were immortalised in van Loos' studio.
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Von Loo returned to Paris in 1753, where he also advanced to become court painter, this time to King Louis XV of France, and also portrayed such famous contemporaries as the philosopher Denis Diderot, the Marquis de Sade or the "expellee of the Jesuits", Marquis de Pombal: sonorous names of an epoch that was intoxicated with its own glory and yet was already - not only financially - dancing on the brink of the abyss. Even in Russia the name van Loo is a household name today: His portrait of Ekaterina Dmitrievna Golizyna, wife of the Russian envoy of Her Majesty Catherine the Great, hangs today in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Of course, van Loo did not live to see the revolution: he died in Paris in 1771. His brothers Francois (who died young, of course) and Charles-Amédée were also famous painters of their time.
A French rococo portrait painter with a Dutch name: This is not as unusual as it sounds at first. Migration across national borders has always existed, especially among professionals and especially in artistic circles. Just think of Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known not only in Spain as "El Greco".
Already the grandfather of Louis Michel van Loo was a famous artist and emigrated from Amsterdam to the South of France. His father Jean-Baptiste van Loo was born in Aix-en-Provence and took on commissions to paint public buildings at a young age. Louis-Michel himself was still born in Toulon in 1707, shortly before the family left this city due to a siege in the "War of the Spanish Succession". Louis-Michel learned the craft of painting from his father in Turin and Rome. His own second educational journey to both cities lasted four years from 1728 to 1732. His metier was detailed, colourful portraits - as colourful as the uniforms and gala toilets of the Rococo period, which as an art movement dominated almost all princely courts of Europe from around 1700 to 1770.
In 1737 he went to Madrid on recommendation - King Philip V needed a new court painter and a colleague, the important portrait painter Hyacinthe Rigaud , recommended van Loo. As I said: careers across state borders were not unusual at that time. Van Loo stayed in Spain for 15 years until 1753, where he immortalized not only Philip V himself, but also his wife Elisabetta de Farnese, the Infanta (Princess) Maria Teresa Rafaela and the family of 14. After Philip's death in 1746, King Ferdinand VI and his wife Maria Barbare de Braganza were immortalised in van Loos' studio.
Br/>
Von Loo returned to Paris in 1753, where he also advanced to become court painter, this time to King Louis XV of France, and also portrayed such famous contemporaries as the philosopher Denis Diderot, the Marquis de Sade or the "expellee of the Jesuits", Marquis de Pombal: sonorous names of an epoch that was intoxicated with its own glory and yet was already - not only financially - dancing on the brink of the abyss. Even in Russia the name van Loo is a household name today: His portrait of Ekaterina Dmitrievna Golizyna, wife of the Russian envoy of Her Majesty Catherine the Great, hangs today in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Of course, van Loo did not live to see the revolution: he died in Paris in 1771. His brothers Francois (who died young, of course) and Charles-Amédée were also famous painters of their time.
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