Jean-Étienne Liotard

Jean- Étienne Liotard ( born December 22, 1702 Geneva, † June 12, 1789 ) was a Geneva pastel and enamel painter.

Life and work

Jean- Étienne Liotard was first formed in Geneva in Daniel and was Gardelle 1723-1736 student of the history and miniaturist Jean -Baptiste Massé in Paris. He focused mainly on portraits, in which he dealt in particular with pastel and miniature portraits. In 1736 he began a multi-year journey through Italy, Greece, and up to Constantinople Opel, since 1738 where he long for five years, dressed as a Turk, lived and recorded. In 1743 he came to Vienna; there was one of his most famous works, The Chocolate Girl, which today is located in Dresden at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. In 1745 he was in Venice. Between 1748 and 1753 was Liotard, meanwhile, swamped with numerous orders, active in Paris. In 1753 he went to London, where he, for example, a portrait in pastel of the Prince of Wales, later George III. , Anfertigte, which today is located in the Royal Collection. He then went to Holland and married in Amsterdam, the daughter of a French businessman. In 1758 he was, according to a return visit in Paris, finally in Geneva, where he was about 30 years and was from where he occasional trips to Vienna (1762 ), Paris (1770 ), London ( 1773), Vienna ( 1778) undertook.

Works

In his late work is turned Liotard, who admired the painter Jean Siméon Chardin, also to the still life, where he experimented with radically simplified pastel compositions of objects. The idea of ​​primitiveness the audience he was counteracted by the fact that he his signature and his age noted obvious in these works.

The pastels of Jean- Étienne Liotard were especially appreciated at Vienna and at the French court; Liotard is also regarded as one of the preferred miniature painter of his time. Thematically, his work is partly in response to Orientalism. Significant collections of pastels Liotard can be found in the Dresden Old Masters Gallery, the Musée d' art et d' histoire (Geneva), in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Castle Museum in Weimar and at Castle Hold Holm in Denmark.