Jean-Baptiste Pillement Lyon 1728 - 1808

A native of Lyon, Pillement was among the most influential decorative artists and landscape painters active in France during the second half of the 18th century.  Trained intially as a designer in the Gobelins tapestry manufactory, he first traveled to Spain and Portugal at the age of seventeen.    He began his artistic career specializing in decorations, especially chinoiseries, and only really turned his attention to landscape painting when he visited England in the 1750s, where local demand was strong.  

Pillement was one of the most widely traveled artists of his age.  He left England after several years and returned to Paris in 1761, but began traveling again immediately thereafter, spending time in Turin, Rome, and Milan, a year in Vienna, and two years in Warsaw (as court painter to King Stanislas III Augustus).   In 1780, he returned to Portugal and founded a drawing academy in the Northern city of Operto, where he remained until 1786 when he moved back to Madrid for the remainder of the decade.  The white farm house at the left of the canvas is unidentified, but its simple style of architecture and the surrounding vegetation recall the Portuguese countryside, suggesting this picture was painted during his travels there.   The work which he produced in Portugal, particularly those pictures painted in the 1780s, are generally regarded as the peak of his achievement.