Biographical/Historical Note
Jean Pillement, also known as Jean II Pillement and Jean-Baptiste Pillement, was the grandson of Jean Ier Pillement and son of Paul Pillement (b.1694), both painters. Pillement, the oldest of five children, was born in Lyon in 1728, studied in Paris with Daniel Sarrabat (1666-1748), a former student of Jean I Pillement. For a short time, Pillement worked at the Gobelins factory designing textile ornaments before beginning a lifetime of extensive travel around Europe. He visited Poland, where he became Painter to the King of Poland, Stanislas Auguste, and was much appreciated in London and Lisbon, where he visited several times. He spent time in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, England, and Portugal before retiring to Lyon, where he died, very poor, in 1808.
Pillement painted and drew genre scenes, chinoiserie, flowers, landscapes, and marines subjects in many media, always in a rococo style. He is known for his inventiveness and endless novelty in these genres, for the usefulness of his drawings for manufacturers, and especially for his chinoiserie scenes, which he abandoned after 1775. Various engravers in Paris and London - including Pillement's second wife, Anne Allen - etched suites and plates after his designs. Leviez published one of two large collections of prints after Pillement's designs in 1767 (130 prints), and Basan and Poignant published the other in 1772 (120 prints).
From the guide to the Jean Pillement etchings, ca. 1755-1775, (Getty Research Institute)
