Jean Baptiste Perronneau

1715 Paris - 19.11.1783 Amsterdam

Art history: Rococo

Short information:

In the 1700s, Jean-Baptiste Perronneau was among the most important pastel portraitists in France. During his lifetime, pastel portraits were immensely popular--widely commissioned and collected. Perronneau began his career as an engraver but shifted to oils and pastels in 1744. He made his Salon debut with a pastel portrait in 1746 and received full membership in the Acad?mie Royale in 1753. Perronneau exhibited steadily at the Salon until 1779 but also traveled extensively across Europe in search of patrons. In Paris, he competed with Maurice-Quentin Delatour, an older and more established painter who was very much the portraitist of choice in fashionable Parisian circles. Despite being favorably compared to Delatour, Perronneau was forced to find much of his clientele in the French provinces and overseas.