Jean-Baptiste PILLEMENT (Lyon, 1728-1808)

Provenance:
• France, private collection
Bibliography:
• Georges Pillement, Jean Pillement, Paris, Chez Jacques Hamont, 1945
• Nicole Riche, Laurent Félix, Maria Gordon Smith (eds.), Jean Pillement, 18th-Century Landscape Painter, Béziers, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Béziers, 2003.
• Maria Gordon-Smith, Pillement, preface by Alastair Laing, Krakow, Irsa, 2006.

The fifth son of a Lyonnais family rooted in artistic tradition for generations, Jean Pillement received both a family education and professional training, naturally choosing a career as a painter. From an early age, he displayed exceptional talent in handling various drawing techniques, including pencil, chalk, and pastel. He pursued his training under the guidance of Daniel Sarrabat II (1666-1748), an active painter in the region who had trained in Rome in the Baroque tradition. However, his master’s influence did not shape his artistic inspiration, as Jean turned instead to the study of nature.
Arriving in Paris at the age of 15, he was admitted as a designer at the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins. The recognition he gained there helped him establish a solid reputation. Faithful to his admiration for nature, he created numerous easel paintings and embarked on a career as a landscape artist. His works, becoming increasingly decorative, found their way into numerous European courts. From 1745 onwards, Pillement embarked on extensive travels that continued throughout his career. He spent three years in Madrid, followed by a period in Lisbon in the 1750s, then in Italy and Austria. In London in 1754, he exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1760 and 1761, later returning to exhibit at the Free Society in 1773, 1779, and 1780.
Throughout his career, Pillement was welcomed into aristocratic circles and easily developed an international clientele. After returning from Spain in 1775, he settled in Avignon. From that time until his death in 1808, he dedicated himself exclusively to landscape painting. The work presented here is dated Year 9 of the Republic (1800-1801).
At a time when painters were increasingly interested in nature, Pillement, too, sought a closer connection with the natural world. Like some of his contemporaries, he faced resistance from the prevailing academic hierarchy, which still favoured historical, religious, and mythological painting as the dominant genres in the 18th century. As a result, he remained on the margins of official French Salons throughout his career.
By insisting on populating his landscapes with figures, Pillement aligned himself with the realist tradition of 18th-century French painting. His work synthesised two popular genres of the time: landscape painting and genre scenes. The figures in his compositions do not take on central roles but instead serve to animate and enhance the surrounding nature. In many of his works, the artist chose to depict the simplicity of daily life. In the idealised, Italianate landscape presented here, a laundress stands surrounded by two shepherds, while in the background, three fishermen are busy in their boat. The scene takes place along a riverbank framed by an arched bridge, a motif that appears in several of his other compositions (see ill. 1).
Pillement set himself apart from his contemporaries by offering a vision that was neither utopian like that of Watteau nor moralising like that of Chardin or Greuze. His work sought to capture sensory experience, portraying what the eye sees without artificial embellishment. Inspired by the Dutch Golden Age masters, such as Nicolaes Berchem (1620-1683), he incorporated a wealth of details and placed great importance on botanical studies, rendering even the smallest leaf with precision.
Art theorists often compared painters to literary figures. Boucher was likened to Catullus, Greuze to Molière, Vernet to Buffon, and Chardin to La Fontaine. Pillement was no exception to this tendency, linking drawing and poetry by combining lightness with powerful descriptive qualities.
Among the many techniques he practised, pastel gradually emerged as his preferred medium. The lack of preparatory work allowed for immediate execution, while the chalky texture created a soft, blended effect that could convey both volume and the natural appearance of stone or vegetation, depending on the density of the strokes. In our painting, direct observation of nature evokes an immediate sense of reality, translated through the quick and confident handling of the medium.
Executed just eight years before his death, this work exemplifies the artist’s mastery of pastel. Many of his most exquisite pastels are dominated by a monochromatic palette, sometimes blue (see ill. 2), sometimes grey (see ill. 3). In this landscape, Pillement employs a dual monochrome scheme of blue and ochre. The ochre tones are used for the genre scene and the bridge covered in vegetation, while the blues skilfully depict the sky and distant mountains.

M.O