after Carle Vanloo Self-portrait engraving by Gilles Demarteau ca. 1755-76 British Museum |
"As the most famous member of a family of painters, Carle Vanloo was acclaimed for his masterful ability to depict a range of subjects and styles. His talent for assimilating and invoking various styles is surely due to his numerous travels between Italy and France, and to his training with an Italian painter and a French sculptor. When Vanloo's father died in 1712, his brother, a painter twenty-one years his senior, took charge of his education. Five years later, the brothers moved to Paris, where Vanloo gained practical skills assisting his brother on various commissions. While still a teenager, he won first prize for drawing at the Académie Royale and was awarded the Prix de Rome. Until 1733 he lived in Italy, where he achieved great recognition for painting illusionary ceiling frescoes with mythological subjects. Vanloo spent the remainder of his life in Paris, where he painted portraits of the royal family and produced works for their private apartments at Fontainebleau and Versailles. His most popular paintings – genre scenes depicting contemporary figures in Turkish dress – reflected the French fashion for exoticism. By the time of his death in 1765, Vanloo had received numerous prestigious appointments, such as Premier Painter to the King, Louis XV, and had been ennobled."
– biographical notes from the Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Carle Vanloo Design for a fountain before 1765 drawing British Museum |
Carle Vanloo Group of Nymphs before 1765 drawing British Museum |
after Carle Vanloo Group of soldiers encountering sailors engraving by Gilles Demarteau ca. 1755-76 British Museum |
Carle Vanloo Dancing Faun before 1765 drawing British Museum |
after Carle Vanloo Académies engraving by Gilles Demarteau ca. 1755-76 British Museum |
after Carle Vanloo Académie engraving by Gilles Demarteau ca. 1755-76 British Museum |
after Carle Vanloo Académie engraving by Gilles Demarteau ca. 1755-76 British Museum |
after Carle Vanloo Académie engraving by Gilles Demarteau ca. 1755-76 British Museum |
after Carle Vanloo Académie engraving by Gilles Demarteau ca. 1755-76 British Museum |
after Carle Vanloo Marsyas engraving by Gilles Demarteau 1767 British Museum |
after Carle Vanloo David playing the harp for King Saul (Bible illustration) etching and engraving by Charles Grignion ca. 1769 British Museum |
Carle Vanloo Studies of a figure in a long coat before 1765 drawing British Museum |
Carle Vanloo Head of a child before 1765 drawing British Museum |