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(b Paris, 29 Sept. 1703; d Paris, 30 May 1770). French Rococo painter, draughtsman, etcher, and designer, whose work best represents the frivolity and elegant superficiality of French court life in the middle of the 18th century. His father was a minor painter, who probably gave him his first training, and he briefly studied under François Lemoyne before winning the Prix de Rome in 1723. There were insufficient funds to pay for his scholarship and for the next few years he earned his living mainly as a printmaker, his work including etchings after drawings by Watteau. In 1728 he went to Rome at his own expense. He returned to Paris in 1731 and was soon launched on a varied, prolific, and enormously successful career, punctuated by a stream of honours.

Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)


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