1510-1572 French Francois Clouet Locations The earliest reference to him is a document dated December 1541 (see Jean Clouet), in which the king renounces for the benefit of François his father estate, which had escheated to the crown as the estate of a foreigner. In this document, the younger Clouet is said to have followed his father very closely in his art. Like his father, he held the office of groom of the chamber and painter in ordinary to the king, and so far as salary is concerned, he started where his father left off. Many drawings are attributed to this artist, often without perfect certainty. There is, however, more to go upon than there is in the case of his father. As the praises of Francois Clouet were sung by the writers of the day, his name was carefully preserved from reign to reign, and there is an ancient and unbroken tradition in the attribution of many of his pictures. There are not, however, any original attestations of his works, nor are any documents known which would guarantee the ascriptions usually accepted. To him are attributed the portraits of Francis I at the Uffizi and at the Louvre, and various drawings relating to them. He probably also painted the portrait of Catherine de Medici at Versailles and other works, and in all probability a large number of the drawings ascribed to him were from his hand. One of his most remarkable portraits is that of Mary, queen of Scots, a drawing in chalks in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and of similar character are the two portraits of Charles IX and the one at Chantilly of Marguerite of France. Perhaps his masterpiece is the portrait of Elizabeth of Austria in the Louvre. This piece made an important impression on Claude Levi-Strauss. In particular it helped inspire his theory of the mod??le reduit, or of works of art as simplifications and scale models of the realities they represent, and other theories of artworks, in his book The Savage Mind. Clouet resided in Paris in the rue de Ste Avoye in the Temple quarter, close to the Hotel de Guise, and in 1568 is known to have been under the patronage of Claude Gouffier de Boisy, Seigneur d Oiron, and his wife Claude de Baune. Another ascertained fact concerning Francois Clouet is that in 1571 he was summoned to the office of the Court of the Mint, and his opinion was taken on the likeness to the king of a portrait struck by the mint. He prepared the death-mask of Henry II, as in 1547 he had taken a similar mask of the face and hands of Francis I., in order that the effigy to be used at the funeral might be prepared from his drawings; and on each of these occasions he executed the painting to be used in the decorations of the church and the banners for the great ceremony. Several miniatures are believed to be his work, one very remarkable portrait being the half-length figure of Henry II in the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan. Another of his portraits is that of Francois, duc d Alençon in the Jones collection at South Kensington, and certain representations of members of the royal family which were in the Hamilton Palace collection and the Magniac sale are usually ascribed to him. He died on the 22nd of December 1572, shortly after the massacre of St Bartholomew, and his will, mentioning his sister and his two illegitimate daughters, and dealing with the disposition of a considerable amount of property, is still in existence. His daughters subsequently became nuns. His work is remarkable for the extreme accuracy of the drawing, the elaborate finish of all the details, and the exquisite completeness of the whole portrait. He must have been a man of high intelligence, and of great penetration, intensely interested in his work, and with considerable ability to represent the character of his sitter in his portraits. His coloring is perhaps not specially remarkable, nor from the point of style can his pictures be considered especially beautiful, but in perfection of drawing he has hardly any equal.  Related Paintings of Francois Clouet :. | Portrait of King Charles IX | Portrait of Francois (nn03 | Portrait of a man | Lady in her Bath | Marguerite de Valois, reine de Navarre |
Related Artists:
Willem Romeijn
circa 1645-1694
Francis Swaine
1720-1783,English painter and draughtsman. He worked as a messenger for a department of His Majesty's Navy in 1735 and seems to have been practising as a marine painter by the late 1740s, but there is little trace of his place in London's art world until his regular contributions from 1761 to the exhibitions of both the Free and Incorporated Societies of Artists. He was awarded the Society for the Encouragement of Arts' second prize for sea-pieces in 1764 and again in 1765. 'About the year 1770', reported Edwards, 'he painted the face of a wind-dial, with sea and ships, which he executed with a great neatness'
Monamy, Peter
English Painter, 1681-1749 English painter. It seems likely that his family origins and name were French. The Painter-Stainers' Company records that he was apprenticed as a house painter to William Clarke from 1696, but by 1710 he had become a marine artist, filling the gap in the market left by the death of Willem van de Velde the younger in 1707. Most of his subsequent career was devoted to careful imitations of van de Velde's style (and, in some cases, of particular pictures), by which, according to Vertue, 'he distinguished himself and came into reputation'. He maintained his links with the Painter-Stainers, of which he had been made a freeman in 1703