Jean-Marc Nattier

Bio

A member of an artistic family, Jean-Marc Nattier began his training in his father’s studio and may have continued to study under Jouvenet. He first worked as an engraver’s draughtsman and early in his career was commissioned by the Crown to make drawings for engravings after the Marie de Medici cycle by Rubens at the Luxembourg Palace. He married Marie-Madeleine de la Roche in 1714, by whom he had four children, including one son, Nicolas Nattier, who became a painter, while two of his daughters married painters (Michel-Ange Challe and Louis Tocque). After the death of Louis XIV, Nattier moved to Amsterdam where he painted portraits of the Czar and Czarina of Russia, but refused the appointment he was offered in Saint Petersburg. Returning to Paris, he became an academician in 1718 with Perseus turning Phineus into Stone, although history painting never became his speciality.

Nattier was greatly renowned as a portrait painter at the court of Louis XV (painting the King’s daughters several times) and in aristocratic circles, adapting the conventions of Largilliére and Raoux to an extremely flattering style that has come to be regarded as the archetypal eighteenth century French portrait. Very prolific at the time that it was fashionable to possess a Nattier, the artist nevertheless lost his fortune by investing with the Scottish financier, Law. Still successful, he exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1737 until 1763, but by the 1750s his retardataire style was regularly criticised by Diderot, Cochin and Bachaumont, and Nattier soon fell from favour.