Les Agréments de l’Été.

Jean Baptiste Pillement, was the son and grandson of painters. The oldest of five children, he was born in Lyon in 1728, studied in Paris with Daniel Sarrabat (1666-1748), a former student of his father. For a short time, Pillement worked at the Gobelins factory designing textile ornaments before beginning a lifetime of extensive travel around Europe. He visited Poland, where he became Painter to King Stanislas Auguste of Poland, and his work was much appreciated in London and Lisbon, where he visited several times. He spent time in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, England, and Portugal before retiring to Lyon, where he died, very poor, in 1808. Pillement’s delicately executed, rococco, genre scenes, chinoiserie, flowers, landscapes, and marine subjects were much used by manufacturers of porcelain, especially his chinoiserie designs, which he abandoned after 1775. Various engravers in Paris and London, including Pillement’s second wife, Anne Allen, etched suites and plates after his designs. This minutely detailed view shows a river inlet, under trees, with fashionably dressed pleasure seekers and their families having picnics in their boats and on the riverbank.