Piat Joseph Sauvage

Pieter (Piat) Joseph Sauvage was born in the small town of Tournai, which in 1744 was a part of Austria. After studying in his native city at the Academy of Tournai under the guidance of grisaille painter M. Geeraerts, he worked briefly in Antwerp before settling in Paris in 1774. He quickly became a member of the French Royal Academy and also exhibited with the Academy of Saint-Luc. His style of painting was espeically popular with eighteenth-century patrons, when trompe l'oeil effects were much in fashion, especially in France. After many years of success in Paris, in 1780, he became official court painter for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Sauvage was known as a painter of illusion, whose grisaille paintings have the appearance of marble in low-relief. His subject matter embodied the Rococo spirit, as his works have playful, feminine overtones. Under Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, he completed the overdoors of the Salon de Jeu at Fontainbleu, and royal residences at Versailles, and Compiegne. In 1793 the French Monarchy fell, and the Louvre Gallery opened. Along with fellow Flemish painters, Pierre-Joseph Redoute, and Gerard van Spaendonck, Sauvage secured residence in the gallery and exhibited sporadically at the Salon. After 1808, he returned to his native city, and reorganized the academy and executed a series of the Seven Sacraments in grisailles for the Cathedral, after Poussin.