JULES-CÉSAR DENIS VAN LOO

(Paris, 1743 - 1821) Landscape with classical architecture Oil on canvas, 135X180 cm Provenance: Milan, private collection Bibliography: A. Bellin, D. Succi, E. Trivoli, Unpublished Paintings from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth Century, Treviso 2015, p. 86 César Van Loo is the last member of an illustrious dynasty of artists, the progenitor of which was the Dutchman Jacob Van Loo (1684-1745) who, originally from the Dutch province of Zeeland, settled in France in 1660. César was born in Paris in 1743 to Jacob's nephew, the painter Carle Van Loo (1705-1765), a painter at the court of Louis XV and director of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, but it should also be mentioned that he was also a nephew of Jean Baptiste Van Loo (1707-1771) and a cousin of Louis Michel (1707-1771), François (1708-1732) and Charles Amédée Philippe Van Loo (1719-1795). César then trained in the productive and famous family workshop, made a study trip to Italy, and in 1784 was elected a member of the Royal Academy by presenting two paintings in the manner of Joseph Vernet (1714-1789).In the following years he regularly exhibited his works at the Paris Salons, achieving in 1789 the position of auxiliary to the rector of the Académie. In 1791 we know him again in Italy, in Rome, and later active for the Savoy court in Turin, a city where his father and uncle Jean Baptiste already worked. Returning to the canvas under consideration, its date of execution can be placed in these years, in which the author expresses a landscape aesthetic of a classicist tenor following the example of Pannini and compatriot Jean Baptiste Lallemand (Dijon, 1716 ; Paris, 1803).