Jean-Baptiste Claudot de Nancy, 1733 – 1805, Kreis des

COUPLE Oil on paper, on panel. 30 x 43.5 cm. Each with engraved old plaque attributed to the named artist. In gilded frame with relief decoration. Although Jean-Baptiste Claudot was active as a painter of religious pictures as well as flowers and still lifes, he also became known as one of the most important French landscape painters of the second half of the 18th century. He studied under Jean Girardet and André Joly and was a friend and follower of Joseph Vernet. His paintings also show a strong influence of Hubert Robert's ruin paintings as well as the great Dutch and Venetian landscape painters such as Berchem, Both, Marco Ricci and Francesco Zuccarelli. The two present unsigned paintings are very close to Claudot's style and were probably painted in his circle. While one painting shows a bleaching basin with washerwomen in the middle of a riverside development with drying textiles, the other painting, which incidentally also shows drying textiles, depicts a ruin capriccio in the foreground, with numerous figures drawing water from a public fountain under a classical relief. (1400441) (13)