Jean Louis Tocqué was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 painter. He specialized in portrait painting.

Biography

Jean Louis Tocqué was born on November 19, 1696 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, capital of the Kingdom of France

Early Modern France

Kingdom of France is the early modern period of French history from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 18th century...

. His father who was also a painter abandoned him in 1706 at the age of ten. In 1707 Jean-Marc Nattier

Jean-Marc Nattier

Jean-Marc Nattier , French painter, was born in Paris, the second son of Marc Nattier , a portrait painter, and of Marie Courtois , a miniaturist...

 another painter adopted him. Tocqué studied under Nattier, Nicolas Bertin

Nicolas Bertin

Nicolas Bertin was a French painter.- Biography :A student of Jean Jouvenet, Vernansal the elder and Louis Boullongne, he won the prix de Rome in 1685 for "Construction of Noah's ark"...

 and Hyacinthe Rigaud

Hyacinthe Rigaud

Hyacinthe Rigaud was a French baroque painter of Catalan origin whose career was based in Paris.He is renowned for his portrait paintings of Louis XIV, the royalty and nobility of Europe, and members of their courts and considered one of the most notable French portraitists of the classical period...

 in the 1720s. He married Jean-Marc Nattier's daughter Marie Nattier in 1747. He died on February 10, 1772 in Paris.

Career

The first works of Tocqué were painted when he was an apprentice of Jean-Marc Nattier. Louis Tocqué was influenced by Hyacinthe Rigaud, who was also one of his tutors and Nicolas de Largillierre, another French painter. His first major work was the painting of the portrait of Louis XV of France

Louis XV of France

Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...

 ordered by his great-grandfather Louis XIV, King of France. In 1740 he painted the portrait of Marie Leszczyńska, Queen of France. From 1737 to 1759 more than fifty of the portraits he painted, were regularly part of the exhibitions of the Salon, the official art exhibition

Art exhibition

Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...

 of the Académie des Beaux-Arts

Académie des beaux-arts

The Académie des Beaux-Arts is a French learned society. It is one of the five academies of the Institut de France.It was created in 1795 as the merger of the:* Académie de peinture et de sculpture...

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 . In 1745 he painted the portrait of Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain, one year before her death. In 1757 he went to the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

, where he stayed for two years after being invited by Elizaveta Petrovna, Empress of Russia

Empress of Russia

Empress of Russia was a title in the Russian Empire between 1721 and 1917, and was held by:*Catherine I of Russia, 22 October 1721 to 17 May 1727 *Anna of Russia, 30 January 1730 to 28 October 1740...

 in order to create a ceremonial portrait of her. This portrait is today part of the permanent collection of the Hermitage Museum

Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...

 of Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 in Russia. In the 1760s he traveled to Denmark and created the portraits of the Danish royal family and taught at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

.

Paintings

• Portrait of Louis, Dauphin of France, 1739
• Portrait of Arnoldus van Rijneveld, 1739
• Portrait of Isaac van Rijneveld, 1739
• Portrait of Marie Leczinska, 1740
• Portrait of Carl Gustaf Tessin
  Carl Gustaf Tessin
  Count Carl Gustaf Tessin was a Swedish politician and son of architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger and Hedvig Eleonora Stenbock.-Life:Carl Gustaf Tessin was born in Stockholm...
  
  , 1741
• Portrait of Jean Michel de Grilleau
• Portrait of Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain, 1745
• Madame Dangé faisant des noeuds, 1753
• Portrait of Mademoiselle de Coislin
• Portrait of Ivan Shuvalov
• Portrait of Ekaterina Golovkina, 1757
• Portrait of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, 1758