Louise Moillon

1610 – 1696

The greatest still-life painter of the French seventeenth century. She spent her long career in Paris, specializing specifically in still-life pictures with the occasional figure. She came from a strictly Calvinist family. In 1640 she married the wealthy timber merchant Etienne Girardot de Chancourt, also a Huguenot. Her technique was extremely refined, and this led, in later centuries, to the confusion of her work with Dutch, Flemish and even German painters. Since four still-life pictures at Grenoble, once given to Moillon, have been reattributed to the Flemish artist Osias Beert, Moillon's art has been redefined. Her best pictures have a stillness combined with acute powers of observation, notably of the texture of exotic fruit, which have never been surpassed.

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