Piat-Joseph Sauvage

1744 – 1818

Flemish painter. He studied first in his native Tournai, then at the Antwerp Academy where he was a student of Martin Joseph Geeraerts, an expert in grisaille and historic paintings. Under Geeraerts's direction he became a specialist in grisaille. Sauvage spent most of his career in Paris between 1774 and 1808. Received in the Académie in 1783, he executed numerous commissions, notably for the decoration of Versailles and the hamlet of the Petit Trianon (from 1780 to 1787). He exhibited regularly at the salon until 1804, when the critics admired "the singular manner whereby he artfully deceives our eye and renders on canvas handsome marble bas-reliefs". Such trompe-l'oeil pieces imitating antique bas-reliefs adorned many residences and châteaux in and around Paris (Bellevue, Compiègne, Fontainebleau). In 1808 he returned to Tournai, and in 1811 he executed in the cathedral a series of trompe-l'oeil bas-reliefs, transforming Poussin's series of the Seven Sacraments.

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