Louise Moillon created about 40 paintings during her lifetime which are held in museums and private collections.
22 Facts About Louise Moillon
1.
2.
Louise Moillon was born into a strict Calvinist family in Paris in 1610.
3.
Louise Moillon had six siblings, one of whom was a painter named Isaac Louise Moillon, who obtained his education from the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.
4.
Louise Moillon's father, Nicolas Moillon, was a landscape and portrait painter, art dealer, and member of the Academie de Saint-Luc.
5.
Louise Moillon's mother, Marie Gilbert, was a daughter of a goldsmith.
6.
Louise Moillon learned the basics of painting from her father, however he died when she was young.
7.
Louise Moillon married a timber merchant, Etienne Girardot, in the 1640s and did not paint as frequently after her marriage.
8.
Louise Moillon had at least three children of her own.
9.
The Revocation Edict of Nantes in 1685 discriminated on any religion other than Catholicism, forcing citizens of France to convert to Catholicism and Louise Moillon's family was greatly affected.
10.
Louise Moillon died in France in 1696 and was given a Catholic burial.
11.
Louise Moillon specialized in still-life painting, commonly using oil paint on canvas or wood panel.
12.
Louise Moillon made works primarily containing fruits that were usually arranged on tables.
13.
Louise Moillon's work is characterized by stillness and acute detail, such as the texture of exotic fruit glowingly displayed against a dark background.
14.
Louise Moillon used Trompe l'oeil elements to give viewers an illusion and make her paintings realistic.
15.
Louise Moillon used Trompe l'oeil to give her still-lifes a lot of texture which further contribute to the realistic aspects and make her paintings relatable to pictures.
16.
Louise Moillon additionally created ledges in her pieces that spread to the end of the picture frame to enhance the illusion.
17.
Louise Moillon was one of the first French still-life artists to combine figures and still-life before 1650 along with another painter named Jacques Linard.
18.
Louise Moillon's style used elements from Flemish painting through use of trompe l'oeil elements and the contrast of cool and warm toned colors along with aspects of French genre painting as shown through the compositional style of her paintings.
19.
Some of Louise Moillon's painting compositions have been described to have a primitive quality due to the way she arranges the fruit.
20.
The notion that Louise Moillon was highly regarded by her contemporaries is demonstrated by the writing of Georges de Scudery who placed her name alongside the still-life painters Jacques Linard and Peter van Boucle, comparing all three to Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian.
21.
Louise Moillon had many notable patrons including Louis XIII's minister of finance.
22.
The majority of Louise Moillon's paintings were executed in the 1630s, before her marriage in 1640 to Etienne Girardot de Chancourt.