Jean Jacques Lagrenée

1739 –1821, Paris

Jean Jacques Lagrenée was trained at the École Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris and by his elder brother, Louis Jean François Lagrenée, with whom he spent the years from 1760 to 1762 in Russia, where they took up an appointment by Tsarina Elisabeth I. Here he made a name for himself primarily as a decoration painter and also produced his first etchings. From 1763 to 1768 the artist lived in Rome, where he continued his studies at the Académie de France. Back in Paris, Lagrenée developed into a talented and sought-after painter and printmaker, whose works were exhibited over several decades at the Paris Salons. In 1775 he was admitted to the Academy of his native city, while a few years later he was appointed professor and then head of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory. While Lagrenée’s later prints betray a strong neoclassical influence, the artist derived inspiration in his earlier works primarily from the etchings of the Genoese artist, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.