Louis Michel van Loo 1759(1759)
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 97 x 83 cm (38.2 x 32.7 in)
cyf Portrait of Princess Ekaterina Dmitrievna Golitsyna Louis-Michel van Loo (2 March 1707-20 March 1771) was a French painter.
He studied under his father, the painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo, at Turin and Rome, and he won a prize at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris in 1725. With his uncle, the painter Charles-Andre van Loo, he went to Rome in 1727 - 1732, and in 1736 he became court painter to Philip V of Spain at Madrid, where he was a founder-member of the Academy in 1752. He returned to Paris in 1753, and painted many portraits of Louis XV of France. In 1765 he succeeded Charles-Andre as director of the special school of the French academy known as the Ecole Royale des Eleves Proteges. In 1766 he made the portrait of the Portuguese statesman Sebastiao de Melo, Marquis of Pombal.
Among his brothers were the painters Francois van Loo (1708 - 1732) and Charles-Amedee-Philippe van Loo (1719 - 1795).
