Joseph Vivien (1657 - 1735)

• Was a French painter from Lyon.
• He left Lyon for Paris at the age of twenty.
• He found employment in the large atelier of Charles Le Brun, the equivalent of an academy.
• He made his reputation with his portraits in pastels.
• He was received in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1701, under the designation peintre en pastel.
• His morceaux de reception, pastel portraits of the sculptor François Girardon and the architect Robert de Cotte, are in the Louvre Museum.
• He was appointed counsellor to the Academy and provided with lodging under royal auspices at the Gobelins Manufactory.
• From Paris he visited Brussels.
• Vivien was taken up by the francophile Elector of Cologne and worked in Munich as first painter to the Elector's brother, Maximilian Emmanuel, Elector of Bavaria.
• At the time of his death in Bonn, he was engaged on a vast canvas combining portraits of the whole family of the Elector, in oils.
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