Jean Louis Tocqué (1696 - 1772)

• Tocqué was a French painter.
• Jean Louis Tocqué was born on 19 November 1696 in Paris.

• His father, who was also a painter, died in 1710, before Louis was even fourteen.

• He was eventually brought into the care of another artist, Jean-Marc Nattier.

• Tocqué studied under Nattier, Nicolas Bertin and Hyacinthe Rigaud in the 1720s. 

• He married Jean-Marc Nattier's daughter Marie Nattier in 1747.

• In 1740 he painted the portrait of Marie Leszczyńska, Queen of France.

• From 1737 to 1759 more than fifty of the portraits he painted, were regularly part of the exhibitions of the Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

• In 1745 he painted the portrait of Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain, one year before her death.

• In 1757 he went to the Russian Empire, where he stayed for two years after being invited by Elizaveta Petrovna, Empress of Russia in order to create a ceremonial portrait of her.

• This portrait is today part of the permanent collection of the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg in Russia.

• In the 1760s he traveled to Denmark and created the portraits of the Danish royal family and taught at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

• He died on 10 February 1772 in Paris.

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