The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (259 page)

(1636–1716).
French painter, one of the pre-eminent decorative artists of Louis XIV's reign. He was a pupil of
Lebrun
and his assistant at Versailles, but his style was more strongly affected by his stay in Italy (1658–63), where he absorbed the
Baroque
manner of Pietro da
Cortona
and was influenced by the colour and warmth of such north Italian artists as
Correggio
and
Veronese
. In the 1680s he turned more to
Rubens
as a source of inspiration. La Fosse was in London working for the first Duke of Montagu on the decoration of Montagu House (formerly on the site of the British Museum) from 1689 to 1692, in which year he returned to Paris to decorate the church of the Invalides. Originally he was commissioned to paint the entire building, but eventually he did only the dome and pendentives (1702–4), in a style that heralds something of the lightness and elegance of the ensuing
Rococo
. La Fosse's work was much more free and colourful than that of most of his contemporaries, and Anthony
Blunt
described him as ‘almost the only 17th-cent. French artist whom
Watteau
may have studied with profit’.

 
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(1885–1925).
French painter. In 1912–14 he was a member of the
Section d'Or
group, and his work shows an individual response to
Cubism
; his paintings were more naturalistic than those of
Braque
and
Picasso
, but he adopted something of their method of analysing forms into planes. The effect in La Fresnaye's work, however, is more decorative than structural, and his prismatic colours reflect the influence of
Delaunay
, as in his most famous and personal work,
The Conquest of the Air
(MOMA, New York, 1913), in which he portrays himself and his brother in an exhilaratingly airy setting with a balloon ascending in the background. La Fresnaye's health was ruined during his service in the army during the First World War and he never again had the physical energy for sustained work. In his later paintings he abandoned Cubist spatial analysis for a more linear style.

 
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(1663–1721).
French decorative painter, active for almost all his career in England. After working for a short time under Charles
Lebrun
in Paris he came to England in 1683/4, initially collaborating with
Verrio
but soon branching out on his own, working mainly in country houses, notably Burghley House, Chatsworth, and Blenheim Palace. He was a better painter than Verrio (although still unexceptional judged by European standards) and was also a more attractive personality, but he never achieved the extravagant worldly success of the Italian. From about 1710
Thornhill
began to succeed him in popularity. Late in his career Laguerre turned increasingly to portraits and history paintings.

 
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(1606–56).
French painter, active in his native Paris. He painted religious and mythological scenes, portraits, and landscapes and also made engravings. His earlier work was influenced by
Primaticcio
and the
Fontainebleau schools
, but from about 1638 his style became more classical, under the influence of Nicolas
Poussin
and then of Philippe de
Champaigne
.
The Birth of Bacchus
(Hermitage, St Petersburg, 1638) is a good example of his work—obviously indebted to Poussin, but showing a certain individuality in the soft and romantic treatment of the landscape that is the most attractive feature of La Hyre's style.

 
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(1641–1711).
Dutch painter, etcher, and writer on art. Born in Liège, he settled in Amsterdam in 1665, and moved to The Hague in 1684. He was the leading decorative painter in Holland in the second half of the 17th cent., working in an academic
classical
style that inspired his over-enthusiastic contemporaries to call him ‘the Dutch
Raphael
’ and ‘the Dutch
Poussin
’. In about 1690, however, he went blind and thereafter devoted himself to art theory. His lectures were collected in two books—
Grondlegginge der Teekenkonst
(Foundation of Drawing, 1701) and
Het Groot Schilderboek
(The Great Painting Book, 1707)—which were translated and much reprinted during the 18th cent. Lairesse's writings reveal the same academic approach as his paintings and he somewhat naïvely confessed that he had a special preference for
Rembrandt
until he learned ‘the infallible rules of art’. Rembrandt had painted a portrait of the young Lairesse in 1665 (Met. Mus., New York), sympathetically showing his disease-disfigured face.

 
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