Piat-Joseph Sauvage

Was a Belgian painter, member of the Académie Royale in 1781, who became famous for his trompe-l’œil works imitating sculpture. In the 1780s, he participated in the decoration of the interiors of the royal châteaux of Rambouillet and Versailles, creating paintings on several different media, and using materials such as marble, ivory, and porcelain, and taking his inspiration from Greek and Roman antiquity and the classical vocabulary. As of 1797, he began to work with the Parisian Manufactory of Dihl and Guérhard, known as the “factory of the Duke d’Angoulême”, for in 1781 that aristocrat became its patron. He entrusted the direction of the factory to Christophe Erasmus Dihl and the Guérhard couple, who turned the factory into the main rival of the Sèvres Manufactory. The works produced by the factory with the participation of the painter Sauvage, were shown at prestigious exhibitions. Today the extant plaques made by them are extremely rare and generally to be found in prestigious French and international museums.