Nicolas Pineau
Encyclopedia
Nicolas Pineau was a French carver and ornamental designer, one of the leaders who initiated the exuberant asymmetrical phase of the high Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

. He worked in St. Petersburg and Paris.

Pineau, the son of the carver Jean-Baptiste Pineau (died 1694), who appears in the Bâtiments du Roi
Bâtiments du Roi
The Bâtiments du Roi was a division of Department of the household of the Kings of France in France under the Ancien Régime. It was responsible for building works at the King's residences in and around Paris.-History:...

 accounts for Versailles
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles....

 and elsewhere from 1680, was the outstanding talent among those designers and craftsmen who accompanied Alexandre Le Blond to St. Petersburg in 1716. His Russian contracts were for designing and carving "doors, chimney pieces, frames, table frames and other ornaments and designs". Le Blond's premature death in 1719 left Pineau the leading French decorative artist in Russia, called upon for a variety of decorations and even to give architectural designs. His chief work in Russia is the design and carving of the Grand Cabinet of Peter the Great in Peterhof
Peterhof Palace
The Peterhof Palace in Russian, so German is transliterated as "Петергoф" Petergof into Russian) for "Peter's Court") is actually a series of palaces and gardens located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, laid out on the orders of Peter the Great. These Palaces and gardens are sometimes referred as the...

, which the Tsar showed, newly complete, in August 1721. Unlike many works by French artists abroad, its distribution is entirely French, featuring central opposed mirrors over low chimneypieces, flanked by carved panels and double doors. The richly carved panels in varying relief with bold certal cartouches and military trophies follow surviving drawings by Pineau.

His contract expired in 1726, though he lingered to the beginning of the Russian New Year the following March. On his return to Paris, Pineau found the Régence manner had been transformed in the decade of his absence by the carver-designer François-Antoine Vassé and the designer Gilles-Marie Oppenord (see Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

). Surprised to find the field of architecture currently well filled by highly competent Paris-trained practitioners, Jacques-François Blondel
Jacques-François Blondel
Jacques-François Blondel was a French architect. He was the grandson of François Blondel , whose course of architecture had appeared in four volumes in 1683 -Biography:...

 reported, he depended upon his own specialty of designs for carving, and enjoyed a vogue extraordinaire. He associated himself particularly with the architect Jean-Baptiste Leroux, who afforded him free rein in designing interiors. The later reaction against the Rococo ensured that most of these crucial works were destroyed through neglect: Pineau's work is amply documented, however, in his surviving drawings and in engravings, witnesses to his delicacy of relief, the extreme attenuation of his mouldings and the free interplay of tendril and interlace (Kimball, p. 163). Individually asymmetrical panels exhibit the Rococo concept of contraste, finding their balance in corresponding features on the other side of a central panel or mirror frame. Pierced rims of expanded shellwork are combined with naturalistic sprays of flowers. At the top of the walls, the upper molding of the cove that joins walls to ceiling no longer follows the outlines of the room but sweeps boldly to join together the cartouches that spring from the corners.

Pineau's designs were well represented in engravings, which disseminated Parisian styles across Europe. "It was Pineau who was primarily responsible for the creation and the adoption of the genre pittoresque in French interiors. Earlier than Meissonnier
Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier
Juste Aurèle Meissonier was a French goldsmith, sculptor, painter, architect, and furniture designer.He was born at Turin, but became known as a worker in Paris, where he died. His Italian origin and training were probably responsible for the extravagance of his decorative style...

, he designed and executed rooms fully incorporating the crucial innovations. Far more than Meissonnier or any other, he fixed the character and type of detail destined to prevail in France. Among all the works, his own were to remain unsurpassed."

Pineau's boiseries in Parisian hôtels

  • Hôtel de Matignon, about 1732. Surviving. Fiske Kimball attributed the undocumernted boiseries, ceiling stuccowork and mirrors To Pineau.
  • Hôtel de Rouillé, about 1732. Architecture remodelled by Jean-François Blondel The first documented work of Pineau in Paris, represented inm numerous drawings in the Musée des arts décoratifs. The building was demolished soon after 1760.
  • Hôtel de Villars, the Gallery in the east wing, 1732–33. Architecture by Leroux. Documented in a suite ofnine engraved plates by Jacques-François Blondel
    Jacques-François Blondel
    Jacques-François Blondel was a French architect. He was the grandson of François Blondel , whose course of architecture had appeared in four volumes in 1683 -Biography:...

    .
  • Hôtel de Roquelaure, 1733. Survives.
  • Hôtel de Mazarin, rue de Varenne, 1735. Architecture by Leroux. Interior remodelling.
  • Hôtel de Varengeville, about 1735. Attributed to Pineau on the basis on similar drawings. A boiserie is installed at the Metropolitan Museum.
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