Pierre-Louis De La Rive

Training under Giovanni Battista Casanova is recorded. Charles Joseph Auriol, Louis-Auguste Brun and Susanne-Elisabeth Eynard-Chatelain are recorded as having studied under Pierre-Louis De La Rive. The recorded working language is French. Claude Lorrain is recorded as an influence. Places of work recorded in the authority are Geneva. Works named in the authority record are View of the Mont-Blanc from Sallanches at dusk. Work by Pierre-Louis De La Rive is recorded in the collections of Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Art and History Geneva, Hermitage Museum, Musée Fabre and Musea Brugge.

He was born to an old family of magistrates and learned men. His father, Pierre, was a pastor in Cartigny. In 1773, after attending courses in Natural Philosophy taught by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, he gave up his legal studies but had great difficulty convincing his father to allow him to pursue a career in the fine arts. In 1774, he and his friend, Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros, travelled through Savoy and Vaud, making sketches. Eventually, he was able to take lessons from the landscape painter, Nicolas Henri Joseph de Fassin, who came from Liège. His instruction consisted largely of copying the Dutch masters from the collections of François Tronchin and Jean-Jacques de Sellon. In 1776, he went to Germany. After a brief stay in Mannheim, he enrolled at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he came under the tutelage of Giovanni Battista Casanova, who introduced him to the work of Claude Lorrain and the early Italians. In 1779, he married Théodora-Charlotte Godefroy and the couple returned to Geneva. Once there, he took Casanova's advice and began painting in a manner that would later be called en plein aire. In 1784, he visited the major art collections in Holland, Germany and Austria. During an eighteen-month stay in Rome, he worked with Ducros, Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours and Giovanni Battista Canova, making copies in museums, painting outdoors and developing a less rigorous representational style. Upon returning to Switzerland, in 1787, he settled in Céligny and became a member of the Geneva Art Society. He held major exhibitions at their salons of 1789 and 1792. As of 1788, he was also a member of the Council of Two Hundred. Following the War of the First Coalition, he was compelled to relocate to Bern, but was able to return in 1797 and settle in Presinge. He was even able to arrange exhibitions at the Salon of Paris in 1799 and 1801. His clients there included Germaine de Staël and Empress Joséphine. In October, 1813, he had a paralytic stroke, from which he never fully recovered.

The authorities additionally record the headings Pierre Louis de la Rive-Godefroy, Pierre Louis de La Rive, Pierre-Louis Delarive, Pierre Louis de Larive-Godefroy and Pierre Louis Delarive. His recorded language was French. His recorded confession was reformed.