Pierre-Antoine Demachy (17 September 1723 – 10 September 1807) was a French artist who specialized in painting ruins,Trompe-l'œil architectural decorations and imaginative scenes of Paris.
Demachy was born in Paris as the son of a carpenter. In 1754, he became a student of the scenographerGiovanni Niccolò Servandoni and, the following year, was certified as a "Painter of Architecture" by theAcadémie royale de peinture et de sculpture. In 1757, he held his first exhibit at theSalon and continued to display his works there until 1802. He began teaching at the Académie soon after.
In 1764, his trompe-l'œil paintings for the façade of the new Church of Sainte-Geneviève (now thePanthéon) earned him an appointment as the decorator of stage sets for theMenus-Plaisirs du Roi.[1] Four years later, the Russian Ambassador in Paris presented him with a commission for several tableaux fromCatherine the Great.
Upon the death ofJean-François Amand, Demachy was assigned his workshop in thePalais du Louvre. His classes were so popular that, in 1777, theComte d'Angiviller wrote a letter to the Académie's Director,Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, complaining that Demachy's students were "polluting the corridors" of the Louvre. Ironically, six years later, Pierre asked the Comte to write a letter to Demachy, informing him that he had been granted an annual pension of 500Livres. In 1784, Demachy took up residence on the first floor of the Louvre.
The following year, he applied for and received the position of Professor of Perspective, recently left vacant by the death ofJacques Sébastien Leclerc. He would hold that office, with some interruptions, until his own death in 1807.[2]
He apparently weathered theRevolution with no serious consequences. In 1793 and 1794, he was appointed a Deputy to the "Commune Générale des Arts" which temporarily replaced the Académie.[3] He dutifully created a work depicting the "Burning of Feudal Titles and the Attributes of Tyranny".
His wife, Louise, died in 1799. His son, Gilles-Pierre, a painter of little note, died two years later. Demachy died in Paris on 10 September 1807.
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