MARÉES, George de
George de Marées (or Georges Desmarées), Swedish painter, active in Germany. His father was descended from French émigrés to Sweden, his mother from the Mijtens family of Netherlandish artists. He was a pupil at the painting school of his uncle, Martin van Mytens II, in Stockholm from 1710. His early portraits, painted while he was still in Sweden, reveal the influence of van Mytens and his French models, Hyacinthe Rigaud and Nicolas de Largillière.
De Marées left Sweden in 1724 and after a short stay in Amsterdam went to Nuremberg to continue his training with Johann Daniel Preissler at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. A year later he went to Venice to study with Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, whose art made a considerable impression on him. He returned to Bavaria in 1728 and was summoned to Munich in 1730 for appointment as court painter to Elector Charles.
He was initially involved in the furnishing and decoration of the Ahnengalerie at the Residenz in Munich. From 1745 to 1749 and from 1753 to 1754 he worked in Bonn for Prince-Bishop Clemens August of Cologne, and in 1752 he worked for Landgrave William VIII of Hesse-Kassel. The influence of French Rococo painting was becoming increasingly prominent during this period, and the Venetian chiaroscuro of his painting gradually gave way to brighter, more emphatic colouring. Such portraits as those of Countess Holstein (1754; Munich, Lenbachhaus), Elector Maximilian III Joseph and his Director Graf Seeau (1755; Munich, Residences) and Princess Peoria (Stuttgart, Stateable) assured his place among the most important representatives of Rococo court painting in Germany. In later years his portraits were marked by a more measured and objective style. Besides large formal portraits of noble patrons, he also undertook commissions for middle class patrons and church paintings.
