Martin Drolling

Portrait by Louis-Léopold Boilly, c. 1800

Martin Drolling (Oberhergheim, Haut-Rhin, September 19, 1752 – Paris, April 16, 1817, aka Drolling the Elder) was a French painter. He was father to Michel Martin Drolling, and to Louise-Adéone Drölling, one of the few successful female painters of the time.

Biography

Portrait of his son Michel Martin Drolling as a drummer boy

Martin Drolling, a native of Oberhergheim, near Colmar, was born in 1752. He received his first lessons in art from an obscure painter of Schlestadt, but afterwards went to Paris and entered the École des Beaux-Arts. He gained momentary celebrity from his 'Interior of a Kitchen,' painted in 1815, exhibited at the Salon of 1817, and now in the Louvre. He usually painted interiors and familiar subjects of general interest. His works were popular during his lifetime, and many were engraved and lithographed. He died in Paris in 1817. The Louvre has paintings a 'Woman at a window' and a 'Violin-Player' by Drolling.

He made use of mummy brown possibly derived from the hearts of French kings.

Gallery

• 
  Portrait of Adéone
• 
  The little milk-girl
• 
  Barthélémy Charles, Comte de Dreux-Nancré
• 
  The messenger or "The Good News", 1806
• 
  Laundry
• 
  A Girl Copying a Drawing
  Pushkin Museum, Moscow
• 
  Interior of a kitchen (detail), Louvre, 1815

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Drolling, Martin". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol. I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.