Louis-François Marteau

Louis-François Marteau (c. 1715-1804), known in Poland as Ludwik Marteau, was a Paris-born painter who served as court painter to kings Augustus III and Stanisław August Poniatowski. All his known works are portraits, both full-size and miniatures, and his catalogue works as a group portrait of 18th-century Polish society.

The son of a carpenter at Versailles, he reached Poland on the recommendation of his teacher Maurice Quentin de La Tour, with his position arranged by his relative by marriage Louis de Silvestre, himself a court painter. In 1752 he stopped at Białystok, at the court of Jan Klemens Branicki, where he painted the hetman's family. In Warsaw he was named the king's painter, with a fixed salary and payments for each work. Between 1780 and 1783 he taught Anna Rajecka, a favourite of the king, who spent most of her life in Paris.

His sitters include figures such as Ignacy Krasicki, Stanisław Konarski and Hugo Kołłątaj, though since he did not sign his paintings, some attributions are hard to confirm. After the king's death he came under the protection of Princess Izabela Lubomirska. In 1831, after the November Uprising, most of his portraits were taken to Saint Petersburg on the orders of Tsar Nicholas I, and three years later they were burned in an attempt to erase evidence of Polish culture. He is remembered today mainly as a visual chronicler of enlightened Poland.