Louis-Michel van Loo was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

.

He studied under his father, the painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo

Jean-Baptiste van Loo

Jean-Baptiste van Loo was a French subject and portrait painter.-Biography:He was born in Aix-en-Provence, and was instructed in art by his father Louis-Abraham van Loo, son of Jacob van Loo...

, at Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

 and Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, and he won a prize at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1725. With his uncle, the painter Charles-André van Loo

Charles-André van Loo

Carle or Charles-André van Loo was a French subject painter, and a younger brother of Jean-Baptiste van Loo and grandson of Jacob van Loo. He was the most famous member of a successful dynasty of painters of Dutch origin...

, he went to Rome in 1727–1732, and in 1736 he became court painter to Philip V of Spain

Philip V of Spain

Philip V was King of Spain from 15 November 1700 to 15 January 1724, when he abdicated in favor of his son Louis, and from 6 September 1724, when he assumed the throne again upon his son's death, to his death.Before his reign, Philip occupied an exalted place in the royal family of France as a...

 at Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, where he was a founder-member of the Academy in 1752. He returned to Paris in 1753, and painted many portraits of Louis XV of France

Louis XV of France

Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...

. In 1765 he succeeded Charles-André as director of the special school of the French academy known as the École Royale des Élèves Protégés.
In 1766 he made the portrait of the Portuguese statesman Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of Pombal.

Among his brothers were the painters François van Loo (1708–1732) and Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo

Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo

Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo was a French painter of allegorical scenes and portraits.He studied under his father, the painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo, at Turin and Rome, where in 1738 he won the Prix de Rome, then at Aix-en-Provence, before returning to Paris in 1745...

 (1719–1795).

Paintings

• The Family of Philip V (1743)
  The Family of Philip V (1743)
  The Family of Felipe V is an oil on canvas painting by the French artist Louis Michel van Loo, completed in 1743. It features life-sized depictions of Philip V of Spain and his family. The painting depicts the royals in a fictional room and is in the style of French baroque and rococo art...