Biography

French painter, the son of René-Antoine Houasse. On his deathbed in 1700, Charles II, the last Spanish Habsburg ruler, named Bourbon Philip of Anjou - the grandson of France's Louis XIV - as his successor, thus triggering the War of the Spanish Succession. It was not until 1713 that Philip secured his crown (as Philip V), at the cost of renouncing any future claim to the French throne. From 1715 a number of French painters, travelling in Philip's train, became influential in Spain, including Michel-Ange Houasse, whose genre paintings influenced Goya, Jean Ranc, and Louis-Michel Van Loo. Houasse became painter at the court of Philip V between 1715 and 1730. Houasse introduced to Spain the pastoral subjects derived from the paintings of Watteau.