French painter and engraver. His father was a wigmaker who later went into the pottery business. He apprenticed his son to the architectural painter Pierre de Marchy. Louis, later to be known as Moreau the Elder to distinguish him from his brother Jean-Michel, absorbed at de Marchy's studio his master's classical taste for formal landscapes with fine monuments. Yet de Marchy also painted views of Paris and its vicinity, subjects that greatly appealed to his pupil. But he was not content with his forerunner's technique, his eye for nature was truer: Moreau would do full justice to the meadows, the greeneries and the grey skies of his homeland. In 1761, Louis Moreau submitted, for the first time, a number of drawings for the Exposition de la Jeunesse. He showed two landscapes, one of which included some architecture, at the Saint Luc exhibition in 1764, year of his admission to that academy of which he later would become an officer. A few years later, Moreau featured again at the Salon of the Académie de Saint Luc with a selection of landscapes, a Storm and a View of the Chateau of Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne which is thought to be the watercolour on show in Rouen museum. He featured in the Salons of 1793 with two landscapes, 1795 with some gouaches, 1796 with oil paintings and 1799 with four canvases and four gouaches. The last exhibition he was involved in was that of 1804. //