Jean Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine (1745–1830)

• Was a Polish-French painter, draughtsman, engraver and caricaturist.
• Born in Misy-sur-Yonne in 1745 in France.
• Norblin started his career in France, in the early 1760s (his first known works date to 1763).
• Around 1763 he trained in the studio of Parisian painter Jacques-Philippe Caresme and around 1765 he worked with Francesco Casanova.
• In 1765 he entered the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture.
• In 1770–71 he studied under Louis-Michel van Loo and Joseph-Marie Vien at the Ecole Royale des Elèves Protégés, all in Paris.
• Around 1771–74 he worked in Paris, London, and Spa.
• Around 1772 he met Polish Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, with whom he traveled for two years and by whom he was invited to Poland.
• From 1774 he worked for the magnate family of Czartoryski and became their court artist and tutor for the children.
• He settled in Warsaw and this move allowed him to witness and illustrate many important historical moments of the last years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• After his return to France in 1804 he still continued to paint based on some of his Poland-era drafts.
• He died in Paris in 1830.  

• Norblin's students in Poland included Aleksander Orłowski, Michał Płoński and Jan Rustem. 

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