Pitloo was born in
Arnhem. He started studying painting first at
Paris and then at
Rome, where there was already an international artistic colony, in 1811. He took advantage of a scholarship offered by
Louis Bonaparte, the King of Holland. In 1815, after the fall of Bonaparte, the scholarship payments ceased. He was then invited to
Naples by the Russian diplomat and art connoisseur
Count Grigory Vladimirovich Orloff (1777 – 22 June 1826). In 1816, Pitloo won, in a public competition, the post of professor of landscape at the Neapolitan Academy. Lord Napier lauded him as a landscape painter: In 1820 he married Giulia Mori and thus became a citizen of the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. He became a lecturer at the
Art Institute of Art at Naples where he specialized in pastoral painting. Around 1826 he was living in Vicoletto del Vasto 15, with
Carl Götzloff,
Giacinto Gigante and
Teodoro Duclere.
Gabriele Smargiassi was his pupil and successor at the academy. Another pupil was
Vincenzo Franceschini. He remained in Naples until his death during a
cholera epidemic. He was buried in the
English Cemetery there. He was considered a leading exponent of the "
Posillipo School" of painting, named to the area where he lived in Naples. His paintings have been compared to precursors of
Impressionism, some sixty years before this was invented. ==References==