Maurice Quentin de La Tour (; 5 September 1704 – 17 February 1788) was a French painter who worked primarily with

pastel A pastel () is an art medium that consists of powdered pigment and a binder (material), binder. It can exist in a variety of forms, including a stick, a square, a pebble, and a pan of color, among other forms. The pigments used in pastels are ...

s in the

Rococo Rococo, less commonly Roccoco ( , ; or ), also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpte ...

style. Among his most famous subjects were

Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...

Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher ('' philosophe''), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects ...

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defi ...

and the

Madame de Pompadour Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (, ; 29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764), commonly known as Madame de Pompadour, was a member of the French court. She was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751, and rema ...

Biography

Maurice Quentin de La Tour was born in Saint-Quentin, the third son of a musician, François de La Tour. François was from

Laon Laon () is a city in the Aisne Departments of France, department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. History Early history The Ancient Diocese of Laon, which rises a hundred metres above the otherwise flat Picardy plain, has always held s ...

and he was the son of a master mason, Jean de La Tour, of

and Saint-Quentin, who died in 1674. François de La Tour apparently was successively a trumpet-player for the rifle regiment of the Duc du Maine, and musician to the master of the collegiate church of Saint-Quentin. He is popularly said to have disapproved of his son taking up the arts, but there is nothing to support this. According to François Marandet in 2002, an apprenticeship was arranged for the young Maurice, with a painter named Dupouch, from 12 October 1719, but it is not known when this contract was terminated. Little is known of de La Tour's background until, when barely nineteen, he went to Paris indefinitely, fleeing an indiscretion concerning his cousin, Anne Bougier; by this age he was claiming painting as his profession. After travelling briefly to England in 1725, he returned to Paris in 1727, where he was encouraged to begin working as a portraitist in pastels. His earliest known portrait, which is attested only by an engraving made in 1731 by Langlois, was a portrait of

. In 1737, at the Paris Salon, de La Tour exhibited the portraits of ''Madame Boucher'', the wife of the painter

François Boucher François Boucher ( , ; ; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories ...

, and ''l'Auteur qui rit'' or ''Self-Portrait, Laughing'' (musée du Louvre), the first of a series of 150 portraits that served as one of the glories of the

Paris Salon The Salon (), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art event in the Western world. At the ...

for the next 36 years. Nevertheless, the painter

Joseph Ducreux Joseph, Baron Ducreux (26 June 1735 – 24 July 1802) was a French noble, portrait painter, pastelist, portrait miniature, miniaturist, and engraving, engraver, who was a successful portraitist at the court of Louis XVI of France, and resumed hi ...

claimed to be his only student (although this is unlikely). On 25 May 1737, de La Tour was officially recognised (''agréé'') by the

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family or royalty Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, ...

, and soon attracted the attention of the French court. According to Jeffares, he had an apartment in the

Palais du Louvre The Louvre Palace (, ), often referred to simply as the Louvre, is an iconic French palace located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, occupying a vast expanse of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Ger ...

in 1745. By the late 1760s, his portraiture of the royal family had ceased. De La Tour was popularly perceived as endowing his portrait subjects with a distinctive charm and intelligence, while his delicate but sure touch with the pastel medium rendered a pleasing softness to their features. Contemporary accounts describe de La Tour's nature as lively, good-humoured, but eccentric. In many of his self-portraits he depicts himself smiling out from the frame towards the viewer;

Laura Cumming Laura Cumming is a British journalist who is the art critic of ''The Observer'' newspaper, a position she has held since 1999. Before that she worked for ''The Guardian'', the ''New Statesman'' and the BBC. In addition to her career in journal ...

states of de La Tour that "where other artists make heavy weather of portraying themselves, he takes the task lightly and seems to have produced more glad-faced self-portraits than any other artist". However, being of an excessively nervous disposition (which eventually descended into dementia), and an exacting practitioner, he has also been described as over-engineering his work, to the point of spoiling it.Emilia, Lady Dilke, ''French Painters of the XVIIIth Century'' (London: George Bell and Sons, 1899), p. 165 As de La Tour's wealth increased from his commissions, so did his philanthropy: he founded a school for drawing in his native Saint-Quentin and donated towards impoverished women in confinement and disabled and ageing artisans and artists. He was also advisor and benefactor to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, and the Academy of Sciences and ''Belles Lettres'' of Amiens. Eventually confined to his home and to the care of his brother, Jean-François, because of encroaching

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...

, he retired at the age of 80 to Saint-Quentin, where he died

intestate Intestacy is the condition of the estate of a person who dies without a legally valid will, resulting in the distribution of their estate under statutory intestacy laws rather than by their expressed wishes. Alternatively this may also apply ...

at the age of 83 (he had revoked earlier wills). Jean-François (d. 1807), ''chevalier de l'ordre royal militaire de Saint-Louis'', was the natural heir to his estate.

Gallery

File:D'après Maurice Quentin de La Tour, François-Marie Arouet, dit Voltaire (château de Versailles).jpg, File:Maurice Quentin de La Tour - Marquise de Pompadour - WGA12359.jpg, File:Maurice Quentin de La Tour - Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau - WGA12360.jpg, File:Jean d'Alembert.jpeg, File:Emilie_Chatelet_portrait_by_Latour.jpg, File:Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Portrait de Marie Leczinska, reine de France (1748) - 02.jpg, File:Isabelle Agneta van Tuyll van Serooskerken, by Maurice Quentin de La Tour.jpg, File:Maurice Quentin de La Tour Prince Henry Benedict Clement Stuart.jpg, File:Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet.jpg, File:Louis15-1.jpg, File:Maurice Quentin de La Tour - Mlle Ferrand Meditating on Newton - WGA12355.jpg, Mlle Ferrand Meditating on Newton File:Maurice-Quentin de La Tour - Pierre-Louis Laideguive - Google Art Project.jpg, Pierre-Louis Laideguive File:Jacques DuMont Le Romain by Maurice-Quentin de la Tour.jpg, Jacques du Mont Le Romain File:Maurice de Saxe (1696-1750).PNG, File:Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (French - Portrait of Gabriel Bernard de Rieux - Google Art Project.jpg, Portrait of Gabriel Bernard de Rieux File:Louis de France, dauphin (1745) by Maurice Quentin de La Tour.png, Louis de France, dauphin (1745) File:Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville (original replica) by Maurice Quentin de La Tour.jpg,

Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville Jean-Joseph de Mondonville (, 25 December 1711 (baptised) – 8 October 1772), also known as Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, was a French people, French violinist and composer. He was a younger contemporary of Jean-Philippe Rameau and enjoy ...

File:Isabelle de Charrière - Quentin de La Tour.jpg, File:MarieFel.jpg,

Commemoration

French banknotes denominated at 50

francs The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' ( King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th centur ...

, issued from 1976 to 1992, featured de La Tour's portrait.

Footnotes

References

* Abécédario de P.-J. Mariette et autres notes inédites de cet amateur sur les arts et les artistes. ''Archives de l'art français''. 1856. t. III, 1854–56, pp. 66–78. * de Goncourt, Edmond and Jules. French XVIII Century Painters. (1867) pp. 165, 171, 176 (first published Paris, 1867, fasc. 4, reprinted New York, 1948; second edition, 1873, pp. 271, 281–282). * Tourneux, Maurice. ''La Tour'', biographie critique. (Paris, 1904) p. 40. * Jeffares, Neil, s.v. 'La Tour, Maurice-Quentin de', In ''Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800'', http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/LaTour2a.pdf
Maurice-Quentin de La Tour’s parents

Attribution

* .

External links

Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online editionan interactive multimedia module about the Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour in the Website of the musée du Louvre
{{DEFAULTSORT:La Tour, Maurice Quentin de 1704 births 1788 deaths 18th-century French painters French male painters French portrait painters French pastel artists People from Saint-Quentin, Aisne 18th-century French male artists Members of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture