Maurice Quentin de La Tour

(b Saint-Quentin, 5 Sept 1704; d Saint-Quentin, 17 Feb 1788). French pastellist. He was one of the greatest pastellists of the 18th century, an equal of Jean-Sim?on Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Perronneau. Unlike them, however, he painted no works in oils. Reacting against the stately portraits of preceding generations and against the mythological portraits of many of his contemporaries, La Tour returned to a more realistic and sober style of work. The fundamental quality of his art lies in his ability to suggest the temperament and psychology of his subjects by means of their facial expression, and thereby to translate their fugitive emotions on to paper: 'I penetrate into the depths of my subjects without their knowing it, and capture them whole', as he himself put it. His considerable success led to commissions from the royal family, the court, the rich bourgeoisie and from literary, artistic and theatrical circles. While La Tour's extensive oeuvre (Besnard and Wildenstein recorded over 1200 pastels and drawings) contains many outstanding pictures and was the result of a remarkable technical mastery, a certain degree of repetitiveness may be discerned occasionally.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

La Tour, Maurice Quentin de (1704-88). An eccentric, La Tour revolutionized French portaiture with his enormous sequence of vivacious, informal portraits in pastel. His studio at the Louvre was visited by all the notables and literati of the day, including Diderot, who commented on his intense concentration. He exhibited his interpretations of the royal family, leading philosophers, singers, actors, and dancers at the Salons. Our knowledge of the appearance of French society depends heavily on his images. In his important life-size pastel portrait of Madame de Pompadour (1755), the setting, with its prominent art portfolio and volumes of Guarini's Il Pastor fido La Henriade, De l'esprit des lois, and the Encyclopédie was used to glorify her intellectual freedom and patronage.

[Patsy Campbell]

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: French painter of religious works (1593-1652)
  Synonym: Georges de La Tour

Self-portrait, 1751, pastel on paper

Maurice Quentin de La Tour (September 5, 1704 – February 17, 1788) was a French Rococo portraitist who worked primarily with pastels. Among his most famous subjects were Voltaire, Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour.

He was born in Saint-Quentin, Aisne, the son of a musician who disapproved of his taking up painting. At the age of fifteen La Tour went to Paris, where he entered the studio of the Flemish painter Jacques Spoede. He then went to Rheims in 1724 and to England in 1725, returning to Paris to resume his studies around 1727. After his return to Paris, he began working with pastels.

In 1737 La Tour exhibited the first of a splendid series of 150 portraits that served as one of the glories of the Paris Salon for the next 37 years. Endowing his sitters with a distinctive charm and intelligence, he excelled at capturing the delicate play of their features.

In 1746 La Tour was received into the Académie de peinture et de sculpture and in 1751 was promoted to councillor. He was made portraitist to the king in 1750 and held this position until 1773, when he suffered a nervous breakdown. For a time the painter Joseph Ducreux was his only student. La Tour founded an art school and became a philanthropist before being confined to his home because of mental illness. He retired at the age of 80 to Saint-Quentin.

References

• "Maurice Quentin de La Tour." (1994) Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. London: Cambridge University Press.
• Masters
• Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Maurice Quentin de La Tour

• Brief biography and selected list of pastel portraits (in French)
• An interactive tour of his work
• a interactive multimedia module about the Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour in the Website of the musée du Louvre

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