Maurice Quentin de La Tour
Maurice Quentin de La Tour | |
---|---|
Born | Maurice-Quentin Delatour 5 September 1704 |
Died | 17 February 1788 | (aged 83)
Nationality | French |
Known for | Pastel |
Maurice Quentin de La Tour (5 September 1704 – 17 February 1788) was a French painter who worked primarily with
Biography
Maurice Quentin de La Tour was born in
In 1737, at the Paris Salon, de La Tour exhibited the portraits of Madame Boucher, the wife of the painter
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 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".[4] 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.[5]
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
Gallery
-
Marquise de Pompadour
-
Jean d'Alembert
-
Émilie du Chatelet
-
Isabelle de Charrière (1766)
-
Prince Henry Benedict Stuart
-
Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet
-
King Louis XV of France
-
Mlle Ferrand Meditating on Newton
-
Portrait of Gabriel Bernard de Rieux
-
Louis de France, dauphin (1745)
-
Isabelle de Charrière (1771)
Commemoration
French banknotes denominated at 50 francs, issued from 1976 to 1992, featured de La Tour's portrait.
Footnotes
- ^ François Marandet, 'The Apprenticeship of Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704-88)', The Burlington Magazine, vol. 144, 2002, pp. 502-505
- ^ 'André Michel, 'Causerie artistique: La Tour', Journal des débats politiques et litteraires (274), 2 October 1904, p. 1
- ^ a b Chisholm 1911.
- ISBN 9780007118441.
- ^ Emilia, Lady Dilke, French Painters of the XVIIIth Century (London: George Bell and Sons, 1899), p. 165
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
- https://neiljeffares.wordpress.com/2016/09/19/maurice-quentin-de-la-tours-parents/
Attribution
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "La Tour, Maurice Quentin de". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
External links
Media related to Maurice Quentin de La Tour at Wikimedia Commons