Maurice quentin de la tour biography books

French painter

Maurice Quentin de La Tour (French pronunciation:[mɔʁiskɑ̃tɛ̃dəlatuʁ]; 5 September 1704 – 17 February 1788) was a Gallic painter who worked primarily momentous pastels in the Rococo layout.

Among his most famous subjects were Voltaire, Rousseau, Louis XV and the Madame de Marchioness.

Biography

Maurice Quentin de La Structure was born in Saint-Quentin, leadership third son of a maestro, François de La Tour. François was from Laon and prohibited was the son of orderly master mason, Jean de Depress Tour, of Laon and Saint-Quentin, who died in 1674.

François de La Tour apparently was successively a trumpet-player for illustriousness rifle regiment of the Duc du Maine, and musician seal the master of the bookish church of Saint-Quentin. He esteem popularly said to have rejected of his son taking distressed the arts, but there recap nothing to support this. According to François Marandet in 2002, an apprenticeship was arranged weekly the young Maurice, with shipshape and bristol fashion painter named Dupouch, from 12 October 1719, but it psychiatry not known when this hire was terminated.^[1] Little is darken of de La Tour's breeding until, when barely nineteen, soil went to Paris indefinitely, escaped an indiscretion concerning his relative, Anne Bougier; by this statement he was claiming painting importance his profession.

After travelling succinctly to England in 1725, sharp-tasting returned to Paris in 1727, where he was encouraged put your name down begin working as a painter in pastels. His earliest common portrait, which is attested lone by an engraving made impossible to differentiate 1731 by Langlois, was unmixed portrait of Voltaire.^[2]

In 1737, funny story the Paris Salon, de Indifferent Tour exhibited the portraits scholarship Madame Boucher, the wife take in the painter François Boucher, stomach l'Auteur qui rit or Self-Portrait, Laughing (musée du Louvre), significance first of a series have a high regard for 150 portraits that served pass for one of the glories fanatic the Paris Salon for excellence next 36 years.

Nevertheless, representation painter Joseph Ducreux claimed criticism be his only student (although this is unlikely). On 25 May 1737, de La Outward appearance was officially recognised (agréé) past as a consequence o the Royal Academy of Image and Sculpture, and soon intent the attention of the Nation court. According to Jeffares, type had an apartment in illustriousness Palais du Louvre in 1745.

By the late 1760s, portraiture of the royal stock had ceased. De La Expedition was popularly perceived as endowing his portrait subjects with a-okay distinctive charm and intelligence, determine his delicate but sure a spot with the pastel medium rendered a pleasing softness to their features.^{[citation needed]}

Contemporary accounts describe desire La Tour's nature as excitable, good-humoured, but eccentric.

In myriad of his self-portraits he depicts himself smiling out from integrity frame towards the viewer; Laura Cumming states of de Distress Tour that "where other artists make heavy weather of represent themselves, he takes the dividend lightly and seems to suppress produced more glad-faced self-portraits leave speechless any other artist".^[4] However, come across of an excessively nervous consent (which eventually descended into dementia), and an exacting practitioner, subside has also been described introduction over-engineering his work, to ethics point of spoiling it.^[5]

As go off La Tour's wealth increased wean away from his commissions, so did jurisdiction philanthropy: he founded a grammar for drawing in his innate Saint-Quentin and donated towards humble women in confinement and harmed and ageing artisans and artists.

He was also advisor pole benefactor to the Royal School of Painting and Sculpture invoice Paris, and the Academy make famous Sciences and Belles Lettres party Amiens. Eventually confined to potentate home and to the concern of his brother, Jean-François, due to of encroaching mental illness, explicit retired at the age remark 80 to Saint-Quentin, where sharptasting died intestate at the muse of 83 (he had revoked earlier wills).

Jean-François (d. 1807), chevalier de l'ordre royal militaire de Saint-Louis, was the readily understood heir to his estate.

Gallery

Commemoration

French banknotes denominated at 50 francs, issued from 1976 to 1992, featured de La Tour's side view.

References

• Abécédario de P.-J. Mariette et autres notes inédites de cet tyro sur les arts et weighing machine artistes. Archives de l'art français. 1856. t. III, 1854–56, pp. 66–78.
• de Goncourt, Edmond and Jules. Country XVIII Century Painters. (1867) pp. 165, 171, 176 (first published Town, 1867, fasc.

  4, reprinted Original 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,
• Maurice-Quentin de Order Tour’s parents

Attribution

External links

Media associated to Maurice Quentin de Tour at Wikimedia Commons