Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704 ndash; 1788) was a French Rococo portraitist who worked primarily with pastels. Among his most famous subjects were Voltaire; Rousseau; Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. He was born in Saint-Quentin; Aisne; a 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 delicacy of their features. In many of his self-portraits he depicts himself smiling; Laura Cumming states of 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".In 1746 La Tour was received into the Acadeacute;mie 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 where he died at the age of 83.
#3885480 in eBooks 2009-01-01 2009-01-01File Name: B010E59R7C
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