{{Short description|French painter (1704–1788)}} {{Infobox artist | name = Maurice Quentin de La Tour | image = Autoportrait de La Tour.jpg | image_size = 220 | caption = ''Self-portrait with Lace Jabot'' ({{circa|1751}}) | birth_name = Maurice-Quentin Delatour | birth_date = {{birth date|1704|9|5|df=y}} | birth_place = Saint-Quentin, Picardy, Kingdom of France | death_date = {{death date and age|1788|2|17|1704|9|5|df=y}} | death_place = Saint-Quentin, Picardy, Kingdom of France | field = Pastel | movement = | works = | signature = }}

'''Maurice Quentin de La Tour''' ({{IPA|fr|mɔʁis kɑ̃tɛ̃ də la tuʁ}}; 5 September 1704 – 17 February 1788) was a French painter who specialised in portrait painting using pastels in the Rococo style. Among his most famous subjects were Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Louis XV, and Madame de Pompadour.

==Life==

Maurice Quentin de La Tour was born on 5 September 1704 in Saint-Quentin.{{sfn|Monnier|2003}} He was the third son of a musician, François de La Tour. François was from Laon and he was the son of a master mason, Jean de La Tour, of Laon 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.<ref>François Marandet, 'The Apprenticeship of Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704-88)', ''The Burlington Magazine'', vol. 144, 2002, pp. 502-505</ref> 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 Voltaire.<ref>'André Michel, 'Causerie artistique: La Tour', ''Journal des débats politiques et litteraires'' (274), 2 October 1904, p. 1</ref>

In 1737, at the Paris Salon, de La Tour exhibited the portraits of ''Madame Boucher'', the wife of the painter François Boucher, 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 for the next 36 years. Nevertheless, the painter Joseph Ducreux claimed to be his only student (although this is unlikely).{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} On 25 May 1737, de La Tour was officially recognised (''agréé'') by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and soon attracted the attention of the French court. According to Jeffares, he had an apartment in the Palais du Louvre 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.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}}

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".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Cumming|first1=Laura|title=A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits|date=2010|publisher=HarperPress|location=London|isbn=9780007118441|pages=159}}</ref> 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.<ref>Emilia, Lady Dilke, ''French Painters of the XVIIIth Century'' (London: George Bell and Sons, 1899), p. 165</ref>

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, he retired at the age of 80 to Saint-Quentin,{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} where he died intestate 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== <gallery mode="packed-hover" heights="200px"> File:D'après Maurice Quentin de La Tour, François-Marie Arouet, dit Voltaire (château de Versailles).jpg|{{center|Voltaire}} File:Maurice Quentin de La Tour - Marquise de Pompadour - WGA12359.jpg|{{center|Madame de Pompadour}} File:Maurice Quentin de La Tour - Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau - WGA12360.jpg|{{center|Jean-Jacques Rousseau}} File:Jean d'Alembert.jpeg|{{center|Jean d'Alembert}} File:Emilie_Chatelet_portrait_by_Latour.jpg|{{center|Émilie du Chatelet}} File:Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Portrait de Marie Leczinska, reine de France (1748) - 02.jpg|{{center|Queen Marie Leszczyńska}} File:Isabelle Agneta van Tuyll van Serooskerken, by Maurice Quentin de La Tour.jpg|{{center|Isabelle de Charrière (1766)}} File:Maurice Quentin de La Tour Prince Henry Benedict Clement Stuart.jpg|{{center|Prince Henry Benedict Stuart}} File:Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet.jpg|{{center|Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet}} File:Louis15-1.jpg|{{center|King Louis XV}} 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|{{center|Maurice de Saxe}} 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 File:Isabelle de Charrière - Quentin de La Tour.jpg|{{center|Isabelle de Charrière (1771)}} File:Maurice Quentin de La Tour - Marie Fel.jpg|{{center|Marie Fel}} </gallery>

==Commemoration== [[File:France 50 Francs 1978. VF- Banknote.jpg|thumb|Maurice Quentin de La Tour on a banknote of 50 francs issued by the Bank of France in 1978]] <!-- [[File:The Favourite Cat and De La-Tour Painter.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Maurice Quentin de La Tour by John Kay, 1813]] --> French banknotes denominated at 50 francs, issued from 1976 to 1992, featured de La Tour's portrait.

==Footnotes== {{reflist}}

==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.&nbsp;66–78. * de Goncourt, Edmond and Jules. French XVIII Century Painters. (1867) pp.&nbsp;165, 171, 176 (first published Paris, 1867, fasc. 4, reprinted New York, 1948; second edition, 1873, pp.&nbsp;271, 281–282). * Tourneux, Maurice. ''La Tour'', biographie critique. (Paris, 1904) p.&nbsp;40. * Jeffares, Neil, s.v. 'La Tour, Maurice-Quentin de', In ''Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800'', http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/LaTour2a.pdf {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201127020941/http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/LaTour2a.pdf |date=2020-11-27 }} * [https://neiljeffares.wordpress.com/2016/09/19/maurice-quentin-de-la-tours-parents/ Maurice-Quentin de La Tour’s parents]

==Attribution== * {{EB1911|wstitle=La Tour, Maurice Quentin de|volume=16}}. * {{cite book |last1=Monnier |first1=Geneviève |title=Grove Art Online |date=2003 |url=https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/display/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000049537 |chapter=La Tour [Delatour; Latour], Maurice-Quentin de}}

==External links== {{Commons-inline}}

* [https://archive.today/20121209103708/http://wwar.com/masters/l/la_tour-maurice-quentin_de.html Masters] * [http://www.pastellists.com Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition] *[http://www.louvre.fr/llv/dossiers/detail_oal.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198674119830&CURRENT_LLV_OAL%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198674119830&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=9852723696500817&bmLocale=en an interactive multimedia module about the Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour in the Website of the musée du Louvre ] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210413134137/https://www.louvre.fr/llv/dossiers/detail_oal.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198674119830&CURRENT_LLV_OAL%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198674119830&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=9852723696500817&bmLocale=en |date=2021-04-13 }}

{{Authority control (arts)}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:La Tour, Maurice Quentin de}} Category:1704 births Category:1788 deaths Category:People from the Province of Picardy Category:18th-century French painters Category:French male painters Category:French portrait painters Category:French pastel artists Category:People from Saint-Quentin, Aisne Category:18th-century French male artists Category:Members of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture