Maurice Quentin de La Tour, portrait painter at the king’s court and figure on 50 franc notes, master of pastel in the Age of Enlightenment

Maurice Quentin de La Tour was born on September 5, 1704 in Saint-Quentin, in Aisne. He was born into a notable family and very quickly, his predisposition to drawing led him to a career as a portraitist at the king’s court. He enjoyed great success during his lifetime and remains the absolute reference for the pastel technique. It’s the story of Sunday.

It is said that when he was very young, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, instead of listening to his teachers, covered his sketchbooks with portraits of his classmates. “It’s true, his vocation was born very early. Moreover, at the age of 15, in 1719, he apprenticed in Paris, with a master, Claude Dupouch.“, explains Agnès Villain, director of the Saint-Quentin museum center, including the Antoine-Lécuyer museum, which houses the largest collection in the world of pastels by the Axon portraitist.

Life and happy chances seemed to smile on the young man very early on. In 1725, during a stay in Cambrai (North), he was noted for his portrait of a Spanish ambassador. He is therefore invited to London where he meets the aristocracy and the powerful. The opportunity for him to learn the codes of the most privileged. Which will be useful to him later.

After this rich experience, in every sense of the word, he returned to France. He was 23 and decided to live in Paris where he began to cultivate a network of artists and influential people.

“Quentin de La Tour is the master of pastel. It is a very particular material, a powdery mixture of pure pigments, chalk, kaolin, assembled by a binder, gum arabic in general.“, specifies the director of the Antoine-Lécuyer museum. “The mixture thus obtained is then shaped into sticks which are held with bare hands. A bit like contemporary oily chalks“.

And Maurice Quentin de La Tour never leaves his pastel holder, which he takes out as soon as possible to sketch the figures of those around him. “Pastel, oily or dry, is a very particular medium“, continues Agnès Villain. “This technique allows for velvety skin, fades and transparencies. He uses it very modernly, in broad strokes, with broad gestures.“.

In the 1730s, he definitively abandoned oil painting in favor of these colored powders, deposited on paper, vellum, silk or parchment. “The pastel technique requires paper specially primed for this, because it is necessary to hang and fix the pigment“, explains Agnès Villain.

At his peak, La Tour was nicknamed ‘the prince of pastel artists’ because of his total mastery of pastel portraiture. “He is a perfectionist whose posing sessions are very long. And any sketches he’s not happy with, he destroys“.

The career of Maurice Quentin de La Tour took off in France in 1735. Date on which he painted the portrait of Voltaire. A work that earned him the recognition of his peers. “The portrait of Voltaire is lost, but in our collection, we keep a very accomplished sketch, purchased by the museum in 1995“, specifies Agnès Villain, its director.

Two years later, La Tour was approved by the Royal Academy of Painting. He already enjoys a great reputation for his disturbing portraits of life. “This is what he is looking for, the purest art. To do this, he extracts the truth from his models in their gaze. This is in-depth work. No question of cheating. And he succeeds. Faced with his models, we have the impression of being captured by their gaze, we immediately enter into a connection with them“.

In 1745, Maurice Quentin de La Tour obtained a housing certificate at the Louvre galleries and in September 1746, he joined the Royal Academy. He painted various portraits of King Louis XV, as well as the queen and members of her family. Without forgetting the king’s favorite, Madame de Pompadour.

In parallel with this ultimate consecration, he assiduously frequented the Parisian salons where he rubbed shoulders with the greatest intellectuals of this era of Enlightenment: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, d’Alembert and of course, Voltaire. And he is passionate about literature, mathematics and politics. One way too for him to speak as an equal with all these prestigious interlocutors.

After light and success, the shadow of senile dementia

Maurice Quentin de La Tour declared signs of senile dementia around 1783.”He is no longer able to stand alone. His brother then decided to bring him back to Saint-Quentin where he died on February 17, 1788, at the age of 84.says Agnès Villain. He will be buried in a cemetery which no longer exists, because it was destroyed during the First World War. We do not know where the remains of Quentin de La Tour were placed, but to mark the place of his burial, the city had a plaque put up a few years ago, in the center of the city, facing the basilica, where found the cemetery“.

But before his character changes and he loses his reason, the pastellist will promote philanthropic works in the city where he was born. There he founded a free drawing school, which still exists today, financed a foundation for women in childbirth and another for old, infirm craftsmen. “It should be noted that the drawing school, founded by de La Tour, was initially intended to train young people who intended to pursue a career in the textile industry. Because Saint-Quentin was a mecca for textiles at the time“, adds Agnès Villain.

When he died in 1788, his brother Jean-François, at the request of the deceased, bequeathed the studio funds and a large part of his portraits to the town of Saint-Quentin. “A part will be sold to generate funding for his works. And what is not sold will be exhibited from 1856 in the first museum dedicated to him, at the Fervaques palace.“, explains the director of the Antoine-Lécuyer museum.

At the time, the Fervaques palace received prestigious visitors: Gauguin, Matisse and Degas came to admire the portraits of Maurice Quentin de La Tour.

“In 1877, Antoine Lécuyer, a banker from Saint-Quentin, bequeathed his mansion to the city so that the collection of pastels could be housed in a prestigious setting. The Lécuyer museum officially opened its doors in 1886 and the works occupied three rooms.“, continues Agnès Villain.

But in 1917, while the city was occupied by the Germans, the ‘Kunstschutz’, the organization which supervises works of art on French territory, decided to evacuate de La Tour’s collections. “This decision was taken to save the most precious pieces from the announced Allied bombings. And on February 8, 1917, the works were transported in crates aboard Red Cross ambulances, at 12 km/h it is said! In the direction of Maubeuge. They will be exhibited there at Au Pauvre Diable, an old business, until after the Great War.“.

A saga that does not end there. Between the two wars, when a good part of the city as well as the Antoine-Lécuyer museum were destroyed by bombings, it was decided to rebuild the whole thing. The museum has been the subject of several years of work. “A new setting worthy of the pastels of Maurice Quentin de La Tour was inaugurated on July 3, 1932“, indicates Agnès Villain.

The precious collection of the Saint-Quentin pastellist will be evacuated again during the Second World War, this time, to the Château de Mézanges, in Burgundy, where it will remain safe until the end of the conflict.

I am amazed by his technique which brings his models to life.

Agnès Villain, director of the Antoine-Lécuyer museum in Saint-Quentin

The French know Maurice Quentin de La Tour for having frequented him for a long time without knowing it. For fifteen years, his effigy appeared on our old 50 franc notes, as part of a “famous creators and scientists” series from the Banque de France. 1 billion 850 million copies will be printed. This shows the artistic importance of de La Tour in our country.

“Maurice Quentin de La Tour had the pleasure of experiencing recognition during his lifetime. He died a fulfilled man despite the shadows of his last years. It is said of him that he had a famous temperament and great pride, that he also seduced women in particular, although he never married.“, adds Agnès Villain.

“He is an artist of light, which he places in touches in the eyes of his models, hence this striking impression that the portrait was sketched the day before, that it is timeless. He has the innate gift of bringing his drawings to life“, concludes Agnès Villain, whose museum welcomes 13,000 visitors each year.