Portrait Painting of King Louis XV in Armour After Maurice Quentin De La Tour

Description

A vibrant portrait of Louis XV in Armor, with the Cords of the Order of the Holy Spirit and the … more A vibrant portrait of Louis XV in Armor, with the Cords of the Order of the Holy Spirit and the Golden Fleece. After Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788). The oil painting is on a naturally distressed canvas with beautiful color and detail. Signed lower right, undiscernible. Ornately framed in gold.

Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (born Sept. 5, 1704, Saint-Quentin, France—died Feb. 17, 1788, Saint-Quentin) was a pastelist whose animated and sharply characterized portraits made him one of the most successful and imitated portraitists of 18th-century France.

Early in his youth La Tour went to Paris, where he entered the studio of the Flemish painter Jacques Spoede. He then went to Reims, Cambrai (1724), and England (c. 1725), returning to Paris to resume his studies in about 1727.

In 1737 La Tour exhibited the first of a splendid series of 150 portraits that formed one of the glories of the Salon for the next 37 years. He was able to endow his sitters with a distinctive air of charm and intelligence, and he excelled at capturing the delicate play of facial features. Among his subjects were the writers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, the painter Joseph Vernet, and the philosopher Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, as well as Louis XV and his mistress, Mme de Pompadour, of whom he did a life-size portrait (1756). In 1746 he was received into the Academy and in 1751 was promoted to councilor. La Tour was made portraitist to the king in 1750, a position he held until 1773. La Tour retired at age 80 to Saint-Quentin.

DIMENSIONS

37 x 2" x 31"; canvas 24" x 30" less