Maurice Quentin De La Tour - 1704-1788

( Originally Published 1907 )

FRENCH SCHOOL

MAURICE QUENTIN DE LA TOUR (pronounced Lah Toor), the greatest of French pastellists, was born in the ancient town of Saint-Quentin, France, on September 5, 1704. In common with the majority of those whom art has made famous, he manifested when very young an aptitude for drawing, covering his copy-books with sketches of any object which chanced to strike his eye. His father, a chorister in the collegiate church of Saint-Quentin, took no further interest in these childish proofs of his son's talent than to decide that the bent they indicated would be best turned to account by training Maurice to be an engineer. The boy's short-sightedness, however, prevented this project from being carried out, and he continued to follow his natural inclination, devoting his pocket-money to the purchase of pencils and prints, and all his spare time to copying any picture that he could. find.

At about this time it chanced that a pupil of the painter Vernansal went to Saint-Quentin, taking with him a number of his master's drawings. La Tour saw them, and, more than ever fired with the ambition to be a painter, announced his desire to his father, who, sceptical as to the success of such a step, flatly refused his consent. Nothing daunted by this opposition, La Tour left home and, determined to carry out his wish, took the shortest route to Paris.

He was then, say his early biographers, barely fifteen, but recent investigations seem to prove that at the time of his precipitate flight to Paris he was, as a matter of fact, between eighteen and nineteen, and that an unfortunate love-affair with a young cousin, in which the rôle played by La Tour was far from honorable, prompted him to leave home.

Arrived in Paris, the young man directed his steps to the engraver Tardieu, whose name he had noticed on some prints which he had copied and to whom he had written for assistance and advice. Tardieu, however, upon learning that La Tour wished to be a painter, recommended him to apply to Delaunay, who kept a picture-shop on one of the quays of Paris. To Delaunay La Tour promptly proceeded, only to be met with a refusal to receive him. Vernansal was next appealed to, but equally in vain. Finally he turned to Jacques-Jean Spoëde, who had once befriended Watteau, and who although but a mediocre painter was a man of kind heart and agreed to take La Tour into his studio and teach him all that he could.

Very little is known of the years which immediately followed the young artist's arrival in Paris. He is believed to have made a journey to Rheims in the autumn of 1722, on the occasion of the coronation of Louis xv., and to have likewise visited Cambrai in the year 1724, at the time that a great congress was held there. Fabulous stories have been told of the reception ac-corded him in that city by the foreign dignitaries there assembled—how he executed a number of portraits of those celebrities, notably one of the beautiful wife of the Spanish ambassador, which aroused such enthusiasm that he quickly found himself all the rage, and was invited by the ambassador from England to visit him in London. It seems highly improbable that a young artist, wholly unknown to fame, should have been the recipient of so much flattering attention, and it is generally conceded that these tales of La Tour's early success have been greatly exaggerated. It is, however, an accepted fact that he visited London, and although his stay there was brief he returned to Paris with sufficient money to enable him to open a studio of his own, and, knowing full well the tendency of human nature to place a higher value upon whatsoever bears a foreign stamp, forthwith announced himself as an English artist!

The medium of pastel had lately been made popular in Paris by a young Venetian artist, Rosalba Carriera by name, who had visited the French capital in 1720–21 and there achieved marked success. La Tour, whose health was never robust, finding his sensitive nerves unpleasantly affected by the smell of oils, profited by this vogue, and adopted pastel as the sole medium of his portraits, quickly superseding all others in popular estimation.

The story has been often told that on La Tour's return from London, Louis de Boullogne, then first painter to the king, happening to see some of the young artist's work, and struck by the ability it showed, told him frankly, "You know neither how to paint nor how to draw, but you possess talent that will carry you a long way."

"No one was more convinced of this than La Tour himself," writes Lady Dilke. "His confidence in his own powers was a part of his genius; it led him to live by the rule of his own caprice, it brought him the conviction that no liberty on his part could be misplaced, but it also gave free play to the generous and lovable qualities which inspired tender and faithful affection in those closely connected with him."

The good opinion he entertained of his own powers did not prevent La Tour from working hard at his chosen profession. In accordance with advice given him by the painters Boullogne and Restout, he devoted much time to drawing, thereby attaining that mastery of technique which is so salient a quality of his work.

The first Salon at which La Tour exhibited was held in 1737. His contribution consisted of two portraits in pastel — one of Madame Boucher and one of himself. The sensation these works created was marked, and those exhibited at the Salon of the following year added to his growing fame. Each succeeding year, indeed, brought him renewed success, public enthusiasm increased, and La Tour became the acknowledged popular portraitist of the day, even those who had at first found fault with his work because of the perishable nature of the medium he used being won over to unqualified praise by the masterly skill it entinced. "He followed in the footsteps of no master ancient or modern," says M. Reiset; "nature was his only guide, his only aim, and he rendered her with a realistic force hitherto undreamed of in pastel, and such as had been but rarely reached in oils." "He spent very little time over his portraits," says Mariette, "never tired his models, made good likenesses, and did not ask high prices. The crowd was great; he be-came the painter of the day."

In the year 1745 portraits of the king, the dauphin, and Orry, the minister of state, marked La Tour's first connection with the court of Versailles. In the following autumn he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, presenting for his reception picture a portrait of Restout. To the spring exhibition of 1747 he contributed as many as eleven pastels—all portraits of well-known persons of the time. Again in 1748 his contribution was a generous one, the list of names of those whose portraits were then exhibited reading, say the De Goncourts, "like a page from the Royal almanach."

In 1750 La Tour was appointed painter to the king, Louis xv., and the next year was promoted by the Academy to the position of counsellor of that body. "All this prosperity," says M. Reiset, "somewhat turned his- head; he now began to ask extravagant prices for his works, and to refuse point blank to paint the portrait of any one who did not happen to please him. He became capricious and overbearing. An obliging fellow at heart, those who applied to him when in a good humor met with no difficulty; but the least thing that went wrong—the slightest dilatoriness on the part of the model, for instance—was sufficient to cause him to inexorably abandon whatever work he might have begun. He was, in short, his own and only master, and if one wished to be in his good graces one had to exercise considerable tact."

Rich as well as famous, the great pastellist had the entrée to the most exclusive society in Paris. He was a frequent guest at the Monday dinners of Madame Geoffrin, at whose house he met the men and women of the "great world;" he became the close friend of Orry, minister of state, and was constantly to be seen in the company of court dignitaries, men of letters, and philosophers. His studio in the Louvre, where he had been assigned a lodging, was thronged with all the prominent men of Paris, and at his table, lavishly spread, he daily entertained his friends, with whom he was wont to stroll after dinner in the gardens of the palace.

"In appearance La Tour was somewhat delicate," writes Bucelly d'Estrées, one of his biographers. "He was only five feet two inches tall; his figure was good, and he was quick and decided in his walk, carrying his head high. His eyes were bright and full of fire; his face was a pure oval; his lips were thin. He was very particular in his dress, and exquisitely neat."

An undated letter from La Tour's friend the Abbé Blanc gives a vivid picture of the artist passing from his studio to the theater, where, behind the scenes, the fatigues of his day's work would be forgotten in the gay society of actresses, dancers, and singers, with whom the pleasure-loving painter was accustomed to sup and spend much of his time. One of these, Mlle. Marie Fel by name, a charming young singer whose fascinations and "silvery voice" had succeeded in turning the head of more than one well-known man of that day, captivated La Tour's heart and fancy. He never married, and the affection for Mlle. Fel was the romance of his life. In the years which followed she was for him his "chère amie," his "divinité," and until his last days she so remained.

In 1755 La Tour exhibited but one pastel—the great full-length portrait of Madame de Pompadour now in the Louvre. Of the countless stories told of the whimsical artist there is one in connection with this picture which is too characteristic to be omitted. When summoned to Versailles to paint the king's favorite he replied coolly that he would not go out of his way to do so. Urged to the task, however, by the flattering words of the Pompadour, he agreed to present himself at the palace on a certain day, but only on condition that no one should interrupt the sitting. When he arrived at Madame de Pompadour's apartment he asked permission to make himself at home. This granted, he undid the buckles of his shoes, unfastened his garters and collar, took off his wig, hung it on a candlestick, and drew from his pocket a little silk cap which he donned, and at once set to work upon the portrait. A quarter of an hour had scarcely passed when the door of the apartment opened and the king entered. Lifting his cap, La Tour said to his model, "You promised, Madame, that your door should be closed to visitors." Louis laughed good-naturedly at both the costume and the rebuke of the artist, and begged him to proceed with his work. "It is impossible for me to obey your Majesty," replied La Tour; "I will return when Madame is alone." There-upon, taking his wig and his garters with him, he walked into another room to dress himself, saying as he went, "I don't like to be interrupted."

"Such was La Tour," say the De Goncourts. "No other painter exercised to so great an extent both the tyranny of the artist and the caprices of genius. The king himself was obliged to submit to his impertinence in order to obtain a portrait; the pastels of Mesdames of France were left unfinished to punish those princesses for failure to keep their appointments; the dauphiness was not allowed to have her portrait, because she had been so rash as to change the place of the sittings from Fontainebleau to Versailles. `My talent belongs to me,' said La Tour proudly. And if he consented to paint a portrait it had to be understood that he was to be absolute master of the pose, the features, the coloring of his model."

In his business dealings La Tour was as eccentric as in all else. It is related that when the wealthy financier M. de la Reynière sent his servant to say that he had not time that day to give the artist a final sitting for his portrait, La Tour, who was already seated at his easel ready for work, said coolly to the messenger, "My friend, your master is a fool whom I ought never to have painted. Now you have a good sensible face which pleases me; sit down, and I will draw your likeness. Your master, I tell you again, is a fool." And in spite of the remonstrances of the man, who assured him that he would lose his situation, La Tour, nothing daunted, proceeded to draw his portrait, promising that he would guarantee to find him another place. The story was soon noised abroad, and when the picture was exhibited at the Salon it attracted general attention. Before long the man had an embarrassment of choice in desirable situations.

Innumerable tales are told of La Tour's independence, brusqueness, and impertinence. Fearing no one, not even the king, he never hesitated to express his opinion with uncalled-for frankness. "His character was full of contradictions," says one of his biographers; "eccentric and unconventional, he was at once avaricious and generous, surly and benevolent. He was carried away by ideas in turn economic, humanitarian, and scientific. He gave a fund for prizes to be awarded for painting; founded at Saint-Quentin a free school of drawing, endowed it liberally, and, in addition, donated money for the. establishment of an asylum for sick women."

In the late spring of 1766 La Tour visited Holland. Allusions to this visit are found in the letters of a Mlle. van Tuyll (afterwards Mme. de Charrière), whose home was the Château of Zuylen near Utrecht and whose portrait La Tour drew in pastel. In an interesting letter written to this same young girl after his return to Paris, the artist speaks of the pleasure his trip had been to him, and, after giving his correspondent, who had apparently been his pupil, some excellent technical advice, he alludes to his own fatal practice—a practice that as years went on amounted to a kind of mania—of retouching his early works. His portrait of Restout, presented to the Academy in 1744, was one of those that was irretrievably ruined by, his disastrous experiments in attempting to improve upon its color and technique.

Notwithstanding his frail constitution, La Tour lived to a good old age. Some years before his death he gave up his rooms in the Louvre and sought the retirement of his country home at Auteuil near Paris. There he received many distinguished visitors, the king himself never passing that way without stopping to ask after the health of the old artist. When nearly eighty he ex-pressed a wish to return to Saint-Quentin, that he might end his days in his native town. Accordingly, in June, 1784, accompanied by his half-brother, Jean-François de La Tour, he went back to the place of his birth —" sa patrie," as he lovingly called it. His fellow-citizens received him with every mark of respect. A salute of cannon greeted his return,the bells of the town were rung, banners floated in the summer breeze, and upon his entrance into the house which had been made ready for him a crown of oak-leaves was placed upon the brows of this great son of Saint-Quentin.

La Tour lived four years after this ovation; but his mind, which had be-come gradually enfeebled, finally grew hopelessly deranged, and he was cared for like a child by the devoted brother who remained near him to the end. Death came to him on February 17, 1788, when in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and on the following day he was buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. André in Saint-Quentin, where his parents had been laid to rest.