The Art Of Maurice Quentin De La Tour

( Originally Published 1907 )

EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT 'L'ART DU DIX- HUITIÈME SIÈCLE'

LA TOUR'S portraits were executed in pastel. His irritable nerves and delicate health required him to give up painting in oil. In devoting him-self to the use of colored crayons, a kind of work in which his genius was destined to assert itself, he did but follow a fashion of his day and conform to that vogue which revived in France of the eighteenth century a taste for French drawings of the sixteenth. It may also be that in adopting the medium of pastel he was influenced by the advent in Paris in 1720 of Rosalba Carriera, who had been sought after by all the great world, overwhelmed with orders and with money, whose portraits had been solicited by the Madame de Parabères and the Madame de Pries, the most prominent ladies of the court, fascinated by the charm of that art which lent to woman an indescribably light and ethereal beauty—an airy likeness in flower-like color. Whatever the reason for his adopting the new medium, La Tour quickly profited by the popularity which Rosalba Carriera had given to pastel.

In the Gallery of the Louvre he holds a great and important place. He is represented there by thirteen pastels' which cast into the shade those of his predecessors—the hard and dark pastels of Vivien, the light and pleasing pastels of Rosalba Carriera. . . . But if one would really study La Tour, what is the Louvre compared with his own museum at Saint-Quentin ? Here it is not a question of some dozen pastels, but of a whole gallery filled from top to bottom, peopled, crowded to the extent of the walls with the master's works; a collection of more than eighty portraits, some finished, some merely sketched in, unfolding before our eyes a procession of the men and women, the orders and the types of that period, showing us side by side, in the closest propinquity, the philosopher Rousseau, the financier La Reynière, the dancer Camargo and the Marquis d'Argenson, the singer Favart and the economist Forbonnais, the clown Manelli and Prince Xavier of Saxony, the Abbé Le Blanc, and Silvestre, and the tragic poet Crébillon—well-nigh the complete iconology of the period.

Astounding collection of the life of an entire society! When you enter the museum a strange feeling comes over you such as no other painting of the past has ever produced: all these heads turn as if to look at you, all these eyes gaze upon you, so that it seems upon entering the room, where all these lips have apparently been just hushed to silence, as if you had interrupted the conversation of the eighteenth century. . . .

These heads by La Tour are alive, not only because they are so admirably constructed, so accurately drawn as to produce the actual illusion of the physical appearance of the individual represented, but also for the reason that the painter, keenly observant, has grasped the psychology of the likeness. Great physiognomist that he is, in giving us a portrait of the man he gives us also a portrait of the man's character. These heads of his think, speak, make confessions, and impart confidences. To the eyes of all La Tour has given that look of the soul, the mens oculorum, that expression through which a man's personality is revealed. . . . Diderot misconceived this great quality of La Tour's talent, in failing on one occasion to see in him anything but a great practitioner, a marvelous technician. La Tour is more than that. He himself said of his models: "They think that I reproduce only the features of their faces, whereas, all unknown to them, I penetrate to the very depths of their beings and take complete possession of them."

This it is which in the portraitist surpasses the practitioner—the effort and the ambition to be with his pencil a father confessor of mankind; to get beneath the surface of those whom he paints by a constant and searching intercourse with them; to draw them out of themselves; "to take complete possession of them." That is what he seeks and what is required for his portraits; to comprehend a man's whole nature, to indicate it by some habitual pose, some unconscious gesture, peculiar attitude; to characterize even the man of the world by some mark of his station or sign of his profession—and such were the high ideal and lofty ambition pursued by La Tour, lifting his aim and glory as an artist far above that of merely a great technician. . . .

As searchingly as he paints the man, so does he also paint the woman of his period. In portraying her he expresses the thoughts and reflections which filled the heads of those fair "readers of Newton." He invests her with the depth, the variety, and the complexity of her nature; and while retaining her powder, her patches, and her frills, he lifts her above the conventional prettiness too freely used by the portraitists of that day. He takes from her those airs of an animated doll which in contemporary painting have made her typical of all that is shallow, silly, and frivolous. The painter of Marie Leczinska and of Marie-Josèphe of Saxony invests woman with a sweet devotion, a thoughtful kindliness, a seriousness and grace—all the most delicate qualities of a woman's face in repose. . . .

Compare the smiles on the faces of the women pictured by La Tour, and you will find that not one is insipid, but that each is individual, belonging peculiarly to the person represented, depicting and slightly emphasizing her character, her disposition, her wit, her heart, her soul. Look, for example, at the portraits of those two women smiling as they hang beside one another in we Museum at Saint-Quentin: in one it is the refined, half-reserved smile, delicate, voluptuous, and spirituel, of the woman of forty, the age when a woman of the eighteenth century was at the height of her powers, a smile which seems to lose itself in tender memories, spreading over the plump face even to the laughing modeling of the dimples of the cheeks, veiling the soft gaiety of the eyes; and alongside of this what a contrast we find in the lips of this sprightly young girl, innocent, soft, ingenuous lips, parted in absolute ignorance of life with a smile in which lies the pure effrontery of seventeen years! Here, as in all his portraits of women, La Tour shows himself to be the most exquisite draftsman of that most subtly expressive feature of a woman's face — the mouth. . . .

"A magician"—that was the epithet which Diderot applied to the pastel-list. And such La Tour will forever remain. His work is a magic mirror in which the dead are brought to life. In his collection of contemporary men and women the spirit of history is revealed to us. He bids us enter that marvelous picture-gallery which the great portrait-painters of truth and feeling, such as Holbein and Van Dyck, have evoked from a court and a whole society. Here are the princes, the lords, and the ladies who were the lights of Versailles; there are the leaders of philosophy, of science, of art, upon whose brows the artist recognized genius, and whom his pencil, so cold in betraying "imbéciles," has portrayed with loving enthusiasm. Here is what La Tour achieved and what he has left us. From the dust of his crayons, from that painting which fell, so to speak, from the powder of that epoch, he has produced, like some delicate and fragile spirit, the miraculous illusion of eternal life. In his work is the great and charming portrait of France, daughter of the Regency and mother of the Revolution. The Museum of La Tour is the pantheon of the age of Louis xv.; of its spirit, its grace, its thought, of all its talents and of all its glories.-ABRIDGED FROM THE FRENCH

LOUIS GONSE 'LES CHEFS-D'ŒUVRE DES MUSÉES DE FRANCE'

LA TOUR possesses all the qualities essential to the great interpreters of the human face—spirit, fire, an exquisite sense of proportion, infallible taste, and a technique that is without its equal. He is, moreover, not merely a painter of the outward man, but understands how to express with all the force of the moralist the social position, state of mind, character, and temperament of the individual. . . .

In his portraits of men La Tour deduced from that new medium, pastel, which had been rendered effeminate by Rosalba Carriera, something virile, serious, and strong; while in his portraits of women he became all charm and grace. He possessed the secret of making them beautiful without departing from truth, simply by means of the illusion of life and an intensity of expression.

His genius need fear nothing from time, for he is one of those who in their very natures appeal to every mind; he belongs indeed to all times, because he is simple, because he is natural, and because his work has the quality of fascination and of truth of expression.— FROM THE FRENCH

HENRY LAPAUZE 'MÉLANGES SUR L'ART FRANÇAIS'

THE Museum of La Tour at Saint-Quentin is something more than a museum—it is a home, where dwells the spirit of that charming artist whose works are among the most expressive of the eighteenth century. In this quiet, provincial home of his you find him quite alone—there is nothing to distract your thoughts from him.

What a sense of intimacy is in those three little rooms whose shutters are carefully opened by a devoted custodian ever mindful of the injurious contact of daylight! The good man, duly discreet and respectful, betrays his zeal by his very silence, as he eagerly notes the impression produced upon the visitor by La Tour's portraits, which for him are as much alive as if they were a distinguished family whose faithful servitor he was. A family! That is exactly the word which should be applied to these portraits, notwithstanding the various origins, the diverse characters and countenances of the personages they represent.

Every painter of strong individuality imparts to his portraits a certain general resemblance. He recreates the personages he represents, uniting them by the common bond of his artistic paternity. One and all have derived their being from him before entering that immovable life which his pencil or his brush bestows upon them. One and all have partaken to some extent of his spirit. And if this spirit be in accord with the spirit of his times it will leave on every face the particular impress of that period, instinctively emphasizing those types which bear most markedly any one general trait, so that in some faces the character of an entire epoch will be manifested to such an extent that they become typical even while retaining their own individualities.

To a greater degree, perhaps, than in the work of any other artist is this the case with La Tour's pastels. This it is which explains both his success while living and the temporary disfavor into which he sank later on. In his lifetime he was the fashionable painter. The greatest ladies of the great world awaited his good pleasure to pose before his easel. He was abominably rude to them, and yet his impertinences were not resented. Sometimes he would leave them in the midst of a sitting that he might sketch the face of a grisette or little dancer, more to his fancy in being more significant of that gay and daringly sensual spirit which appealed to both his heart and to the epoch in which he lived. In short, what pleased his contemporaries was also pleasing to his eye, his pencil, and to his eager and sensitive nature—it most keenly appealed to his artistic temperament. This is the secret not only of the unbounded admiration he inspired, but of the deep psychological meaning of his work. It is also the secret of his posthumous disfavor.

When the pastels of which Saint-Quentin is now so. proud were offered for sale in Paris in 1812, the finest among them did not bring a hundred francs apiece. Indeed, a portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau could find no purchaser at more than three francs. The heirs of Jean-François de La Tour, to whom the portraits belonged, were consequently discouraged and gave up the sale, and it is to this lack of appreciation on the part of the public that we owe the fortunate fact that this precious collection was not scattered.

But how was it that this artist, so famous fifty years before, met with so indifferent a reception ? Simply because neither popular taste nor interest in 1812 could be the same as it had been in 1760. In its warlike passions, its delirious joy over victories won, the new century gave no thought to pretty coquettes, whose intrigues had led the old monarchy into fatal disasters and France itself into the Revolution. A wide abyss separated the two eras. What was the smile of a Camargo compared with a war bulletin of Napoleon's ? Military painting alone appealed to the public. Under a ruler who loved, soldier-fashion, for a brief period, in the interim between battles, so to speak, the twenty years' reign of a Pompadour were scorned, as was the affability of an artist who had flattered that soft, pale face, silly and blundering incarnation of the destinies of France. Not until our own epoch, absorbed in psycho-logical research, eager in analyzing souls, did La Tour recover his prestige. No artist is more satisfying to us of to-day, because none was more thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his own times, more perfectly in accord with the frivolities which characterized the age in which he lived.

La Tour is typical of the whole eighteenth century, amorous and worldly, and with all that exaggerated conventionality which fixes a psychological period in the imagination of posterity. The flippant sensuality of the life of that day, the smattering of philosophy, the smiling pedantry, the beauty which, although deified, was worshiped only in a superficial way with neither dignity nor mystery, find expression in him, and him alone. And to it all he adds the supreme gift, not only of life, but of individual life. Beneath the powder of his pastels he incloses living beings made of real flesh and blood and throbbing with emotion, men and women who, even under the spell of his great pervading spirit, keep their own individual ways of feeling and loving. Each one of them remains himself, haunting you with a look, or it may be a curl of the lip, peculiar to him alone; and yet on those lips and in that look hover the dreams of a whole generation of men and women, the sentiments of thousands of hearts long since turned to ashes.

This it is which is so marvelous in La Tour's genius. This it is which impresses you when you enter the three little rooms of the Museum of Saint-Quentin, where the eyes of all those portraits—eyes charged with so many memories—seem to fasten themselves upon you. . . .

In its accuracy La Tour's work has a documentary value. No one can study the eighteenth century without pausing long before his pastels. Such faces as those that we see at Saint-Quentin summon before our imagination a society at once recent and yet long past, and in recalling its atmosphere, its gesture, and its voice, make it live again. It is a singular illusion, and one that no other paintings of that period produce—neither the too literary libertinism of Fragonard, nor the quasi-mythological beauties of Nattier, nor yet the sentimental and artful artlessness of Greuze.

In order that a hundred or so faces should bring before us a whole epoch, was it not necessary for the instinct of the painter to make a definite choice from among his models, or did he not have to reproduce for us that special atmosphere in which his vision saw them ? When we come to think of it, both these conditions exist in La Tour's work. To illustrate the point there can, of course, be no question of selecting his official portraits; for as we look at his famous Madame de Pompadour in the Louvre, so conventional in face and accessories, a marvel of art, showing the favorite not as she was, but as she wished to be, or when we study the faces, too pronounced in their haughtiness, of the king, queen, and princes, we cannot summon to our minds that searcher of consciences, that analyzer of character, that we know La Tour to have been. His marvelous virtuosity, his touch, warm, light, and vivacious, his attention to detail, the wonderful quality of his flesh-tints, beneath which we seem to see the rosy flush of the blood, the living pulsations of the tissues,—all these are manifested in these celebrated pastels; but if you would know what it was that he sought beneath all outward features, what it was that he surprised in the play of expression, then go to Saint-Quentin! There in the presence of his studies, the "preparations," not only for his official portraits, but for those of unknown personages, types which attracted his pencil, and which, pulsating with life, he transferred to his paper in some whim of psychological investigation, you will discover how perfectly he understood and could interpret the spirit of his day. He himself, possessed of this same spirit—sensual, philosophic, gay, and shrewd, with all the subtle shades of sensuality, philosophy, gaiety, and shrewdness which characterize his contemporaries—delighted in painting those in whom these characteristics predominated, emphasizing them, and even imparting them when they were lacking.

For with La Tour, as with so many other artists, the source of truth some-times became a source of error. His strength and sincerity of expression when translating those feelings which he could best conceive led him into unconscious mistakes when he failed to encounter them. We are filled with admiration for the striking psychological power of his pencil, and justly; but nevertheless let us recognize the fact that this insight, however keen, was not without its exceptions. For this very reason it was the more concentrated, the more poignant, in interpreting those special traits which were most significant of his epoch, and La Tour's glory is in no way dimmed when we affirm that certain natures wholly escaped him. For instance, he never grasped that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The salient characteristics of courtezans, dancers, and abbés were diametrically opposed to the earnestness of the Genevese philosopher. . . .

What then are the principal traits which La Tour has emphasized ? Above all, gaiety—a gaiety made up of wit and sensuality easily satisfied. La Tour depicts a happy race of beings. All his portraits are smiling, but with this peculiarity: nothing commonplace ever spoils that expression, which more than any other of the human face is liable to become tiresome. Each smile has its own special character, its own individual meaning. Each is interesting in a different way by reason of the varying shades of suavity, of gentle raillery, of shrewdness, or of voluptuous pleasure, and all bespeak the infinite variety of inward dreams. And these dreams are joyous because La Tour created his work at a period in the world's history when life was full of pleasure, when a realization of the delights of mind, heart, and senses was keenest. He himself enjoyed success, good fortune, and love, and, at least in the days of his vigorous manhood, before the failure and weakness of old age, he enjoyed his riches, albeit in the same superficial fashion, sceptical and sage, as that practised by his contemporaries.

In those upper classes of society from which La Tour took his models the world prided itself on its indifference. Enthusiasm was expressed only for art and for pleasure. There was no such thing as. passion, scarcely a shadow of sentiment—only just enough to lend languor to lovely eyes. Nothing was taken seriously, not even war. Courteous and gay the men went to battle as to a ball, arrayed in an equal amount of finery. The women followed, provided with a whole arsenal of sweetmeats and frivolity. Powder, paint, patches, and furbelows—they carried with them as much ammunition for captivating hearts as did the men for fighting battles.. . .

Such was the society which La Tour portrayed, and it is the people who made up that society whom one sees at Saint-Quentin—light-hearted, beautiful, gallant and bantering, dainty and voluptuous. In their youth his women are bewitching; in their maturity they are gentle and adorable—all, even the least attractive among them, rendered charming by love.

La Tour was too completely the man of his time for his time to be other than subservient to him. From him women had no secrets; the loveliest of them completely surrendered themselves to him, and through him they have come down to us. Go then and visit them at Saint-Quentin! Not even their contemporaries found them more at their ease, more charming in their grace, more unreserved in their voluptuous beauty, nor did they receive from them glances more tender, more languishing, or more full of challenge. A whole century of love breathes from these fair faces whose beauty charms and en-thralls our hearts—FROM THE FRENCH

W. E. HENLEY 'ART JOURNAL' 1887

LA TOUR was the Van Dyck of pastel—the Reynolds of the age of Louis IXV. He had the public at his feet; when he gave a sitting he conferred a favor. His vogue was equal to his talent, which is saying much, for his talent was of the first order.

He was not so exquisite a poet as Watteau; he was neither so original a mind nor superlative a craftsman as Chardin; the fire and opulence and variety of Boucher—as of a Rubens debauched and demoralized—were beyond him. But he was himself, and in his way he was superior to all three.

In private life La Tour was capricious, tyrannical, preeminently vain; he was fond of money, women, good living, good company. He had a spice of the philosopher in him, he liked to air his ideas; he was addicted to the in-coherent expression of those windy theories which were the spiritual manner of his generation. He treated his sitters as his obliged and humble servants; refused to paint the Pompadour herself except on his own terms and in his own fashion; would talk reform to the very king; set what price he pleased upon his work, and refused to let things go till they were paid as he thought they deserved. His character was, in fine, a whole pageant of humors—a procession of qualities of every sort, some antic, some unpleasant, some ridiculous, some contemptible. But behind this flighty and changeful individuality there was an artist of singular talent and unrivaled accomplishment, endowed with an unalterable firmness of purpose, and with a sincerity and a conscientiousness that nothing could impair. La Tour, indeed, was great alike in draftsmanship and in color, in the management of draperies and accessories as in the perception and the presentation of character. More than that, he was his own severest critic, and would suffer nothing to leave his studio until he was content with it. His portraits are triumphs of conscious and intelligent art. He had reflected on the difference between art and nature, and his work is such an "expression of life" as it is given to not many to achieve.

MAURICE TOURNEUX LA TOUR

LA TOUR'S rare pastels command prices to-day far beyond what their whimsical author would ever have dreamed of asking for them. His name is now familiar to all; his place in the foremost rank of the French school is no longer contested, and never was the epithet of "great magician," applied to him by Diderot, more completely justified. Magician he is indeed, by reason of the marvelous power of life which -breathes from his portraits. .

In writing of his works exhibited at the Salon of 1767 Diderot says: "Undoubtedly one great merit of La Tour's portraits is that they are excellent likenesses; but this is neither their sole nor is it their chief merit. All the qualities of painting are to be found in them. The connoisseur admires them as does he who is ignorant, without ever having seen the personages they represent. Real flesh and blood—life itself—are in them.

"But why do we feel so surely that they are portraits ? What is the difference between a head drawn from the artist's imagination and one that is from a living model ? How can we say of one taken from life that it is well drawn, when one corner of the mouth goes up and the other goes down ? When one of the eyes is smaller and lower than the other ? When all the established rules of drawing are violated in the position, the size, the shape, and the proportion of the features ? In La Tour's works is nature herself. They are the deliberate portrayal of her imperfections, as is seen every day in real life. This is not poetry; it is simply painting."

La Tour himself, moreover, betrayed to Diderot the secret of his constant preoccupation, and of his superiority over his predecessors and rivals, when he gave expression to the following wise reflections: "In nature, and consequently in art," he said, "there is no idle, meaningless creature; every living being has to suffer more or less from the cares and responsibilities of his circumstances, and to a greater or less degree bears the marks of his experience. The main point is, therefore, to note well those marks which life has left upon his face, so that in painting a king, a priest, a philosopher, or a street-porter, each may be as typical as possible of his station in life."

In his large portraits La Tour did not fail to place the personages he was representing in appropriate settings. President Rieux and Madame de Pompadour are surrounded with objects indicative of their rank and their character; but generally speaking, the artist did not require any such settings as those to which Rigaud, Largillière, Nattier, de Troy, Tocqué, and Tournières sacrificed so much, and one would search in vain throughout his work for any allegories.

If in the modern French school La Tour is the most powerful interpreter of the human face, he is also the first in point of date who sought for and attained that realism of which Sainte-Beuve has said that it charms and interests serious minds whenever they find in the art it inspires style, feeling, and an ideal.—FROM THE FRENCH