Portrait of a Man Holding a Book, Turned to the Right

1758·Black and white chalk, with traces of red chalk, on blue laid paper, rubbed on the verso with vermillion and traced with a stylus·53 × 45.8 cm (20 7/8 × 18 1/16 in.)

Liotard was internationally famous in the mid-18th century for his incisive and resplendent pastel portraits, such as the Art Institute’s Portrait of Marthe-Marie Tronchin. This rare preliminary study of an unknown gentleman reveals some of the artist’s working method: he rubbed the back of the sheet of blue paper with a lush vermilion pastel, to trace and thus transfer the outlines of the figure onto another support.

Catalogue

Year: 1758
Medium: Black and white chalk, with traces of red chalk, on blue laid paper, rubbed on the verso with vermillion and traced with a stylus
Dimensions: 53 × 45.8 cm (20 7/8 × 18 1/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Jean-Étienne Liotard

Artist

Jean-Étienne Liotard

Painting

Jean-Étienne Liotard was a Genevan painter, pastellist, printmaker, art theorist and art dealer. Born in the Republic of Geneva as the son of exiled French Huguenots, he spent most of his career working in cities such as Rome, Istanbul, Paris, Vienna, London, Amsterdam and other cities. He is best known for his detailed, strikingly naturalistic portraits in pastel and Orientalist scenes of life in Turkey. As an art theorist he wrote the Traité des Principes et règles de la Peinture in which he argued that painting should to be a mirror of nature.

Full artist profile →