Art: Portraiture

At the age of 23, after garnering a few commissions in London, Maurice Quentin de La Tour set himself up as a portraitist in Paris. The year was 1727, and Anglophilia was becoming fashionable in the court at Versailles.

La Tour, though a native of Picardy, cannily proclaimed himself an English painter. Pastel portraiture was all the rage. Only seven years before, the Italian pastelist Rosalba Carriera had visited Paris and found duchesses and princesses imploring her to do their portraits. La Tour* prudently devoted himself entirely to pastels.

Not long afterwards, a counselor to Louis XV wrote admiringly that "La Tour is...