Portrait of a Man Holding a Book, Turned to the Right
Jean-Etienne Liotard
1758–1762
- 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.)
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
drawings (visual works)prints and drawingpaper (fiber product)
About
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.
