Jean-Étienne Liotard
Born in Geneva on 22 December 1702.
Died in Geneva on 12 June 1789.
Swiss (Geneva) · Eighteenth-century portraiture and pastel · painting, drawing and printmaking.
The Genevan artist Jean-Étienne Liotard is particularly known for his pastel portraits. Trained partly in Paris under Jean-Baptiste Massé, he pursued a European career that took him to Rome, Constantinople, Vienna, London and Holland. Geneva subsequently remained his principal base.
In Vienna he worked for the imperial family and the nobility. He also portrayed prominent Genevans and people in their circles. His career therefore brought together court commissions and portraits of individuals encountered within the different communities in which he worked.
The Lavergne Family Breakfast, made in Lyon in 1754 and held by the National Gallery in London, reveals another side of his work. Within this breakfast scene, fabrics, porcelain and silverware receive meticulous attention. Pastel conveys the distinctive surfaces and qualities of these different materials.
The portrait of Maria Frederike van Reede-Athlone at the Getty Museum demonstrates his interest in an observed face rather than a conventionally idealised likeness. Soft flesh tones and unobtrusive handling contribute to its sense of human presence.
Liotard also explored printmaking. His late self-portrait at the Fondation Custodia investigates the relationship between light, shadow and legibility. Published in 1781, his Traité des principes et des règles de la peinture extends this reflection on the means of representing the visible world.
