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

Description

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.

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