Jean Etienne Liotard
Born Geneva, 22 Dec 1702; died Geneva, 12 June 1789.
Swiss pastellist, painter, printmaker and writer. He was born to French Protestant parents, who had fled to Switzerland after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Having studied with the miniature painter Daniel Gardelle in Geneva, in 1723 he travelled to Paris, where until 1726 he was a pupil of Jean-Baptiste Massé. In 1734 he submitted his only known history painting, King David and the High Priest Abimelech in the Tabernacle (untraced, see Humbert, Revilliod and Tilanus, no. 110), for the painting prize of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, but it was rejected. He subsequently travelled to Naples and then to Rome, where he executed a portrait of Pope Clement XII (untraced). In Florence he met Sir William Ponsonby (1704–93), later 2nd Earl of Bessborough, whom he accompanied to the Levant in 1738, breaking the journey in Capri, Messina, Syracuse, Malta and the Greek islands; there, seduced by the beauty of Eastern dress, he made a large number of acute and charming drawings in black and red chalks (Paris, Louvre; Paris, Bib. N.)
Liotard then spent 1738–42 in Constantinople (now Istanbul), during which time he painted pastel portraits of members of the British colony, including the full-length portrait of Richard Pococke in Turkish Costume (Geneva, Mus. A. & Hist). He himself acquired the habit of wearing Turkish dress and grew a long beard; his eccentric appearance contributed not a little to his celebrity on his return to Europe.
From 1743 to 1745 Liotard was in Vienna, where he found favour at court and painted the Empress Maria-Theresa (version, Weimar, Schlossmus.) as well as executing his most famous pastel, a full-length figure of a chambermaid carrying a tray with a cup of chocolate, La Belle Chocolatière (Dresden, Staatl. Kstsammlungen; see [not available online]). He then visited Venice and was in Geneva in 1746, leaving again for Paris two years later. While in Lyon on this journey, he painted his niece Mlle Lavergne, a charming half-length portrait known as La Belle Liseuse (versions, Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; Dresden, Staatl. Kstsammlungen). Among the several works he produced in Paris is the exotic portrait of ?Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry (versions, Geneva, Mus. A. & Hist.; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). Introduced at court in 1749 by Maurice, Maréchal de Saxe (1696–1750), he received an important commission for portraits of Louis XV and of his five daughters (all Stupinigi, Pal. Mauriziana).
Despite his success in France and abroad, the Académie Royale refused to admit Liotard as a member, and he instead joined the Académie de St Luc, exhibiting works at its exhibitions in 1751 and 1752. In 1755 he travelled to London, where he enjoyed a warm welcome and executed pastel portraits of Augusta, Princess of Wales and of her nine children (all Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.). He then moved on to Amsterdam and The Hague and in 1757 settled in Geneva, where he depicted the local bourgeoisie with an accomplished and rigorous mastery. His most remarkable portraits of this period are those of the family and friends of François Tronchin, a notable collector, including François Tronchin Looking at a Painting by Rembrandt (1757; Geneva, Givaudan priv. col., hrt 78) and Mme d’Epinay (Geneva, Mus. A. & Hist.), which is considered his masterpiece.
Liotard continued to travel until near the end of his life: in 1762 he returned to Vienna and in 1771–2 was in Paris, where he painted Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI (both Stupinigi, Pal. Mauriziana). From 1773 to 1775 he was in London, where he exhibited five portraits at the Royal Academy, including one of John, Viscount Mount Stuart (London, priv. col., hrt 62). In Vienna, where he stayed again in 1777–8, he executed some of his most beautiful drawings aux trois crayons, including those of the 11 children of the Empress Maria-Theresa (all Geneva, Mus. A. & Hist.).
Throughout his career Liotard made self-portraits, both as self-examination and as self-advertisement, in order to keep up the image that had earnt him the nickname of ‘the Turkish painter’. Some 15 are known, including oils, pastels, miniatures and engravings, the first of which dates from 1727 (Geneva, Salmanowitz priv. col.). Towards the end of his life he painted an increasing number, among which his Self-portrait as an Old Man with Chin in Hand (Geneva, Mus. A. & Hist.) is a masterly work of great emotional content.
At the end of his career, out of fashion and short of commissions, Liotard began to paint pastel still-lifes of flowers and fruit (e.g. Geneva, Mus. A. & Hist.; Winterthur, Samml. Oskar Reinhart). These astonishingly modern still-lifes, many of which date from after 1783, owe a good deal to the work of Jean-Siméon Chardin but are yet more austere. One pastel landscape by Liotard is known, a View of Geneva Looking towards the Mountain (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.).
Liotard also worked occasionally in media other than pastel and oil; thus early in his career he painted enamel miniatures, and he later experimented with painting on glass and porcelain. He made a number of etchings (see Etching, soft ground, §2), including the Self-portrait in the Artist’s Studio (e.g. Vienna, Albertina), and he experimented with colour printing as a means of disseminating his pastel portraits.
At the age of almost 80, Liotard published the Traité des principes et des règles de la peinture, in which he explained his concept of painting as a mirror of nature, using this to justify a violent attack on the method of applying paint in touches or dabs: a deceitful artifice, in his opinion, because non-existent in nature. The book also contains high praise for the still-life painter Jan van Huysum, several of whose paintings he had collected.
As a portrait painter, Liotard remained faithful all his life to a style that owed little to other artists or to the conventions of fashionable salon art. Whether his sitters came from the nobility, the bourgeoisie or the world of artists, he treated them all with startling directness. His models are depicted firmly against a plain background (usually grey-brown), simply lit and set in a space with little depth. He never sought to embellish his subjects nor to flatter them by means of the pose selected, and he used no ornaments, drapery or symbols of rank or office to distract the eye. Liotard’s success as a portrait painter rested on the care he took to achieve a close likeness, his unreserved submission to the real, his sober and incisive style and the simplicity of the composition of his works.
Liotard’s twin brother, Jean-Michel Liotard (1702–96), was an etcher and engraver. After training in Paris he worked for Joseph Smith, British consul in Venice from 1735, for whom he engraved works by Carlo Cignani and Sebastiano Ricci (published Venice, 1743). After his return to Paris he was principally engaged in reproducing works by Antoine Watteau and Eustache Le Sueur. He later settled in Geneva, to be near Jean-Etienne.
Nicole Parmantier-Lallement. "Liotard, Jean-Etienne." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T051256 (accessed April 27, 2012).
