Maurice Quentin de LA TOUR (Saint-Quentin... - Lot 137 - Nouvelle Etude

Lot 137
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Result : 60 536EUR
Maurice Quentin de LA TOUR (Saint-Quentin... - Lot 137 - Nouvelle Etude
Maurice Quentin de LA TOUR (Saint-Quentin 1704- 1788) Presumed portrait of Madame Catherine Masse (circa 1724-1793) Pastel on blue paper 32 x 24 cm Provenance : Probably the estate of Abbé Duplaquet, related to the ancestors of the present owners Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Piasa, November 21, 2001, n°111, repr. Bibliography: N. Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, London, 2006, ed. Unicorn Press, p.297, repr. Edition by the same author online, under n°J46 2351. Related works: - A finished half-body portrait, private collection (see A. Besnard, La Tour, ed. Les Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1928, no. 336, repr. Fig.177) - A preparation of the face, Musée de Saint-Quentin, Inv LT59 - Another preparation, sold at Sotheby's in Monaco on June 16, 1989, n°566 Abbé Duplaquet, a friend of La Tour, was a deputy of the Third Estate of the bailiwick of Saint-Quentin at the Estates General of 1789. He is the author of the historical eulogy of Maurice Quentin de La Tour, pronounced at the Town Hall of Saint Quentin in 1788 at the time of the artist's death, published in 1789. He also composed the inscription engraved on his tombstone. Catherine Massé, née Dufloquet de Réals, was a cousin of La Tour (according to a mention in an early will of La Tour dated 1768). In 1752 she married Grégoire Nicolas René Masse, a merchant-goldsmith and burgher of Paris, appointed secretary to the King in 1732. The expression of this smiling face is a tribute to benevolence. The Goncourts liked to say that La Tour "shows himself to be the most exquisite drawer of the finest feminine expression: the mouth" (see C. Debrie, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Saint-Quentin, 1991, ed. de l'Albaron, p.142).
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