Portrait of Pierre-Louis Laideguive

Pierre-Louis Laideguive was a French legal official, and La Tour's oil portrait of 1761 — now in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona — represents the artist's engagement with the prosperous professional middle class as well as the aristocracy and royal family. Laideguive occupied the kind of senior legal administrative position that was a pillar of French civic life, and his portrait by the most celebrated pastellist in France reflects the cultural aspirations of the noblesse de robe. The Barcelona provenance is unusual for La Tour's work and documents the international dispersal of French portraits through the European art market over two and a half centuries. The oil medium, which La Tour used less frequently than pastel by 1761, suggests a deliberate choice of the more conventional format for a professional official.

Oil on canvas, with La Tour's precise analytical handling maintaining his characteristic portrait intensity in the less favoured medium. Legal professional dress is rendered with the documentary attention La Tour brought to all costume, while the face receives the same penetrating observation as his royal commissions.