45 MAURICE­QUENTIN Maurice­Quentin de La Tour was the most sought­after portraitist of his day. He worked DE LA TOUR exclusively in pastel, producing likenesses of the nobility and the wealthy middle class that French, 1704­1788 were acclaimed both for their technical mastery and for their brilliant verisimilitude. After Gabriel Bernard de Rieux, seeing Gabriel Bernard de Rieux at the Salon of 1741 a viewer wrote, "It is a miraculous circa 1739­41 work, it is like a piece of Dresden china, it cannot possibly be a mere pastel." Pastel and gouache on paper This monumental full­length portrait—assembled from separate sheets of paper mounted on canvas Unframed: 200 x 150 cm laid on canvas and still in its original, massive gilt frame—transcends the intimate (79x 59 in.) conventions of the pastel medium. During his long career La Tour did only one other Framed: 317.5 x 223.5 cm like it, the portrait of Madame de Pompadour now in the Louvre. The Getry portrait (125 x 88 in.) 94.PC.39 illustrates a fine differentiation between textures, a play of light over reflective surfaces, and an overall high degree of finish extraordinarily difficult to achieve in fragile pastel. This work was perceived by contemporaries to be La Tour's greatest technical success, rivaling portraits in the more prestigious medium of oil. Gabriel Bernard de Rieux (1687—1745) is shown dressed in the robes of his office as president of the second Court of Inquiry in the Parliament of Paris. He owed his status as a member of the extremely wealthy class known as the grande bourgeoisie to his father, an immensely successful financier, who also purchased the noble title of the comte de Rieux in 1702. Gabriel Bernard inherited his father's fortune in 1739, the year this work was begun. The deliberately old­fashioned furnishings and Gabriel Bernard's poised hauteur create the aura of old wealth and status, a fiction delightfully undone by the brazen grandeur of his portrait. In this work the high ambitions of a patron and an artist, who was said to produce a new marvel of perfection every year, seamlessly coincide. DA FRENCH SCHOOL 83