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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Self Portrait 1751-52 pastel on paper, mounted on canvas Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève |
Traveler in Turkey
During the Romantic Age, journeys to the Orient were much in vogue. There was an established Orientalist movement in art and culture. But in the 18th century such interests and excursions were rare. Certain citizens of Geneva had, however, already sought out this destination. Liotard passed a substantial share of his life in Istanbul, capital of a huge empire that was still a great power and whose cultural prestige (in European eyes) derived from the Thousand and One Nights, translated by Galland, one of the diplomats sent to the Sublime Porte by Louis XIV. Back in Europe, Liotard produced "Turkish" pictures that enjoyed great popularity. Western women suddenly wished to be painted in Turkish costumes, lounging in Turkish interiors.
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of François Tronchin with Danaë by Rembrandt 1755 pastel on vellum Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
Virtuoso of the Self Portrait
The artist's technique with pastels outshone all his contemporaries, however well-regarded in this medium. There is a pastel portrait of a Genevan banker posing with the highlight of his art collection, a Danaë by Rembrandt. This is an oil painting with thick impasto, which Liotard managed to render convincingly, despite the inherent antagonism between oil paint and pastel, the one glossy and the other flat.
Certain painters have been immersed in the study of their own faces, most famously Rembrandt and Van Gogh. A great number of self portraits by Liotard survive, created at different ages and in different attitudes. The one shone here is in his "Turkish" manner, complete with an extravagant beard which he depicts so meticulously that one seems able to distinguish each of its curling strands.
Beards
Long beards most commonly make reference to Biblical patriarchs, such as the famous Moses of Michelangelo. Hermits in their solitude were also routinely portrayed with prominent beards.
It must have taken years for Liotard to grow such a beard, yet he didn't keep it. His face continued to transform itself from one picture to another. We can say of each: it looks like him, but it doesn't, he isn't just this, he shifts, he tries things on. He won't stay the same, bearded or shaved, with hat or without. To take in his true portrait, we ought to have a movie of all his portraits. Diderot said: "In one day I have a hundred different faces, according to what affects me." Liotard seems to say: "I had a hundred different faces, depending on where I was and what was happening around me."
– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)