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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Anne-Germaine Larrivée, Madame Paul-Louis Girardot de Vermenoux ca. 1775 pastel on vellum Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Woman with Hyacinths ca. 1750-60 pastel on vellum Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Miniature of Laura Tarsi, a Grecian Lady ca. 1745-50 watercolor and gouache on ivory Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Frankish Woman of Pera in Constantinople ca. 1750 pastel on paper Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Frankish Woman and her Servant 1750 oil on canvas Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Ekaterina Mavrocordato, Princess of Moldova 1742-43 drawing (red and black chalk) Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor 1762 pastel on vellum Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress 1762 pastel on vellum Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress 1762 pastel on vellum Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Madame Sophie of France ca. 1762 pastel on vellum Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Johanne Salome von der Asseburg 1748 pastel on vellum Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Jeanne-Marie Liotard ca. 1745 pastel on vellum Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Madame Marc Liotard de la Servette, née Marianne Sarasin 1775 pastel and gouache on paper, mounted on canvas Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Self Portrait ca. 1781 mezzotint Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of the artist's wife Marie Gargues and their daughter Marie-Jeanne ca. 1768 watercolor and charcoal on paper Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Divan in Liotard's Rooms in Constantinople ca. 1738-42 drawing Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire,Genève |
Nobody knew this better than Ruskin, the propagator of the theory of the innocent eye. Indeed I know of no clearer analysis of what is here involved in the painter's art than another paragraph from Ruskin's little manual: "While form is absolute, so that you can say at the moment you draw any line that it is either right or wrong, colour is wholly relative. Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch that you add in other places; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes cold when you have put a hotter colour in another place, and what was in harmony when you left it, becomes discordant as you set other colours beside it; so that every touch must be laid, not with a view to its effect at the time, but with a view to its effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is afterwards to be done being previously considered. You may easily understand that, this being so, nothing but the devotion of life, and great genius besides, can make a colourist."
In stressing this need for the imitator of nature to hold the effect of all elements upon each other simultaneously in his mind, Ruskin has, without realizing it, amended his own theory of childlike vision. For this mental act rests on knowledge of how colors will affect each other. In fact, it demands a willingness to use a pigment which in isolation still looks unlike the area to be matched in order that it may look like it in the end. This power, I believe, is not only independent of the eye, or the image on the retina, it has also very little to do with visual memory. There are psychological types, we are told, who can hold a visual impression for quite some time after it has vanished from their eyes. They keep something like a color photograph in their minds, even when closing their eyes. Obviously such a faculty may be useful for a painter who wants to memorize a scene and who can devote more time to painting than to looking. But the claims that have been made for this so-called "eidetic faculty" in relation to art seem to me as unfounded as are those for the innocent eye. For we have seen that even the humble task of copying nature facsimilewise presents difficulties of a much higher order than those of remembering. Whether the artist has his prototype in front of him or "in his mind" can make little difference here. That power of holding on to an image that Ruskin describes so admirably is not the power of the eidetic; it is that faculty of keeping a large number of relationships present in one's mind that distinguishes all mental achievement, be it that of the chess player, the composer, or the great artist.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)