A Girl with a Kitten

portrait

Perronneau's pastels show less technical virtuosity than Maurice Quentin de La Tour's, perhaps quite deliberately. Something of a preparation remains in the finished portrait, giving a gritty, unflattering, yet forceful character to his work. He is less concerned with simulating the texture of skin or hair, for example, than with lively drawing in pastel; the strokes remain, and add their vibrancy to Perronneau's sharp observation.

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About the Artist

Jean-Baptiste Perronneau

1715 – 1783

French painter and engraver. He worked mainly as a portraitist and mainly in pastel. In this medium he was overshadowed in his lifetime by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, whose style was more vivacious, but posterity has judged the more sober but more penetrating Perronneau to be at least his equal. From about 1755 he led a wandering life, visiting England, the Netherlands several times (he died in Amsterdam), Italy, Poland, and Russia. He was a prolific artist and is represented in many galleries in France and elsewhere.

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