2-732-436 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Jacques Dumont, called Le Romain, c. 1742. La Tour specialized in pastel portraiture, and he made this quickly drawn sketch directly in front of his friend, the painter Jacques Dumont. He then used this drawing as a guide for Dumont's face in two different large-scale portraits in pastel, one of which is in the Louvre in Paris. During the 1800s this sheet was owned by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, the brothers who, as writers and intellectuals, championed the art of 18th-century France and helped to revive interest in La Tour and other artists from that period.