Bildnis eines sitzenden Abbé

This early work of 1729 — 'Bildnis eines sitzenden Abbé' (Portrait of a Seated Abbé) — dates from before La Tour's Parisian celebrity and provides evidence of his formation as a portraitist. Oil on canvas was his predominant medium early in his career, before he committed fully to pastel after approximately 1737. The depiction of an abbé — a minor ecclesiastical figure common in French intellectual and social life — reflects the broad middle-class professional clientele that sustained portraitists working outside the court. The work's previous location in the Führermuseum collection in Linz indicates that it passed through the Nazi state art accumulation programme during the Second World War, a provenance that shadows a number of European museum works from this period. Its current location reflects the complex post-war dispersal of that collection.

Oil on canvas in La Tour's early manner, before his full commitment to pastel transformed his approach. The handling is competent but less distinctive than his mature pastel work, with conventional three-quarter portrait framing and standard eighteenth-century colour conventions for ecclesiastical dress.