Louis Stanislas Xavier de France, comte de Provence

Louis Stanislas Xavier, Count of Provence, was the future Louis XVIII — the Bourbon king who would eventually reign after Napoleon's fall. La Tour's pastel of 1762, now in the Louvre's Department of Prints and Drawings, was made when the Count was only three years old, as the grandson of Louis XV and a figure of dynastic significance. Pastel studies of royal children were made as records for the royal family and for diplomatic circulation, serving a political function alongside their aesthetic one. By 1762 La Tour was the leading pastellist in France and the portraitist of choice for the royal family and court, making his commission for this image of the young prince a natural outcome of his position. The Louvre provenance — in the drawings department rather than the paintings galleries — reflects the dual status of pastel as both drawing medium and finished artwork.

Pastel on paper, with the delicacy appropriate to a portrait of a three-year-old royal child. La Tour's usual analytical intensity is modulated here toward a softer, more open treatment of the child's features, while maintaining the precision that distinguished him from less rigorous pastellists.