Mlle Ferrand Meditating on Newton

Mademoiselle Ferrand Meditating on Newton, of 1753, is one of La Tour's most celebrated and historically significant portraits. Élisabeth Ferrand was a woman of intellectual distinction who participated in the Parisian Enlightenment milieu, and the inclusion of Newton's Opticks as the book of meditation was a pointed cultural statement in the year following the publication of Newton's French translation by Mme du Châtelet. Showing a woman deep in scientific reading — rather than sewing, music, or social display — was a direct challenge to conventional assumptions about female intellectual capacity. The Bavarian State Painting Collections' holding of this work places it in Munich, where it is one of the most-discussed images in the European Enlightenment's contested history of women and learning.

Pastel on paper, with La Tour's characteristic dense surface and analytical observation applied to an unusually interior subject. The downward-directed gaze of meditation required careful modelling of the face in an atypical light condition. The book — identifiable as Newton's — is rendered with sufficient precision to identify it without overemphasising the prop.