Portrait de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), écrivain et philosophe

Jean-Jacques Rousseau sat to La Tour in 1753, a pivotal year in Rousseau's intellectual career when his Discours sur les sciences et les arts had already made him famous and his Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité was in preparation. La Tour and Rousseau occupied overlapping social circles in Enlightenment Paris — both men were associated with the philosophe milieu and both cultivated an image of authenticity that sat awkwardly alongside their social success. Rousseau is said to have resented portraits as false images of the self, making the fact of this sitting particularly interesting. The Musée Carnavalet in Paris holds the oil version; La Tour also made pastel preparatory studies for this commission. The portrait became one of the most-replicated images of Rousseau's face, distributed in engravings across Europe.

Oil paint on an unspecified support, with La Tour's precise handling applied to the challenge of capturing Rousseau's celebrated features. The face receives the penetrating analytical observation La Tour brought to all his intellectual sitters, conveying intelligence and a certain wariness beneath the conventional portrait format.