Portrait of the engraver Schmidt

Georg Friedrich Schmidt was a German engraver who worked primarily in Paris and Berlin, becoming one of the most celebrated printmakers of his era. La Tour's 1760 pastel — a portrait of one visual artist by another — belongs to the tradition of mutual professional celebration within the Paris art world. Schmidt had been received into the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1742, the same institution to which La Tour had been elected in 1746, giving both men a shared institutional context. The work is now in the Demidov collection, reflecting the Russian aristocratic collecting of French art that was a significant feature of the eighteenth-century European art market. Depicting a fellow artist as colleague and equal rather than patron or client gives this portrait a more informal, collegial character.

Oil or pastel — the medium is listed as oil paint — with La Tour's precise analytical approach applied to a professional peer. The informal character of an artist-to-artist portrait allows La Tour to forgo the social markers of rank and concentrate entirely on the sitter's facial character and professional bearing.