Maurice Quentin de La Tour was a French painter who worked primarily with pastels in the Rococo style. Among his most famous subjects were Voltaire, Rousseau, Louis XV and the Madame de Pompadour.

A pastel is an art medium that consist of powdered pigment and a binder. It can exist in a variety of forms, including a stick, a square, a pebble, or a pan of color, though other forms are possible. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those used to produce some other colored visual arts media, such as oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation. The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry pigments than that of any other process.