Long regarded as his masterpiece, ‘The Lavergne Family Breakfast’ is Liotard’s largest and most ambitious work in pastel. Despite the medium’s notorious delicacy, he skilfully reproduces complex textures: the sheen on the metal coffee pot, the shiny ceramic jug, the silky fabrics and reflections, in the black lacquer tray. Liotard was extremely versatile, producing works in pastel, oil, enamel, chalk and even on glass. Highly unusually, he returned to ‘The Lavergne Family Breakfast’ twenty years after he had painted it and made an exact replica in oil.

Liotard worked across the length and breadth of eighteenth-century Europe. Following four years in Constantinople, he grew a long beard, adopted Turkish dress and nicknamed himself ‘the Turkish painter.’ The exhibition showcases the raw materials used to make pastels as well as drawings, paintings and miniatures that seek to bring this idiosyncratic artist to life.

Last exhibited in 1754, when Liotard brought the pastel from Lyon to London, and hardly been seen in public since, this exhibition seeks to put Liotard and ‘The Lavergne Family Breakfast’ back in the spotlight.