Portrait of a Man

Unlike Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Perronneau was also an adept at using oil paint, achieving some of his best portraits in this medium. Outstanding is the Portrait of a Man of 1766 at Dublin, as pungent and penetrating as a Goya portrait. The hand is painted almost roughly; the lace is suggested rather than painstakingly detailed; and the clever, challengingly shrewd face twists round with disconcerting abruptness, as if defying the spectator to slip by.