Liotard, also known as ‘le peintre de la verité’, chose the medium of pastel, in order to give his paintings a naturalistic effect. Liotard's Apollo and Daphne and The Three Graces might be his oldest pastel works that have been remained. While Liotard mainly worked with oil paint in Paris, one can say Liotard's career as pastellist officially begun in Italy. Liotard had already been familiar with the medium of pastel during his younger years which he spent in his hometown Geneva, but it was not the medium he officially worked in. The rejection that Liotard received from the Académie Royale de Peinture in Paris on his historical works in oil paint may have been a stimulus for him to go back to his beloved medium, in which he was notably more skilled.
