George de La Tour
(March 13, 1593 - January 30, 1652) |
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Chiaroscuro technique, religious scenes lit by candlelight Art Work
| Name: |
George de La Tour |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Vic-sur-Seille |
| Nationality: |
French |
| Birth: |
March 13, 1593 |
| Death: |
January 30, 1652 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Chiaroscuro technique, religious scenes lit by candlelight |
| Medium: |
oil paint |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| One of the greatest painters of his age, La Tour combined a sense of monumentality and simplicity, fused a specific moment and timelessness, blended fidelity to nature with universality, and joined prosaic humanity with a refined spirituality. In sum, Georges de La Tour's work involves the resolution of opposites and the concentration on essentials which marks the great artist. Despite his outstanding reputation today, La Tour was virtually forgotten until the twentieth century, when a series of studies resurrected the artist and reconstructed his oeuvre. Nevertheless, little is known about his training or his career and there remains disagreement among scholars as to the authenticity of various works. Born the son of a baker in the duchy of Lorraine, Georges de La Tour is first documented in 1617 at the time of his marriage at age twenty-four to a wealthy girl, still in his native town of Vic-sur-Seille. By 1620 he was an independent master at Luneville with his own shop and his first apprentice. In 1623 La Tour is recorded as selling a picture to Henri II, Due de Lorraine, who also purchased a St. Peter from him in 1624. La Tour's name crops up regularly in Luneville, and a recent publication cites a document placing La Tour in Paris in 1639, the year in which he became Peintre ordinaire du Roi. This honor was probably given by Louis XIII, for whom he painted a St. Sebastian Tended by St. Irene (a picture now known through versions, or copies, notably Detroit and Kansas City). Earlier scholars identify the work with the vertical version now in the Louvre (a painting now at times attributed to La Tour's son fetienne, 1621-92). Between 1644 and 1651 there are records of at least six important commissions, mostly for the collection of the marechal de La Ferte the governor of Lorraine, and during these years La Tour was peintre d titre de Luniville. Court cases involving La Tour reflect a temperamental personality and aspirations to nobility. La Tour's premature death at age fifty-nine in 1652 left behind two daughters and a son, the painter tienne de La Tour. La Tour's training is uncertain. Most scholars agree with the strong influence of Bellange, while the amateur artist Alphonse de Rambervilliers, who was active in Vic during La Tour's youth, and another painter, Saint Pierre Pourier (1565-1640), who was in Lunville, have been suggested as teachers. Opinion is divided on the extent of La Tour's travels. Many scholars speculate that La Tour traveled in Italy between 1610 and 1616, while others believe La Tour's Caravaggism is of a particularly Dutch inclination and derives from a trip to Holland, where the works of Hendrick Ter Brugghen* and Gerrit van Honthorst* especially inspired him. Only three pictures are dated, of which one is illegible and the other two are 1645 (Cleveland) and 1650 (Nantes) – that is, relatively late in his career. Thus La Tour's stylistic evolution remains unclear, although his oeuvre is generally thought to move from the depiction of daylight scenes early in his career to nighttime scenes later on. Like Matthias Slomer,* Georges de La Tour is one of the later exponents of Caravaggism at a time when it had long gone out of fashion elsewhere, but in La Tour's hands the old fashioned artifice of candlelit scenes becomes the means to achieve some of the most original poetic and mysterious images of the entire century. Today a group of some thirty-five to forty-two compositions has been accepted. Problems of development, attribution, and artistic intent continue to intrigue art historians and no aspect of his work is now considered too irrelevant to examine. La Tour's early career seems to have involved a number of genre pictures which probably date from the 1620s. Generally accepted works include the pendant full-length, standing figures of a Peasant Man, Peasant Woman (San Francisco, Fine Arts Museum), while the Hurdy-Gurdy Player and His Dog (Bergues, Muse"e Municipal du Mont-de-Piete) and the Blind Musician (Nantes, Musee des Beaux-Arts) are less universally accepted. These works are all marked by their full-length format, their vantage point of looking down at the figure, the monochromatic palette, and detailed, if somewhat summary, description of the subject. The unsparing depiction elicits as much horror as sympathy for the picture's characters. The Fighting Musicians (Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum) is La Tour's earliest known exploration of the three-quarter-length format, which has its origins in Roman Caravaggism. Here a particularly Dutch flavor is evident both in the handling of paint and in the depiction and interpretation of figures. La Tour's Fighting Musicians led to more mature explorations of genre subjects including two versions of Card Players (Fort Worth, TX, Kimbell Art Museum; Paris, Louvre) and the Fortune Teller (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). (The attribution of the Fortune Teller has recently been disputed but remains accepted by most scholars.) In these works the characters are not only more elegant, but their various states of mind and their interrelationships are expressed with greater subtlety and depth. La Tour's treatment of physiognomy and composition, is now suspended between the real and the ideal. Specific features are smoothed toward generalized forms, actions are frozen, and a simple story takes on the general implications of a parable. A far greater number of La Tour's surviving works involve biblical or religious subjects. His development in these areas parallels the evolution of his genre themes. Among his earliest accepted religious paintings are two full-length versions of the Penitent St. Jerome (one in Grenoble, Musee de Peinture et de Sculpture; one in Stockholm, National Museum), which are dated to the 1620s. These share the same view from above and realistic handling seen in La Tour's early genre works. The painting Job and His Wife (fipinal, Musee Dtpartemental des Vosges) marks the turning point in La Tour's development as a narrator. Here he transformed the subject into a night scene, lighted by a single candle. La Tour fully exploited the narrative potential of his juxtapositions as the clothed, standing wife looms forcefully over the frail, naked, seated Job " her candle illuminating and revealing Job's poignant condition, and fixing their contrasted states powerfully in our minds. Nocturnal settings lit by candles lend a special poetry to La Tour's handling of several subjects, such as the Adoration of the Shepherds (Paris, Louvre) and the Penitent St. Peter (signed and dated 1645, Cleveland Museum of Art). In both of these images light selectively obscures or highlights facial details to underscore expression and describe a state of mind. La Tour's exploration of the theme of penance found especially fruitful stimulation with the story of the penitent Magdalen, which he painted more often than any other subject. In each treatment, meditative reflection is given visual expression via the presence of a single lit candle (and sometimes a mirror) next to which the Magdalen broods in solemn isolation. At least four versions (Paris, Louvre; Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art; New York, Wrightsman; Los Angeles, County Museum of Art) are accepted and are original interpretations of this important counterreformation theme. In several candlelit scenes, La Tour juxtaposes children with adults while using the light to isolate figures, to unify the narrative, and to organize the composition. The chiaroscuro also underscores the spiritual and mystical elements of the story. Notable examples include The Dream of Joseph (signed, Nantes, Musee des Beaux-Arts) and Christ and St. Joseph in the Carpenter's Shop (Paris, Louvre). The Frick Collection, New York, preserves one version of a copy after La Tour depicting the Education of the Virgin. In his last known dated work, The Denial of St. Peter (signed and dated, 1650, Nantes, Musee des Beaux-Arts), done just two years before his death, La Tour once more shows his familiarity with Caravaggisti. La Tour's special genius can perhaps best be noted in those works in which the exact subject remains a mystery. In such paintings as the Woman with the Flea (Nancy, Musee Historique Lorrain; also entitled the Virgin Awaiting the Light of the World) and A New Born Child (Rennes, Mus6e des Beaux-Arts et d'Archeologie), sometimes described as a Nativity, genre is raised to such a spiritual level that the image is transformed into a religious theme, or perhaps a traditionally religious subject has been stripped of its ordinary trappings and has become instead a meditation on the universal human condition. In either case. La Tour's sparing and elemental approach to image making underscores his position as one of seventeenth-century Europe's most important painters, and as one who stands apart from other developments in his native country. |
Samples of Work
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