LE NAIN brothers
French painters (b. 1598/1610, Laon, d. Louis and Antoine: 1648, Mathieu: 1677, Paris)
There were three brothers of this name, all born in Laon. Antoine was in Paris from
1629 and his two brothers Louis and Mathieu from 1630. They had established a common
workshop in Paris. They remained unmarried and are traditionally said to have worked
in harmony, often collaborating on the same picture. The "Le Nain problem"
of determining which of them painted what is complicated because no signed work bears
a first initial and no work completed after 1648 is dated. Evaluation of the three
personalities early in the 20th century was therefore based on the dubious establishment
of three stylistic groups. Art scholars today no longer try to attribute individual
works, and the three brothers are treated as a single artist.
Biography
French painters, brothers (Antoine, d. 1648, Louis, d. 1648, Mathieu, c. 1607-1677),
who were born at Laon but had all moved to Paris by 1630. The traditional birth-dates
for Antoine and Louis are 1588 and 1593, respectively, but it is now thought that
they were born shortly before and shortly after 1600, so that all three brothers
were of much the same generation.
Mathieu was made painter to the city of Paris in 1633, and all three were foundation
members of the Academy in 1648. Apart from this, little is known of their careers
and the assigning of works to one or the other of them is fraught with difficulty
and controversy, for such paintings as are signed bear only their surname, and of
those that are dated none is later than 1648, when all were still alive. The finest
and most original works associated with the brothers - powerful and dignified genre
scenes of peasants - are conventionally given to Louis; Antoine is credited with
a group of small-scale and richly coloured family scenes, mainly on copper; and in
a third group, attributed to Mathieu, are paintings of more eclectic style, chiefly
portraits and group portraits in a manner suggesting influence from Holland. The
brothers are also said to have collaborated on religious works. Examples of all three
types are in the Louvre.
In 1978-79 a major exhibition in Paris brought together most of the pictures associated
with the brothers, but it raised as many problems as it solved. It also confirmed
the stature of Louis, whose sympathetic and unaffected peasant scenes are the main
reason why the Le Nains have attracted so much attention. It has recently been proposed
that the traditional description of the figures in these paintings as 'peasants'
is a misnomer (they are said to be too well dressed for that) and that in fact they
represent members of the bourgeoisie. |
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