1593-1652 French Georges de La Tour Galleries His early work shows influences from Caravaggio, probably via his Dutch followers, and the genre scenes of cheats??as in The Fortune Teller ??and fighting beggars clearly derive from the Dutch Caravaggisti, and probably also his fellow-Lorrainer, Jacques Bellange. These are believed to date from relatively early in his career. La Tour is best known for the nocturnal light effects which he developed much further than his artistic predecessors had done, and transferred their use in the genre subjects in the paintings of the Dutch Caravaggisti to religious painting in his. Unlike Caravaggio his religious paintings lack dramatic effects. He painted these in a second phase of his style, perhaps beginning in the 1640s, using chiaroscuro, careful geometrical compositions, and very simplified painting of forms. His work moves during his career towards greater simplicity and stillness ?? taking from Caravaggio very different qualities than Jusepe de Ribera and his Tenebrist followers did. He often painted several variations on the same subjects, and his surviving output is relatively small. His son Etienne was his pupil, and distinguishing between their work in versions of La Tour's compositions is difficult. The version of the Education of the Virgin, in the Frick Collection in New York is an example, as the Museum itself admits. Another group of paintings (example left), of great skill but claimed to be different in style to those of de La Tour, have been attributed to an unknown "Hurdy-gurdy Master". All show older male figures (one group in Malibu includes a female), mostly solitary, either beggars or saints. After his death in 1652, La Tour's work was largely forgotten until rediscovered by Hermann Voss, a German scholar, in 1915. In 1935 an exhibition in Paris began the revival in interest among a wider public. In the twentieth century a number of his works were identified once more, and forgers tried to help meet the new demand; many aspects of his œuvre remain controversial among art historians.  Related Paintings of Georges de La Tour :. | Brawl, Getty Museum | The Card-Sharp with the Ace of Spades | St Joseph | Dice players | The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs |
Related Artists:
Theo Van Rysselberghe
Belgian Pointillist Painter, 1862-1926 was a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who played a pivotal role in the European art scene at the turn of the century. Born in Ghent to a French-speaking bourgeois family, he studied first at the Academy of Ghent under Theo Canneel and from 1879 at the Academy of Brussels under the directorship of Jean-François Portaels. The North African paintings of Portaels had started an orientalist fashion in Belgium. Their impact would strongly influence the young Theo van Rysselberghe. Between 1882 and 1888 he made three trips to Morocco, staying there a total of one year and half. Barely 18 years old, he already participated at the Salon of Ghent, showing two portraits. Soon afterwards followed his Self-portrait with pipe (1880), painted in somber colours in the Belgian realistic tradition of that time. His Child in an open spot of the forest (1880) already departs from this style and he sets his first steps towards impressionism.
Antoine Chintreuil
Antoine Chintreuil Antoine Chintreuil (May 15, 1814 - August 8, 1873) was a French landscape painter. He was born in Pont-de-Vaux, Ain and grew up in Bresse. In 1838 he moved to Paris, where he began studying under Paul Delaroche in 1842. The following year he met Corot, who influenced him profoundly by encouraging him to paint landscape en plein air. Art historian Athena S. E. Leoussi suggests that Chintreuil's work can be divided into three periods: From c. 1846-1850 he painted Paris and its surroundings, particularly Montmartre; from 1850-1857 he lived in Igny and frequently painted in Barbizon, and from 1857 on he lived and worked in La Tournelle-Septeuil in the Seine valley. During this final period his work reached its fullest development, and he achieved critical recognition. In the breadth and simplicity of his execution, and in his attention to capturing light and atmosphere, Chintreuil can be placed alongside Eugene Boudin, Johan Barthold Jongkind, and the painters of the Barbizon school, as an important forerunner of Impressionism. He died in Septeuil, Seine-et-Oise in 1873.
Anton Raffael Mengs
a pastel portrait painter German,1728-1779