Georges de La Tour and His World

by Philip Conisbee

Book Overview

Georges de La Tour, one of the most significant painters of 17th-century France, was virtually forgotten until the early 20th century. This work is an overview of the work and world of La Tour. It... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0894682628
• ISBN13: 9780894682629
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: National Gallery of Art
• Length: 319 Pages
• Weight: 4.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Holy Mother of Mary!

This book shows thirty great paintings by what I consider the second-best French painter of the seventeenth century (to me, but to very few others, Simon Vouet was the best). Those who haven't seen Georges de La Tour's paintings will be struck by the fact that the backgrounds are typically dark black. That was his style. He'd paint the design, starting with the light colors. Then he would add darker colors to it. And he'd finish up with a very dark background. We see people paying taxes. We see a peasant couple. A hurdy-gurdy player. Brawling musicians. Dice players. There's a great work showing someone cheating at cards. In the version in the Louvre, the cheat has the Ace of Diamonds behind his back. La Tour did a copy of the painting, which is in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, but in that one, the cheat holds the Ace of Clubs! Some of the paintings have religious significance. Three of them involve Magdalene and a skull. Another shows Irene tending to the wounded Saint Sebastian. And there are paintings of the Holy Family. One is of Jesus and Saint Joseph in Joseph's carpenter's shop. Another is of Saint Anne (Mary's mother) teaching Mary to read. One more is of Anne and Jesus. And yet another is of Anne, Mary, and Jesus. The detail in all these paintings is stunning. And the expressions on the faces of La Tour's characters are remarkable. I recommend this book.

Arts in Lorraine

That only taxes and death are certain would sum up what we know for sure about GEORGES du Mesnil DE LA TOUR AND HIS WORLD. Just as his native Lorraine lost its independence to France, so was he factored out of the art world during the 250 some years after he died in 1652. His "flea catcher"; "hurdy-gurdy player," variously mistaken as the work of 17th-century Spanish masters Herrera the Elder, Maino, Murillo, Rivera, Velazquez, and Zurbaran; and my favorite, Jacques Callot-type "newborn child" have been recognized as the most beloved of his art of Dutch- and Flemish-type earthy realism and luminously softened colors, eerily flickering light and spectacular lighting effects, finely drafted clothing and hair, highly focused and tensely concentrated mood, and minimal expressions, forms and gestures subtly cluing character. He excelled in not only the theatrically controlled daylight manner, with the henpecked "old man" and thin-lipped "old woman" of the piercing eyes and the careworn "old peasant couple eating" in worn clothing with pulled stitches accented by light brushstrokes and rubbed-thin paint, but also the deeply shadowed and dramatically night-time style, with "denial of St Peter" and "dream of St Joseph." His subjects ranged from the everyday life of ordinary people, as in his boys blowing on a charcoal stick and a firebrand, "girl blowing on a brazier," and my favorite "payment of taxes" with a Jacques Bellange-styled unsettling atmosphere of crowded space, deeply shadowed eyes, meticulously folded drapery and unusual candle-cast shine to arms and faces; to music, with "cornet player," "musicians' brawl" of gesturing arms and gnarled hands around beautifully painted musical instruments and lively highlighted weather-cracked and wrinkled faces, Jean Appier aka Hanzelet-type "woman playing a triangle," and "young singer"; to nonreligious moralizing with all the furtiveness and sideways glances by cheats with the aces of clubs and diamonds in Fontainebleau school-styled solidly brushed half-length figures and Simon Vouet-type colorfully light fine materials, "dice players," and my favorite "fortune-teller"; to religious meditations with "adoration of the shepherds," Job with his broken bowl for scraping sores and his Jacques Bellange-styled highwaisted wife, and such Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio- and Hendrick ter Brugghen-type ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events as saints Alexis, Andrew, Anne mothering Mary and grandmothering Jesus, Francis in ecstasy, James the Less of the brushy arthritic hands, Jerome the scholarly ascetic with a bloodstained knotted rope against self-indulgence, John the Baptist in the wilderness, Jude Thaddeus, Mary Magdalene sorrowing over her sins, Philip of the crystal buttons ingeniously refracting light onto his jacket, Sebastian tenderly cared by Irene and her tearful assistant, and Thomas transformed from doubt to toughly unflinching faith. I particularly like the way he showed children behavin