
The three Le Nain brothers were
painter
Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...
s in 17th-century
France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
: Antoine Le Nain (c.1600–1648), Louis Le Nain (c.1603–1648), and Mathieu Le Nain (1607–1677). They produced
genre works,
portraits and portrait miniatures.
Lives and work
The brothers were born in or near
Laon
Laon () is a city in the Aisne Departments of France, department in Hauts-de-France in northern France.
History
Early history
The Ancient Diocese of Laon, which rises a hundred metres above the otherwise flat Picardy plain, has always held s ...
, in
Picardy
Picardy (; Picard language, Picard and , , ) is a historical and cultural territory and a former regions of France, administrative region located in northern France. The first mentions of this province date back to the Middle Ages: it gained it ...
, in northern France. Mathieu was born in 1607; Antoine and Louis were originally believed to have been born in 1588 and 1593, respectively, but are now thought to have been born later; the
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...
gives them birth dates of "c. 1600? and c. 1603?". By 1630, all three lived in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, where they shared the studio founded by Antoine, who was admitted to the Paris
painters' guild
The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Four Evangelists, Evangelist Saint Luke, Luke, the patron sa ...
, enabling his two brothers to train under him without paying fees. Within a few years they were receiving important commissions, Antoine painting a group portrait of the
aldermen of Paris in 1632.
The early paintings of the Le Nains were religious, and varied in style as the brothers passed through brief periods in which they were influenced by French contemporaries such as
Philippe de Champaigne
Philippe de Champaigne (; 26 May 1602 – 12 August 1674) was a Duchy of Brabant, Brabant-born French people, French Baroque era painter, a major exponent of the French art, French school. He was a founding member of the Académie royale de pein ...
,
Laurent de La Hyre, and
Jacques Blanchard.
[Dickerson and Bell, 16–20] A more enduring influence on their paintings of the 1630s, such as ''The Holy Family'' (ca. 1635–1640), was the work of the Italian artist
Orazio Gentileschi
Orazio Lomi Gentileschi (; 1563 – 7 February 1639) was an Italian painter. Born in Tuscany, he began his career in Rome, painting in a Mannerist style, much of his work consisting of painting the figures within the decorative schemes of other ...
, who had worked in Paris during the 1620s.
The Le Nains's interest in genre and peasant subjects began around 1640. In 1648 the three brothers were received into the
Académie de peinture et de sculpture on the year of its founding.
[Wine, 194]
Because of the similarity of their styles of painting and the difficulty of distinguishing works by each brother (they signed their paintings only with their
surname
In many societies, a surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person, although several give ...
, and many may have been collaborations), they are commonly referred to as a single entity, ''Le Nain''. Louis is usually credited with the best-known of their paintings, a series of scenes depicting
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasan ...
life; he may have visited Italy, and been influenced by the Dutch artist
Pieter van Laer
Pieter Bodding van Laer (christened 14 December 1599, in Haarlem – 1641 or later) was a Dutch Painting, painter and Printmaking, printmaker. He was active in Rome for over a decade and was known for Genre works, genre scenes, animal paintings a ...
, who was based in Rome but also passed through France in the mid-1620s.
[Blunt, 154] These genre paintings are often noted for being remarkably literal, yet sympathetic; the subjects are never grotesque or seem ridiculed. There remains some question, however, as to whether some of the assumed "peasants" were truly from the rural class—many seem to be simply the bourgeois at leisure in the country. Their sober execution and choice of colour recall characteristics of the Spanish school. Their choice of subject was unusual for the time: the world of Paris was busy with mythological allegories, and the "heroic deeds" of the king, while the three Le Nain devoted themselves chiefly to these subjects of humble life such as ''Peasant Meal'' (1642), ''Boys Playing Cards'', or ''A Farrier in His Forge'', three pictures now in the
Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...
. Their
''Adoration of the Shepherds'' in London (
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...
) is an exception, and many other civic and church works may have been lost in the
French Revolution. ''
Ariane in Naxos'' also appears to be an exception, as it depicts the Greek deity
Bacchus
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ) by the Gre ...
and his lover
Ariadne
In Greek mythology, Ariadne (; ; ) was a Cretan princess, the daughter of King Minos of Crete. There are variations of Ariadne's myth, but she is known for helping Theseus escape from the Minotaur and being abandoned by him on the island of N ...
.
The brothers also produced
miniatures (mainly attributed to Antoine) and
portrait
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...
s (attributed to Mathieu). Mathieu became the official painter (''Peintre Ordinaire'') of Paris in 1633, and much later was made a
chevalier. Among his sitters for portraits were
Marie de' Medici
Marie de' Medici (; ; 26 April 1575 – 3 July 1642) was Queen of France and Navarre as the second wife of King Henry IV. Marie served as regent of France between 1610 and 1617 during the minority of her son Louis XIII. Her mandate as rege ...
and
Cardinal Mazarin
Jules Mazarin (born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino or Mazarini; 14 July 1602 – 9 March 1661), from 1641 known as Cardinal Mazarin, was an Italian Catholic prelate, diplomat and politician who served as the chief minister to the Kings of France Lou ...
, but these works seem to have disappeared.
Antoine and Louis died in 1648. Mathieu lived until 1677, and appears to have painted until the mid-1650s, although no works are signed after 1648. In 1662 he received the unusual honour for a painter of the
Order of Saint Michael
The Order of Saint Michael () is a French dynastic order of chivalry, founded by King Louis XI of France on 1 August 1469, in response to the Order of the Golden Fleece founded by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, Louis' chief competitor fo ...
, but was expelled a year later, and imprisoned in 1662 for wearing the collar of the order when he was not entitled to it.
The Le Nain paintings had a revival in the 1840s and, thanks to the exertions of
Champfleury, made their appearance on the walls of the Louvre in 1848. Champfleury was a friend of the Realist painter
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( ; ; ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the ...
, and a theorist of Realism and writer on French popular arts. The "naive" quality of these works, with their static poses, "awkward" compositions and peasant subjects were admired and may well have exercised some influence on many nineteenth-century artists, notably Courbet himself. They have remained popular through the 20th century.
Notes
References
*
Blunt, Anthony, ''Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700'', 2nd edn 1957, Penguin
*Dickerson, Claude Douglas, and Esther Bell, ''The Brothers Le Nain: Painters of Seventeenth-century France'', 2016, New Haven: Yale University Press. .
*Wine, Humphrey, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): ''The Seventeenth Century French Paintings'', 2001, National Gallery Publications Ltd,
External links and sources
Biography(Web gallery of Art)
(The Artchive)
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Le Nain
People from Laon
17th-century French painters
French male painters
French genre painters
French Baroque painters