Antoine Le Nain

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Preparation for dance lesson - after 1650

Antoine Le Nain (* around 1588 in Laon ; † May 25, 1648 in Paris ) was a French painter of the 17th century. He lived and worked in Paris and can be assigned to baroque realism .

The life paths and the attribution of the paintings of this artist and his brothers have not been clearly clarified to this day. Antoine Le Nain's date of birth, which is generally given as 1588, remains controversial and is dated to a later period by some art historians, namely the years 1597 to 1607. Furthermore, his work is difficult to distinguish from that of his two younger brothers Louis Le Nain (* 1597/1607) and Mathieu Le Nain (* around 1607), which is why the three artists have long been summarized under the name Les Le Nain , "the (brothers) Le Nain". Their names, which are among the most important in French painting today, were almost completely forgotten by the end of the 18th century. Her works were only rediscovered by the Laonian novelist Jules Champfleury (1821–1889), who drew attention to her through his writings from 1850 and 1862.

Life

Antoine Le Nain was born as the third of the five sons of the wealthy farmer and winemaker Isaac Le Nain, who owned several houses, vineyards, meadows and forests in the area of ​​Laon in the northern French region of Picardy and in 1595 the office of "Sergent royal" at the salt store acquired. Together with his younger brothers, Antoine Le Nain received painting lessons for several years before traveling to Paris. He stayed there all his life, not without maintaining contact with his relatives in Laon, where he owned property. In Paris he did not join the painters' corporation , which required an expensive and long training, but instead settled in 1629 in the district of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés abbey , whose privileges allowed him to bypass the strict rules of the corporation.

The workshop, which he set up together with his brothers on rue Princesse, seems to have become very successful, especially with portraits and religious motifs, because in the same year Antoine was commissioned by the city fathers to create the later lost portrait des échevins (portrait of the Schöppen) to create. With his brothers he worked on the decor of the famous "Chapel of the Virgin" of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which was destroyed during the French Revolution, and the also lost altarpieces for four side chapels of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral .

In 1648 Antoine was one of the first members of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, which had just been founded .

Antoine Le Nain died unpredictably in Paris in 1648.

Selection of works

Only fifteen paintings by the Le Nains workshop from 1640 to 1647 are dated and signed. However, the brothers never signed anything other than their family name, which has not yet allowed the works to be reliably attributed to one or the other of the brothers. The works listed below are therefore those of the Le Nain brothers .

Major works

  • Victoire , Paris, Musée du Louvre
  • Baccus and Ariane , Orléans , Musée d'Orléans
  • Venus in the forge of Vulcanus 1641, Reims , Musée de Reims

Religious subjects

  • Adoration of the Shepherds , 1630-1632 ?, Paris, Louvre. From a series of 6 paintings on the life of the Virgin, which were created for a chapel of the "Petits-Augustins", of which only four have so far been found.
  • Birth of the Virgin , Paris, Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral
  • Rest of the Holy Family in Egypt , private collection
  • Denial of Petri , Paris, Louvre. It is not yet clear whether the painting is a joint work with his brother Louis or whether it was painted by one of the brothers alone.

Portraits

  • Marquis de Trévilles , 1644, private collection
  • Chest portrait of a man , Le Puy , Museum
  • Tric-Trac player , Paris, Musee du Louvre

Genre painting

  • The picture The Gardener (around 1655/60) is in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne.

literature

  • Les frères Le Nain . Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris 1978, ISBN 2-7118-0094-6 , exhibition catalog, Paris, Grand Palais, October 3, 1978–8. January 1979.
  • Jean-Philippe Breuille (Ed.): Dictionnaire de la peinture française. La peinture en France du Moyen Age à nos jours . Edition corrigée. Larousse, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-03-740011-X , ( Essentiels Larousse ).

Web links

Commons : Antoine Le Nain  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The small encyclopedia , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, volume 2, page 37
personal data
SURNAME Le Nain, Antoine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter
DATE OF BIRTH around 1588
PLACE OF BIRTH Laon
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 1648
Place of death Paris