thumb|right|[[Joseph the Carpenter, 1642, Louvre.]]

Georges de La Tour (; 13 March 1593 – 30 January 1652) was a French Baroque painter, who spent most of his working life in the Duchy of Lorraine, which was temporarily absorbed into France between 1641 and 1648. He painted mostly religious chiaroscuro scenes lit by candlelight.

Artist at the confluence of Nordic, Italian, and French cultures, and a contemporary of Jacques Callot and the Le Nain brothers, La Tour is a keen observer of everyday reality. His pronounced taste for plays of light and shadow makes him one of the most original successors of Caravaggio.

Recognised during his lifetime, he was quickly forgotten after his death. Rediscovered in the early 20th century by German art historian Hermann Voss, he later inspired writers as diverse as René Char, André Malraux, Pascal Quignard, and Charles Juliet.

Personal life

thumb|left|upright|[[Magdalene with Two Flames, , Metropolitan Museum of Art]]

Georges de La Tour was born in the town of Vic-sur-Seille in the Diocese of Metz, which was technically part of the Holy Roman Empire, but had been ruled by France since 1552. Baptism documentation revealed that he was the son of Jean de La Tour, a baker, and Sybille de La Tour, née Molian. It has been suggested that Sybille came from a partly noble family. His parents had seven children in all, with Georges being the second-born.

La Tour's educational background remains somewhat unclear, but it is assumed that he traveled either to Italy or the Netherlands early in his career. He may possibly have trained under Jacques Bellange in Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, although their styles are very different. His paintings reflect the Baroque naturalism of Caravaggio, but this probably reached him through the Dutch Caravaggisti of the Utrecht School and other Northern (French and Dutch) contemporaries. In particular, La Tour is often compared to the Dutch painter Hendrick Terbrugghen.

In 1617 he married Diane Le Nerf, from a minor noble family, and in 1620 he established his studio in her quiet provincial home-town of Lunéville, part of the independent Duchy of Lorraine which was occupied by France, during his lifetime, in the period 1641–1648. He painted mainly religious and some genre scenes. He was given the title "Painter to the King" (of France) in 1638, and he also worked for the Dukes of Lorraine in 1623–4, but the local bourgeoisie provided his main market, and he achieved a certain affluence. He is not recorded in Lunéville between 1639 and 1642, and may have traveled again; Anthony Blunt detected the influence of Gerrit van Honthorst in his paintings after this point. He was involved in a Franciscan-led religious revival in Lorraine, and over the course of his career he moved to painting almost entirely religious subjects, but in treatments with influence from genre painting.

thumb|Dice-players, c. 1651, probably his last work, [[Preston Hall, Preston-on-Tees|Preston Hall Museum, Stockton-on-Tees, UK.]]

After his death at Lunéville in 1652, La Tour's work was forgotten until rediscovered in 1915 by Hermann Voss, a German art historian who would later become head of Hitler's Führermuseum; some of La Tour's work had in fact been confused with Vermeer, when the Dutch artist underwent his own rediscovery in the nineteenth century.

<gallery widths="134" heights="180" caption="Chiaroscuro scenes">

File:Georges de La Tour 044.jpg|Job Mocked by his Wife, c. 1625–1650, Musée départemental d'Art ancien et contemporain, Épinal, France

File:Georges de La Tour - The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame - Google Art Project.jpg|Magdalene with the Smoking Flame, c. 1640, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

File:Georges de La Tour - Newlyborn infant - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes.jpg|The Newborn Christ, c. 1645–1648, Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes

File:Georges de La Tour L'Education de la Vierge The Frick Collection.jpg|The education of the Virgin, c. 1650, The Frick Collection

File:Georges de La Tour - Smoker.jpg|The smoker, 1646, Tokyo Fuji Art Museum

File:Femme à la puce, Georges de la Tour.jpg|The Flea-Catcher, 1638, Musée Lorrain, Nancy

File:Georges de La Tour Saint Andre collection privee.JPG|Saint Andrew in the Albi Apostles series, c. 1620

File:Georges de La Tour - The Repentant Magdalen - Google Art Project.jpg|The Repentant Magdalene, c. 1635-1640, National Gallery of Art

</gallery>

<gallery perrow="4" widths="160px" heights="180px" caption="Other">

Image:Georges de La Tour - The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs - Google Art Project.jpg|The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs, c. late 1620s, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. Another version (with Diamonds and slightly different clothes) is in the Louvre.

File:Georges_de_La_Tour,_The_Fortune_Teller.jpg|The Fortune Teller, 1633–1639, Metropolitan Museum of Art

File:Ciego tocando la zanfonía (Georges de La Tour).jpg|The Hurdy-Gurdy Player, c. 1610–1630, Prado Museum

Image:Georges de La Tour 056.jpg|Portrait of an Old Man, c. 1624–1650, De Young Museum, San Francisco

Image:Georges de La Tour 055.jpg|Portrait of an Old Woman, c. 1624–1650, De Young Museum, San Francisco

</gallery>

See also

  • Tenebrism
  • Joseph Wright of Derby

Notes

References

  • Conisbee, Philip. “An Introduction to the Life and Art of Georges de La Tour,” in Philip Conisbee (ed.), Georges de La Tour and His World, exhibition catalogue Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum 1996, pp.13-147.
  • Furness, Sophia Mary Maud. Georges de la Tour of Lorraine, 1593–1652. Published by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, London, 1949. .
  • Judovitz, Dalia. Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible, New York, Fordham University Press, 2018. ; .
  • Le Floch, Jean-Claude. La Tour, Le Clair et L'Obscur, Herscher, 1995.
  • Le Floch, Jean-Claude. Le signe de contradiction : essai sur Georges de La Tour et son oeuvre, Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2, 1995.
  • Thuilier, Jacques. Georges de La Tour, Flammarion, 1992.
  • Wright, Christopher. The Art of the Forger, 1984, Gordon Fraser, London. .
  • Georges de La Tour at Gallery of Art
  • Attributed painting at the Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth
  • Georges de La Tour. Pictures and Biography
  • Judovitz, Dalia. Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible, 2017.
  • Georges de la Tour in Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation.
  • Georges de La Tour at Fondation Berger