1593-1648 French Louis Le Nain Gallery French family of painters. Antoine Le Nain (b Laon, c. 1600; bur Paris, 26 May 1648) and his brothers Louis Le Nain (b Laon, c. 1600; bur Paris, 24 May 1648) and Mathieu Le Nain (b Laon, c. 1607; bur Paris, 26 April 1677) lived together and shared a studio in Paris. Since the studio was headed by Antoine, he is assumed to have been older than Louis. The brothers reputation rests on a number of paintings signed Le Nain, on the basis of which other paintings (but no drawings) have also been attributed to them. None of the signed paintings bears a Christian name, and there is no secure way of attributing works to the individual brothers, although many attempts have been made. Eighteenth-century sale catalogues, fearful of anonymity, effectively chose from the three names at random. Since the writings of Witt (1910) and Jamot (1922) in particular, it has been habitual to ascribe small paintings on copper to Antoine, and austere, larger peasant scenes to Louis. This division of hands will be found in almost all the subsequent literature on the artists, although it must be stressed that there is no evidence at all to support it. Great efforts have also been made to identify works by Mathieu, since he survived his brothers by nearly 30 years and presumably continued to paint after their deaths in 1648. However, no such activity after 1648 is securely documented, and none of the surviving works bears a date later than 1647; and the arguments for a separate Mathieu oeuvre, though cogent, should not be regarded as conclusive. The outstanding feature of the work of the Le Nain brothers, and the basis of their celebrity since the mid-19th century, is the artists treatment of the poor.  Related Paintings of Louis Le Nain :. | Der Bauernwagen | Peasant family | young prince, c | Landscape with bondfolk | La Charette (mk08) |
Related Artists:
John Frederichk Lewis RA
1805-1876
John Wootton
1682 - 1764 English painter. He probably received some instruction from Jan Wyck in the 1690s, and he was possibly patronized from an early age by the aristocratic households of Beaufort and Coventry (as was Wyck), perhaps while working as a page to Lady Anne Somerset at Snitterfield House, Warwicks. However, there seems to be no real evidence for this save his early painted view of the house and the family's later acquisition of many of his works. Joseph Farington saw a painting of Diana and the Nymphs (1707; untraced) at Antony House, Cornwall, but Wootton's earliest extant dated work is the horse portrait Bonny Black (1711; Belvoir Castle, Leics). By this time he had begun to establish himself in London, having moved there before his first marriage, to Elizabeth Walsh, in 1706.
Willem van Bemmel
(Utrecht 10 June 1630 - Nuremberg 20 December 1708), was a Dutch Golden Age painter active in Germany. Van Bemmel was a student of Herman Saftleven in Utrecht. He made a Grand Tour to Rome, spending first the years 1647-9 in Venice where he became famous for his landscapes. He stayed in Rome for six years and was a member of the Bentvueghels. From Rome he crossed the Alps to Nuremberg, where he became a successful painter of Italianate landscapes. In 1656 he moved to Kassel. He was the father of the German Von Bemmel painting family.