1593-1652 French Georges de La Tour Galleries His early work shows influences from Caravaggio, probably via his Dutch followers, and the genre scenes of cheats??as in The Fortune Teller ??and fighting beggars clearly derive from the Dutch Caravaggisti, and probably also his fellow-Lorrainer, Jacques Bellange. These are believed to date from relatively early in his career. La Tour is best known for the nocturnal light effects which he developed much further than his artistic predecessors had done, and transferred their use in the genre subjects in the paintings of the Dutch Caravaggisti to religious painting in his. Unlike Caravaggio his religious paintings lack dramatic effects. He painted these in a second phase of his style, perhaps beginning in the 1640s, using chiaroscuro, careful geometrical compositions, and very simplified painting of forms. His work moves during his career towards greater simplicity and stillness ?? taking from Caravaggio very different qualities than Jusepe de Ribera and his Tenebrist followers did. He often painted several variations on the same subjects, and his surviving output is relatively small. His son Etienne was his pupil, and distinguishing between their work in versions of La Tour's compositions is difficult. The version of the Education of the Virgin, in the Frick Collection in New York is an example, as the Museum itself admits. Another group of paintings (example left), of great skill but claimed to be different in style to those of de La Tour, have been attributed to an unknown "Hurdy-gurdy Master". All show older male figures (one group in Malibu includes a female), mostly solitary, either beggars or saints. After his death in 1652, La Tour's work was largely forgotten until rediscovered by Hermann Voss, a German scholar, in 1915. In 1935 an exhibition in Paris began the revival in interest among a wider public. In the twentieth century a number of his works were identified once more, and forgers tried to help meet the new demand; many aspects of his œuvre remain controversial among art historians.  Related Paintings of Georges de La Tour :. | The Penitent Magdalene, Metropolitan | Petrus | Schlagerei der Musikanten | Gilles | Carpenter Saint Joseph |
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George Hardy
(1822-1909) was an English genre painter, a member of the Cranbrook Colony and eldest brother to Frederick Daniel Hardy. Hardy was born in Brighton in Sussex the first son (of 8 children) of George Hardy (b. 1796 in London), a musician to George IV, Queen Adelaide, and Queen Victoria in the Royal household at Windsor. His mother was Sarah Lloyd (b. 1804). Hardy became an oil painter of light-hearted genre subjects and moved to the artists' colony in Cranbrook in Kent. He married Ellen Hutton in May 1862 and the couple had 3 children. Hardy died in Eastbourne in 1909.
Auguste Bouvier
1825-1881
Filippo Balbi
1806-90