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 :. | The Milkmaid's Family | The Milkwoman-s Family | Landscape with Peasants | The Peasant Family | Peasant family |
Related Artists:
Joseph Paelinck
Belgian Painter, 1781-1839, Flemish painter. The son of a farmer, he studied at the Academie in Ghent. He exhibited for the first time in 1802 at the Ghent Salon, then left for Paris where he was admitted into Jacques-Louis David's studio. In 1804 his Judgement of Paris (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.) obtained a prize at the Ghent Salon. The first of numerous commissions that followed was for St Colette (1806; Ghent, St Baaf), which was in keeping with the contemporary Historicist vogue. In 1808 he was commissioned to paint a portrait of the Empress Josephine (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.), and in the same year the town of Ghent granted him an allowance for four years of study in Rome where, with other former pupils of David, he took part in the decoration of the Palazzo del Quirinale; his contribution, Augustus Ordering the Adornment of Rome, is untraced. While in Italy he also painted a Neo-classical Invention of the Cross (1812; Ghent, St Michel), inspired by Raphael. In 1812 he returned to Ghent and in 1815 moved to Brussels to paint the portrait of William, Prince of Orange (1818; Brussels, H?tel de Ville). He painted several religious subjects, including a Crucifixion (1817; Sleidinge, St Joris) and the Disciples at Emmaus (Everghem Church), which have links with the 17th-century French tradition. Among the portraits he executed in this period is the Snoy Family
Aragon jose Rafael
b.c.1795 d. 1862
Richard Westall
English Painter, 1765-1836 was an English painter. Westall was the more successful of two half-brothers (both sons of a Benjamin Westall, from Norwich), who each became painters. His younger half-brother was William Westall (1781C1850), a much-travelled landscape painter. Born on 2 January 1765 in Reepham near Norwich (where he was baptised at All Saints on 13 January in the same year) Richard Westall moved to London after the death of his mother and the bankruptcy of his father in 1772. He was apprenticed to a heraldic silver engraver in 1779 before studying at the Royal Academy School of Art from 10 December 1785. He exhibited at the Academy regularly between 1784 and 1836, became an Associate in November 1792 and was elected an Academician on 10 February 1794. From 1790 to 1795 he shared a house with Thomas Lawrence (later Sir), the future Royal Academy president, at 57 Greek Street, on the corner of Soho Square, each of the artists placing their name on one of the entrances. His works C many in water-colour - caused great interest in the late years of the 18th century when he was considered by his chief patron Richard Payne Knight as an outstanding artist of the picturesque. He painted works in a neo-classical style for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and for Henry Fuseli's Milton Gallery. His painting of John Milton and his daughters hangs in Sir John Soane's Museum in London. A number of scenes in which Westall depicts events in the life of Horatio Nelson are at the Maritime Museum. Westall was a prolific illustrator of books of poets and writers including Sir Walter Scott and Oliver Goldsmith, Byron - who greatly admired his work, stating that "the brush has beat the poetry". He also illustrated editions of the Bible,