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 :. | Landscape with bondfolk | fransk bondkvinna | The Cart or the Return from Haymaking (mk05) | Peasant Interior with an Old Flute Player | Peasant Meal (mk05) |
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John Rogers
American Sculptor, 1829-1904, He was an American sculptor who produced very popular, relatively inexpensive figurines in the latter 19th century. He became famous for his small genre sculptures, popularly termed "Rogers Groups", which were mass produced in cast plaster. A total of 80,000 copies of almost 80 Rogers Groups were sold across the United States and abroad. At the height of their popularity, Rogers' figurines graced the parlors of homes in the United States and were found as far away as Chile and Australia. The English novelist Charles Reade furnished his home with all the Rogers figurines available to him, and in the Dakota Territory, Lt. Col. George Custer and his wife had one.
Jean-Baptiste Van Mour
17th Century Painters of the Bosporus,was a Flemish-French painter, remembered for his detailed portrayal of life in the Ottoman Empire during the Tulip Era and the rule of Sultan Ahmed III. Van Mour was a native of Valenciennes, a Flemish town that at he time of his birth belonged to the Spanish Netherlands, but since 1678 to France. He studied art in the studio of Jacques-Albert Gerin, and his work attracted the attention of an aristocrat and statesman of the time, Marquis Charles de Ferriol. Van Mour was invited to go to Istanbul when De Ferriol was appointed there as the French Ambassador in 1699. De Ferriol commissioned van Mour to do one hundred portraits of the local people. In 1711 De Ferriol returned to France and van Mour worked for a variety of other diplomats. In the meantime De Ferriol published a series of one hundred engravings (after the paintings) in Recueil de cent estampes representant differentes nations du Levant. The book had a great influence in Western Europe and was published in at least five languages. Painting audiences with the Sultan became van Mour's speciality; he only had to change the setting and a few faces. Van Mour worked with assistants to fulfill all his obligations. In 1725 he was granted the extraordinary title of Peintre Ordinaire du Roy en Levant in recognition of both his and the Levant's importance to the French government. In 1727 the Dutch ambassador Cornelis Calkoen asked Van Mour to record his audience with Sultan Ahmed III on canvas. Van Mour was allowed to enter the palace during these ceremonies accompanying the ambassador and his retinue; therefore, he was familiar with the special protocol that prevailed in the Ottoman court for ambassador's receptions. Calkoen took many paintings of Jean-Baptiste van Mour with him, when he was appointed as ambassador in Dresden for the Dutch Republic. In his will of 1762 the bachelor Calkoen forbade his heirs to sell the paintings, which are now part of the Rijksmuseum collection.
Karel Myslbek
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