When you're born into modest circumstances in Lorraine in a century of perpetual conflict and forced displacement, how do you become famous?
Georges de La Tour was an artist shaped by tumult. His life and work span a period shaken by confrontations, invasions and religious tensions - forces that have left their mark on his canvases as much as on the history of Lorraine itself.
Today, when everything is accessible and we are invited to travel everywhere, it is almost impossible to realize the difficulties that artists such as Georges de La Tour went through to learn painting and gain recognition.
When you're born into modest circumstances in Lorraine, an independent duchy of France, in a century of perpetual conflict and forced travel, how do you become famous? Where did your inspiration come from to become one of France's most innovative and timeless painters?
Georges de La Tour was born in an independent duchy, shaken by the religious wars raging since 1562. At the time, Lorraine was a prosperous region and was not yet part of France: it was the fragmented heir of the ancient Lotharingia, threatened by the ambitions of both the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of France. Lorraine was a Catholic land neighbouring Protestant states, and this religious positioning fostered both a strong identity and bloody conflicts. A brief period of calm came to the region in 1598, when the Edict of Nantes brought an end to the hostilities.
But twenty years later, the Thirty Years’ War broke out and everything accelerated. France, the Swedes, and the Croats took turns occupying and ravaging the region. Lunéville, where Georges de La Tour lived, was set on fire and plundered in 1638. He was forced to flee the town. Many paintings were lost, canvases reduced to ashes, and commissions vanished. Even during his lifetime, the artist already saw his work being destroyed.
The 17th century Europe was also the scene of a pictorial revolution. Rome, despite its sacking by Charles V's troops in 1527, was the new beating heart of art, where Caravaggio presented his innovative works. He embodied a new movement: realism.
The latter stands in eloquent contrast to the late 16th century, dominated by Mannerism, a movement that favored elongated body proportions, intricate detail and subjects linked to Antiquity. In contrast, Caravaggio's realism focused on religious and secular scenes rooted in everyday life. Contrasts of light and shadow enhance the dramatic intensity of the paintings.
Although he neither founded a studio nor trained students, his works captivate with the expressive force of his style and the brutal realism of Italian genius. Artists from all over Europe in the early 17th century flocked to Rome to see his works and draw inspiration from his art, particularly Flemish and Dutch painters. Among those who embraced chiaroscuro and realism were the Dutchmen Gerrit van Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen, whose works Georges de La Tour discovered on his travels through Flanders.
It was probably through the paintings of Dutch and Flemish painters that he became familiar with this movement, which was born in Italy. From then on, while Georges de La Tour learned to master chiaroscuro, he created his own universe: light now came from candles or various fireplaces; the scenes of daily life he proposed were pared down, focusing on the meditative silence of the figures.
His unique art seduced the court, and commissions multiplied.
The death of Richelieu in 1642 and that of Louis XIII in 1643 marked a turning point in his career: La Tour left Paris and returned to Lunéville. He thus distanced himself from the fame the capital had offered him, but it is perhaps in this voluntary isolation that his art fully explores the meditative dimension of the subjects he portrays. He was then over 50 years old.
As the Thirty Years' War drew to a close, the Fronde broke out: Paris rose up, and the nobles rose up against royal power. It was in this climate of violence and instability, in a troubled France barely pacified by the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648, that La Tour continued his work in Lorraine. In 1652, the year in which Louis XIV finally returned to the capital, master of a still battered kingdom, Georges de La Tour died in Lunéville shortly after his wife, likely of an epidemic. His life ended much as it began—that is, in a highly troubled political and social context, where the genius of artists emerges almost like a miracle.
Image 1 : Woman with a flea (c. 1632-1635) © Palais des ducs de Lorraine - Musée Lorrain, Nancy / Photo : Thomas Clot
Image 2 : The Repentant Magdalen (1635-1640) © Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
Image 3 : Map of Lorraine and Barrois at the End of the 16th Century © gallica.bnf.fr /Bibliothèque nationale de France
Image 4 : Paris in the 16th century: Barricades Day © Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris
Image 5 : Shepherdess with doves, Gerard van Honthorst, 1625 © Centraal Museum
Image 6 : Baccanthe with an Ape, Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1627 © J. Paul Getty Museum
Image 7 : Portrait of Louis XIII, Philippe de Champaigne, 1635 © Museo del Prado
Image 8 : The Cardinal of Richelieu, Philippe de Champaigne, 1635 - 1640 © National Gallery, London
Cover image: Georges de La Tour, The Denial of Saint Peter (1650) © Musée d'arts de Nantes - Photo : Cécile Clos
