terça-feira, julho 15, 2008

Louis Le Nain


Louis Le Nain

"There are indications that sometime between 1626 and 1630 Louis must have gone to Rome, for the influence of the Netherlandish artists painting in Rome at the time, the Bamboccianti, or painters of small low-life scenes, particularly that of Pieter van Laer, is strong, as is that of Orazio Gentileschi.


A Roman sojourn is implied also by the reflections in subject matter, composition, and mood in Louis's Peasant Family (ca. 1645-1648) and the Procession of the Ram of The Drunkards by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez, who was in Rome in 1629-1630. Louis Le Nain's expressive content differs, however, from the vulgar bravado and hilarity of contemporary Dutch painters of the peasantry.


Such a work as his Peasants in the Country dignifies and memorializes into frozen, immutable silence his subjects, calmly posed like monoliths among the carefully selected paraphernalia of the barnyard. These immortal peasants sit among the tokens of an earthly pilgrimage with the hushed deference which bespeaks an awareness of their being the guests of God. Their environment is lonely, the landscape airless, anticipating the aridity of some surrealistic paintings."

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