Galerie Dreyfus
52
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ANTOINE LE NAIN (LAON, c. 1588 – PARIS, 1648)
Three Women wi…
See original version (French)
52
-
ANTOINE LE NAIN (LAON, c. 1588 – PARIS, 1648)
Three Women wi…
See original version (French)
Estimate €180,000 - €230,000
Voluntary lot
Description
ANTOINE LE NAIN
(LAON, c. 1588 – PARIS, 1648)
Three Women with Three Children
c. 1640
Oil on panel
29.5 x 36.5 cm.
Certificate from René Millet Expertise.
Three women pose alongside three little girls, or at least three children dressed
in dresses, as were worn indiscriminately by both boys and girls until around the age of six
. These three children are the main figures in the scene, although they are positioned on the
right-hand side. Elegantly dressed in fine dresses worn over a white shirt, the
lapels of which protrude from the sleeves, they look like miniature adults; the first child
even wears a scalloped bib. Frozen in their three similar poses, arms by their
sides, they stare at us, ready to curtsy. By comparison, the three adults on the left
are more drab, probably the children’s servants: a nanny and a governess.
Two of the women are seated, whilst a third moves about in the shadows at the back. We can make out
nothing of this room, whose dark background draws our attention back to the foreground. To the whiteness of the
tablecloth upon which a dish and a loaf of bread are placed. Whilst the colour palette is fairly limited,
dominated by browns and greys, white plays a distinctive role, emphasising the presence
of each figure with varying degrees of intensity, depending on their social standing. But
it is indeed the red that draws our attention here to the figures we are meant to focus on: these
three children from a wealthy 17th-century bourgeois family.
Antoine Le Nain (1588–1648) was a French painter renowned for his so-called
realistic genre paintings. Raised in a rural environment to which he remained deeply attached, Antoine was the eldest of
two brothers, Louis and Mathieu, with whom he painted throughout his career. In 1629, the three brothers
opened a studio in Paris and gained public acclaim thanks to the genre scenes in
which they specialised. Whilst everyday life was a popular subject in European painting at the time, the Le Nain brothers’ style
differed from the prevailing Caravaggist trend through the simplicity of their compositions and
a restrained colour palette, favouring shades of grey and brown as seen in *Three Women
with Three Children*. They focused on capturing intimacy and the warmth of the home, prioritising the expression
on the faces over the proportions of the figures, which were sometimes rendered somewhat clumsily. This work,
attributed solely to Antoine, is rather rare, probably because it was a
special commission for a group portrait.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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