Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

GEORGES DE LA TOUR, COPIES AND STUDIO PAINTINGS

1998; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 43; Issue: sup2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1179/sic.1998.supplement-2.011

2047-0584

Élisabeth Martin, Alain Duval, Anne Reinbold,

Archaeological Research and Protection

Recent exhibitions in Washington [1] and Paris [2] have renewed interest in the work of Georges de La Tour. The exploitation of data obtained by image processing of a great many works and the study of the ground layer of about half of the painter's corpus reveal an evolution in his practice. Youthful works with sharp lines daylight scenes for the most part, such as The Musicians' Brawl, but also nocturnal ones such as The Payment of Taxes belong to the Franco-Flemish tradition which was also that of Bellange from Lorraine (Saint Francis, Nancy). La Tour therefore used oily ground layers containing chalky material, with frequently a few scattered pigments. Being aware of the trends governing European painting, La Tour then uses coloured grounds which, for at least four major daylight paintings, he covers with a chalk layer, whereas the nocturnes are painted entirely on a brown background which exhibits various tones: dark (The Flea Catcher and Saint Sebastian, Louvre, The Magdalen, Los Angeles, The Dice Players) or more yellowish (Saint Peter, Job, The Magdalen, Washington, The Adoration of the Shepherds). Usually multilayered without any change of colour, the dark grounds contain earths with a few iron compounds (about 10%). Elemental micromapping performed with the scanning electron microscope often reveals dolomitic material and scattered pigments, particularly vermilion. Lead white or black in variable amounts have been added to the earths in some preparatory surface layers, without being the main component (The Newborn Child). On the basis of observations and analyses made on 13 brown grounds from highly rated works (four daylight and nine nocturnes, six of which are signed), what attribution can be proposed concerning some controversial paintings? An atypical composition discovered recently, Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, sitting in darkness, is not illuminated by any artificial light. Therefore no useful hint can be provided by comparing its X-radiograph with those of other La Tour works. In contrast, the ground preparation exhibits similarities with that of most nocturnes: brown earths with small amounts of iron compounds, dolomitic material, scattered black and red pigments, addition of lead white on the surface preparatory layer. The dark layer representing the darkness contains a few grains of vermilion, also found in the background of The Flea Catcher and The Adoration of the Shepherds. The painting from the Vic/Seille Museum may thus originate from Georges de La Tour's studio: the scientific evidence does not tell us anything to the contrary. The Hurdy-Gurdy Player (Remiremont), included in the present corpus of the painter's daylight works, differs from the other versions of this theme when examined by X-radiography [3]. Painted on a triple brown ground, it certainly shows some analogies with La Tour's nocturnes. Could it not be a work of Etienne, his son, born in 1620 and appointed painter to the king, who could have returned to a theme dear to his father's youth, at a time when coloured grounds were positively in use? The theme of The Education of the Virgin was rather popular, because of the spiritual revival in Lorraine. The version in the Frick Collection signed 'La Tour', and that of the Louvre, considered to be a copy, are half-length portraits of Saint Anne and the Virgin. The support of the second painting is made from a single width of canvas with a narrow vertical strip of linen of the same type of weave. This fact, and the absence of a reinforcing band in the lower part, suggest that the original composition was of portrait format, probably a full-length study. In the radiograph the subtle modelling of Saint Anne does not exhibit any awkward retouching; the highlights on the child's face and hands reveal a developed technique which, however, does not reach the perfection of the Christ with Saint Joseph. The ground is very similar to that of The Adoration of the Shepherds: yellow ochre containing dolomitic material and scattered pigments, to which some black has been added in a rather large quantity to make the surface preparatory layer. The Education of the Virgin, considered an original at the time of the 1934 exhibition 'Painters and Reality', might have been the work which served as a model for the full-length copy in Switzerland. Scientific examination can thus provide arguments complementary to those of the art historians, in order to include three more works within the corpus of the master from Lorraine. The studies carried out on copies are also instructive, since knowledge of the constituent materials can yield clues about the provenance of the paintings. Previous articles have shown that seventeenth-century French painters, and particularly those from Paris, preferred to use red grounds, frequently with a grey second layer [4]. A few works examined recently seem to indicate a different trend prevailing in the dukedom of Lorraine. Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene, in Orleans [5], is painted on a yellow ochre-rich ground, which could imply that it was produced outside the capital of the kingdom of France, and thus quite logically in Lorraine, as a copy after La Tour. In contrast, the copy of The Musicians' Brawl in Chambery is more likely to have been made in Paris, having been painted on a double red and grey ground. This kind of technical information suggests that a youthful work of La Tour, The Brawl (Getty Museum, Los Angeles), could have circulated in Paris. Elisabeth Martin and Alain Duval are scientists at the Laboratoire de Recherche des Musees de France, 6 rue des Pyramides, 75001 Paris, France; Anne Reinbold is a researcher with CNRS.