A Candle Held up to a Rediscovered Master: Georges de La Tour

The Dream of Saint Joseph, c. 1640

Most of the great artists are instantly recognizable. As soon as you see one of their works, you instantly know that it can't be by anyone else. If this is truly the mark of a great artist, then Georges de La Tour (1593 - 1652), must be among the greatest. The 17th century French painter, whose works are being presented to the Japanese public for the first time in a comprehensive show at the National Museum of Western Art, had a unique style that combined touching piety with dramatic light effects to create stunning works of art that were strangely neglected for centuries by the art world.

It is not difficult to see parallels with La Tour's contemporary, Jan Vermeer (1632 - 1675), another painter of masterly technique, whose few surviving paintings languished in obscurity until being rediscovered in the late 19th century. Considering the great excitement generated last year by the display of a solitary Vermeer at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, the present exhibition is truly remarkable as it gathers approximately one-third of the 40 or so extant paintings by La Tour, complemented by around 20 copies and related images of now lost works.

While Vermeer's genius was in depicting the calm, prosaic light of domestic scenes, La Tour was the master of an equally impressive technique, painting the otherworldly effects of candlelight. The strong contrasts owe a clear debt to the chiaroscuro of the Italian painter Caravaggio (1571 - 1610), and to the tenebroso (shadow) style of his Dutch contemporaries Hendrick Terbrugghen (1588 - 1629) and Gerrit van Honthorst (1590 - 1656), but de La Tour makes the technique his own by applying it with greater subtlety and realism. Indeed, this is the reason for the ubiquitous candles, as the light in Caravaggio's paintings is often without a source, creating a feeling of artificiality that de La Tour ably avoids.

In de La Tour's world of flickering light and shadows, the spiritual takes on a greater sense of concrete reality, like the angel that stands before the dozing man in The Dream of Saint Joseph (c.1640), which is traditionally interpreted as the Angel Gabriel warning Joseph to flee into Egypt, although some scholars now dispute this interpretation. If it is an angel, however, the effect of the candlelight is truly magical, as it gives the divine visitor a solidity that doesn't compromise his otherworldly nature.

An exquisite stillness pervades this picture, as with the copy of Christ in the Carpenter's Shop (1645) where the attention to mood is shown in the minute observation of the effects of light in certain areas, particularly in the translucency of the Christ child’s hand silhouetted against the candle, which reveals even the dirt in the fingernails! This work also shows the strong compositional balance that characterizes many of La Tour's works.

Other typical La Tour characteristics are a precise, uncluttered realism and simplified volumetric shapes. Both these qualities are in evidence in The Flea Catcher (c.1638), which shows a plump woman, composed of harmoniously rounded shapes attending to her personal hygiene against a neutral, candlelit backdrop. Despite such unedifying subject matter, the characteristics of La Tour's art combine to cast an almost beatific light on this scene that is a true affirmation of humanity.

But, as exhibition curator, Akiya Takahashi, points out, de La Tour's masterly technique was both his doing and undoing.

"In the early 17th century, this chiaroscuro style of painting enjoyed great popularity," he explains. "In his own lifetime he was a successful painter, and was patronized by Louis XIII. But later this style fell out of favor."

While La Tour's solemn simplicity reflected the religious depth and classicism of 17th century art, it had much less in common with the later Baroque style that strove to reflect the tastes and interests of the increasingly rationalist and hedonistic leisured classes. Part of this trend away from piety was spurred by revulsion against The Thirty Years War (1618 - 1648), a mainly religious war between Catholic and Protestant princes that devastated much of Europe, including La Tour's home region of Lorraine.

"Because of the war, the quantity of his works already lost during his own lifetime was great," Takahashi laments. "I think only about 10% survived."

While La Tour was in his element painting religious works or humble domestic scenes, it seems he also tried to broaden his appeal by tackling the popular diversions of the leisured classes. Cheater with the Ace of Diamonds (1620-40), is initially an impressive work, but, without the magical candlelight and the profounder emotions that suffuse his other works, it ultimately looks cold, awkward, and unnatural, except for the cheater, whose uncanny resemblance to the actor, Hugh Grant, gives him a certain caddish sparkle.

Unable to cater to changing tastes, La Tour's art was largely forgotten after his death. The few works that survived stayed in the shadows until his art was rediscovered in the 1930s. It was only after Western Art had run its full course of revolutions, through Impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism, Dadaism, etc., that the art public, tiring of relentless novelty, picked up the candle to examine once more the eternal beauty of this great painter.

C.B.Liddell
The Japan Times
16th March, 2005