The Brothers Le Nain: Painters of Seventeenth-Century France

From: 22/05/2016
To:11/09/2016
Fort Worth
United States

Kimbell Art Museum

The Brothers Le Nain: Painters of Seventeenth-Century France will be the first major exhibition in the United States devoted to the Le Nain brothers, Antoine, Louis and Mathieu, who were active in Paris during the 1630s and 1640s. It will gather more than 50 of their best paintings and highlight the brothers' full range of production, with altarpieces, private devotional paintings, portraits and those poignant images of peasants on which their celebrity rests. Masterworks will come from public and private collections in Europe and North America, with major loans from the Musée du Louvre and the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, as well as museums throughout France.
Until recently, the work of the Le Nains has been shrouded in mystery. Little is known of their lives, and the attribution of their paintings to the hands of the individual brothers has been hotly debated. The exhibition will debut new research concerning the authorship, dating and meaning of their works. It will be accompanied by the results of a major study of the paintings by the conservation departments of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Kimbell Art Museum.