The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (264 page)

 
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(1859–1929).
British painter. He had his main training at the
Royal Academy
in London and the École des
Beaux-Arts
in Paris. In 1887 he described the Academy as ‘the diseased root from which other evils grow’, and he was one of the leading figures in founding the
New English Art Club
in opposition to it and in introducing the ideals of French
plein-air
painting to Britain. He lived in the countryside (first in Norfolk, then in Sussex), and
Clausen
wrote of him: ‘Sunlight was the thing that attracted him: this and some simple motive of rural occupation, enhanced by a picturesque surround.’ From about 1898 he turned to peasant scenes set in Provence or Italy, places where he often stayed. As the countryside changed, his work became increasingly nostalgic, as he hankered after what
Munnings
called a ‘quiet old world village where he could live and find real country models’.

 
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(1593–1652).
French painter, active at Lunéville in the duchy of Lorraine. He was patronized by the Duke of Lorraine and had a successful career, but his name sank into oblivion after his death and it is only in the 20th cent. that he has been rediscovered and hailed as the most inspired of
Caravaggesque
painters. Little is recorded of his life (although he is known to have been arrogant and unpopular with his neighbours) and it is a matter of dispute whether he gained his knowledge of Caravaggio's style via painters of the Utrecht school such as
Honthorst
or by travelling to Italy. Like Honthorst he is particularly associated with nocturnal scenes and the use of a candle as the light source in a painting. La Tour's handling of light is more subtle and sensitive, however, and he is grander in conception and more sombre in mood. In his mature work he smoothed the forms of his figures until they approached geometric simplicity and achieved a feeling of monumental stillness that is considered to represent the spirit of 17th cent. French
classicism
no less than the paintings of Philippe de
Champaigne
and
Poussin
in their different fields. Only three of La Tour's paintings are dated—
The Payment of Dues
(Museum, Lvov, Ukraine, 1634?);
Penitent St Peter
(Cleveland Mus. of Art, 1645);
The Denial of St Peter
(Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, 1650)—and there is much scholarly debate about his chronology. The works associated with the beginning of his career are daylit scenes of such subjects as peasants and card-sharpers; they are very different in spirit from the calm and majestic religious images of his maturity and have become controversial as regards attribution as well as dating. It has been argued (and hotly disputed) that
The Fortune Teller
(Met. Mus., New York) is a modern fake, and although the status of most of the other early works as authentic (and high-quality) 17th-cent. French paintings is not denied, their attribution to La Tour (which rests almost entirely on stylistic evidence) has been questioned. Another problem in La Tour studies is that many of his undeniably authentic compositions exist in more than one version, and the studio replicas (as they appear to be) are sometimes of extremely high quality; the versions of
St Sebastian Tended by St Irene
in the Louvre and the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, for example, are each extraordinarily beautiful. La Tour's son
Etienne
(1621–92) worked in his father's studio and may have been responsible for some of the replicas. No independent works certainly by him are known, but
The Education of the Virgin
(Frick Coll., New York), signed ‘de la Tour’, has been attributed to him.

 
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(1704–88).
With
Perroneau
the most celebrated and the most successful French
pastel
portraitist of the 18th cent., active mainly in Paris. His portraits have great vivacity and exploit the resources of the technique to the full. Some are lightly sketched impressions, others elaborate and detailed studies. In both, the essence of his art lies in his swift and accurate draughtsmanship; his colour, which is never very deep, and his superb velvet finish are always subordinate. La Tour portrayed many of the most famous men and women of his day and in 1750 he became portraitist to Louis XV, a position he held until he had a nervous breakdown in 1773.

 
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(
c.
1430–1502?).
Italian sculptor, born near Zara in Dalmatia, at that time subject to Venice. In 1453 he is recorded working on decorations to the Triumphal Arch of Alfonso I at Castelnuovo, Naples. He was one of several sculptors who did so and his contribution is uncertain. Thereafter he divided his time between France and Italy, mainly the south of the country, including Sicily, although he also visited Urbino, and was possibly related to the architect Luciano Laurano , who designed the celebrated Ducal Palace there. In France his most important work was the chapel of St Lazare (1475–81) in the church of La Major at Marseilles, described by Anthony
Blunt
as ‘probably the earliest purely Italian work on French soil’. He is best known, however, for his portrait busts of members, mostly female, of the Neapolitan royal house and their relatives. In these remarkably sensitive works the forms of the face are subtly generalized in a search for basic geometric shapes, and their simple naturalism was sometimes enhanced by heightening the marble with colour, as in the bust of Isabella of Aragon in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

 
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