On the Cover

Cover image: The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs. Georges

de La Tour. Late 1620s. Oil on canvas.

With permission: Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth,

Texas/Art Resource, NY

Although Georges de La Tour lived in Lorraine, France,

between 1593-1652, his paintings went unknown for

centuries until 1934, when art historians included some

of his works in an exhibit called Painters of Reality, in

Paris. Those were the times of the Popular Front

government in France, a coalition of left-wing radical

parties of socialist leanings. The French intelligentsia

sang the praises of his work offering it as proof of a long

historic tradition of grass root, people-oriented art in

their national culture. After WWII his paintings were

shown in New York where they were said to represent

a stream of modest French artists that had remained

close to the simple folk that the upper classes derided.

These artists were supposedly driven by sympathy

towards all men. They were, so to speak, humanistically

canonized.

There is a big gap between the reality of La Tour’s life

and the subjects of his art. It is true that La Tour was of

humble origin but he ‘‘married up’’ into the local

aristocracy. He became the wealthiest landowner of his

town, Luneville, and profited handsomely from grain

speculation during the war famine. The people of his

hometown, who petitioned their Governor to get relief

from La Tour’s arrogance and violent temperament,

despised him.

Art historians have compared his work to that of his

contemporary Caravaggio (1571-1610) in Italy. While

there is similarity in their choice of subjects and in the

treatment of light and shade, their paintings show

different realities (compare this painting with

Caravaggio’s ‘‘The Cardsharp’’ on the cover of Annals,

July 2010). Caravaggio painted life in the Roman

underworld where he lived with its brawls, drunkards

and whores, and he roamed Italy to escape the officials

and the Pope who wanted his neck. There is no

contradiction between his life and his subjects. He

painted his own life. He was inside the things he paints.

La Tour’s narrative is the opposite of Caravaggio’s. La

Tour did not need the patronage of a cardinal or a ruler

to pursue his interests and gifts in painting. His was that

of a wealthy landowner that depicted beggars, peasants,

and fortune tellers with a detachment that made them

scenes of a different world. The flesh of his subjects was

lifeless and there was little expression in their eyes. They

appeared like the wax figures of Mme Toussaud’s. La

Tour’s subjects are strangers on a stage.

In 1636 the French Governor burned to the ground the

city of Luneville rather than surrendering it to the control

of the Duke of Lorrainewho had laid siege to it. Many of La

Tour’s paintings and properties were destroyed. When,

later on, he returned to the town and resumed painting,

his compositions changed. They became darker, with

scenes illuminated by candles representing objects and

analogies alternating between reality and illusion:

a candle in front of its lighted reflection, Magdalene in

front of a mirror that returns her profile as a skull, etc.

These are the works for which he is best known. The last

ruminations of a solitary man contemplating a world he

did not quite understand.

R. Berguer

A9