Fashioning Artistic Identity in 17th Century Paris: The Le Nain Brothers’ L’Atelier in Context

Fashioning Artistic Identity in 17th Century Paris: The Le Nain Brothers’ L’Atelier in Context

Date: 30 October 2014 (Thursday)
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Venue: Room 7.58, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus

The brothers Le Nain have long been celebrated as among the most original and accomplished painters working in mid 17th Century Paris. But their style of painting, distinctive studio practice, and focus on scenes of everyday life put them at odds with the academic norms which were coming to dominate French painting, rendering them socially and professionally illegible. The modern reputation of the Le Nain owes more to their 19th Century rediscovery as ‘painters of genre’ than to the actuality of their aspirations and practice. This paper attempts to recover their efforts to forge a familial, professional and aesthetic identity by examining this remarkable, but virtually unstudied, group portrait.

Speaker: Grace Cheng (MPhil Candidate, Department of Fine Arts, HKU)