Le Nain

Three 17th-century French painters, the brothers Antoine (c. 1588–1648), Louis (c. 1593–1648), and Mathieu (c. 1607–1677). Born in Laon, they worked together in Paris, where they established a reputation with genre paintings, in particular scenes of peasant life painted with a classical dignity.

Nothing is known of their training, though their work suggests a knowledge of both Dutch and Spanish art. Their style was strongly at variance with the baroque classicism – that of Poussin and Charles Lebrun – that dominated French 17th-century painting, though they all became members of the French Academy 1648.

They seem to have collaborated, in some works at least, though the signature on pictures, ‘Le Nain’, without initial, does not distinguish them. However, their paintings have been divided into three broad groups: Antoine concentrated on small figures painted on copper, Louis on works larger in scale and subdued in colour. Antoine and Louis probably collaborated. Mathieu concentrated on subjects reflecting a higher social level than the peasant scenes of the other two, including religious works and also portraits (he is known to have painted such figures as Marie de' Medici, Cardinal Mazarin, and Anne of Austria, but none of these works has survived).

It is generally agreed that Louis was the central figure of the family and one of the great French artists of the early 17th century in the sympathetic realism of his depictions of peasant life, such as the Peasants' Meal (Louvre, Paris).