A Painting by Georges de la Tour

A Painting by Georges de la TourAuthor(s): Phyllis BoberSource: Art Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Autumn, 1962), pp. 28-30+32Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/774606 .

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Phyllis Bober Phyllis Bober

Fig. 6. Major Saelan, Djakarta, Indonesia, Goalie on Olympic Team that tied Russia in 1956 Olympics, thanks to the many saves he made. Score 1-1. Fig. 6. Major Saelan, Djakarta, Indonesia, Goalie on Olympic Team that tied Russia in 1956 Olympics, thanks to the many saves he made. Score 1-1.

can be a man who has learned that a swollen eye can perceive more than it can see, and a boxer can reflect the fact that you can't hit a man un- less you come close enough to be hit yourself, a truth so fundamental that we must learn it above and below as well as on the intellectual level. I did admit that an athlete must be more than an athlete to be a fit subject for art, but I've never known one who, wasn't. I showed pho- tographs of my play equipment and playground designs, abstract designs that were made for children to play on and complete, pointing out that they looked better with children using them. Usually this brought a sort of sigh of relief from the initiated, "Then you do believe in the validity of abstract design?" "Yes," I would answer, "as im- plicitly as I believe in the air we breathe. But we must eat and drink and sleep and do many things as well as breathe."

The most troubling question was, "What do you believe are the trends of the future?" When asked by art students or artists-and it is asked too often here and abroad-it is hair- raising. It reflects so vividly our capitulation to packaging tech-

niques, or if I may employ a more colorful parallel, it brings to mind a flock of sparrows looking for a promising horse to fol- low. I made it plain that I thought an artist, to retain his vital-

ity, must work from a basis of experience, and that if he has

anything to do with trends it should be that he "happens" to make them. Organized art becomes official art, and officialized truth and beauty are organized mediocrity, which at best is sterile and qualitatively limited, and at its worst is just alive enough to ignore and throttle excellence.

I wish that I could predict, regarding the arts, that we are

going to learn more by contact with the Orient than they will learn from us, but I'm afraid that the opposite is true, and they seem to be learning the wrong things. They are tired of poverty and unimportance, and have come to settle up for the idea that there is nothing that succeeds like success. With the really am- bitious there is nothing that succeeds like successors, which

brings me back to Robert Frost. He once said in conversation, "The danger of greatness is that it gives a man the idea that he has the right to start a creed." That's true, but the far greater danger is that it gives too many others the idea that they can be his high priests.

can be a man who has learned that a swollen eye can perceive more than it can see, and a boxer can reflect the fact that you can't hit a man un- less you come close enough to be hit yourself, a truth so fundamental that we must learn it above and below as well as on the intellectual level. I did admit that an athlete must be more than an athlete to be a fit subject for art, but I've never known one who, wasn't. I showed pho- tographs of my play equipment and playground designs, abstract designs that were made for children to play on and complete, pointing out that they looked better with children using them. Usually this brought a sort of sigh of relief from the initiated, "Then you do believe in the validity of abstract design?" "Yes," I would answer, "as im- plicitly as I believe in the air we breathe. But we must eat and drink and sleep and do many things as well as breathe."

The most troubling question was, "What do you believe are the trends of the future?" When asked by art students or artists-and it is asked too often here and abroad-it is hair- raising. It reflects so vividly our capitulation to packaging tech-

niques, or if I may employ a more colorful parallel, it brings to mind a flock of sparrows looking for a promising horse to fol- low. I made it plain that I thought an artist, to retain his vital-

ity, must work from a basis of experience, and that if he has

anything to do with trends it should be that he "happens" to make them. Organized art becomes official art, and officialized truth and beauty are organized mediocrity, which at best is sterile and qualitatively limited, and at its worst is just alive enough to ignore and throttle excellence.

I wish that I could predict, regarding the arts, that we are

going to learn more by contact with the Orient than they will learn from us, but I'm afraid that the opposite is true, and they seem to be learning the wrong things. They are tired of poverty and unimportance, and have come to settle up for the idea that there is nothing that succeeds like success. With the really am- bitious there is nothing that succeeds like successors, which

brings me back to Robert Frost. He once said in conversation, "The danger of greatness is that it gives a man the idea that he has the right to start a creed." That's true, but the far greater danger is that it gives too many others the idea that they can be his high priests.

A PAINTING BY GEORGES DE LA TOUR

The Editor has asked me to write a short note on the

early Georges de la Tour Denial of Christ by St. Peter (Fig. 1) lent by my husband and myself to the Wellesley College benefit exhibition of March, 1962, and also reproduced in the last issue of the ART JOURNAL (Summer, vol. XXI, p. 266). Because this

previously unpublished painting has aroused considerable in- terest, it may be of value to set forth something of its physical state1 and artistic background, although it is not in my province to anticipate full publication of the work (permssion for which has been given to Professor Jan Van Gelder of Utrecht).

The canvas was acquired at a London auction in 1949 as a Honthorst, obscured by grime and disfigured by a white fill which had been carefully introduced into an area of paint loss between the head of St. Peter and that of the soldier (Fig. 2), showing state after cleaning and before in-painting). Cleaning and thorough-going technical analysis by Morton C. Bradley, Jr., formerly Conservator of the Fogg Art Museum, revealed a

signature in two lines of Roman characters at upper left in the smoke from a burning brazier concealed by the three figures: Gs DELA TOVR./MDC . . . (Fig. 3, in infra-red photograph). In the hopes of recovering terminal letters lost in sur- face abrasion that has affected many areas of the canvas, Mr.

Bradley and Mr. William Young of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts tested the inscription with solvents and examined it under a microscope and ultra-violet light as well as by infra- red photography and x-ray fluoroscopy, determining that it is

part of the original seventeenth-century body of paint and not a subsequent addition.

Once the forms were revealed by cleaning, it became clear to specialists like Prof. Van Gelder that the execution had nothing to do with either Honthorst or Dutch seventeenth-

century painting. But the composition does belong to a com-

plex group of inter-related treatments of the theme which in-

1Oil on fabric, measuring 451/2" X 383/4". The ground of the painting consists of two layers, the lower red, the second gray. There are two pentimenti: the position of St. Peter's left eye was altered, and a sixth finger is apparent on his left hand. It is interesting to note that, although the composition is directly borrowed from Seghers (see below), under x-ray fluoroscopy the underpainting of all forms stands out as a particularly strong "relief map" with nothing of the "skin" or sur- face reproduction characteristic of replicas.

The color tonalities are cooler than in developed work by Georges de la Tour, save for the roseate reflections of light in the faces of soldier and servingmaid and in her hand holding the candle. St. Peter wears a blue-gray garment with yellow mantle; the blouse of the maid is rose, her apron and turban white; and the soldier wears black armour with gold details, a red-brown cloak on his right shoulder and steel-blue helmet.

Phyllis Pray Bober is a Research Fellow in Ancient Art, on the Faculty of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her husband, Harry Bober, is on the same faculty. Mrs. Bober was formerly on the faculty of Wellesley College.

A PAINTING BY GEORGES DE LA TOUR

The Editor has asked me to write a short note on the

early Georges de la Tour Denial of Christ by St. Peter (Fig. 1) lent by my husband and myself to the Wellesley College benefit exhibition of March, 1962, and also reproduced in the last issue of the ART JOURNAL (Summer, vol. XXI, p. 266). Because this

previously unpublished painting has aroused considerable in- terest, it may be of value to set forth something of its physical state1 and artistic background, although it is not in my province to anticipate full publication of the work (permssion for which has been given to Professor Jan Van Gelder of Utrecht).

The canvas was acquired at a London auction in 1949 as a Honthorst, obscured by grime and disfigured by a white fill which had been carefully introduced into an area of paint loss between the head of St. Peter and that of the soldier (Fig. 2), showing state after cleaning and before in-painting). Cleaning and thorough-going technical analysis by Morton C. Bradley, Jr., formerly Conservator of the Fogg Art Museum, revealed a

signature in two lines of Roman characters at upper left in the smoke from a burning brazier concealed by the three figures: Gs DELA TOVR./MDC . . . (Fig. 3, in infra-red photograph). In the hopes of recovering terminal letters lost in sur- face abrasion that has affected many areas of the canvas, Mr.

Bradley and Mr. William Young of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts tested the inscription with solvents and examined it under a microscope and ultra-violet light as well as by infra- red photography and x-ray fluoroscopy, determining that it is

part of the original seventeenth-century body of paint and not a subsequent addition.

Once the forms were revealed by cleaning, it became clear to specialists like Prof. Van Gelder that the execution had nothing to do with either Honthorst or Dutch seventeenth-

century painting. But the composition does belong to a com-

plex group of inter-related treatments of the theme which in-

1Oil on fabric, measuring 451/2" X 383/4". The ground of the painting consists of two layers, the lower red, the second gray. There are two pentimenti: the position of St. Peter's left eye was altered, and a sixth finger is apparent on his left hand. It is interesting to note that, although the composition is directly borrowed from Seghers (see below), under x-ray fluoroscopy the underpainting of all forms stands out as a particularly strong "relief map" with nothing of the "skin" or sur- face reproduction characteristic of replicas.

The color tonalities are cooler than in developed work by Georges de la Tour, save for the roseate reflections of light in the faces of soldier and servingmaid and in her hand holding the candle. St. Peter wears a blue-gray garment with yellow mantle; the blouse of the maid is rose, her apron and turban white; and the soldier wears black armour with gold details, a red-brown cloak on his right shoulder and steel-blue helmet.

Phyllis Pray Bober is a Research Fellow in Ancient Art, on the Faculty of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her husband, Harry Bober, is on the same faculty. Mrs. Bober was formerly on the faculty of Wellesley College.

ART JOURNAL XXII 1 28 ART JOURNAL XXII 1 28



Fig. 3. Infra-red photograph of inscription.

Fig. 1. Denial of St. Peter, signed by Georges de la Tour. Collection Harry and Phyllis Bober, New York.

Fig. 2. Denial of St. Peter. Same painting as Fig. 1., after cleaning and before in-painting.

Fig. 4. Detail, left portion of George de la Tour's Denial of St. Peter, Nantes Museum.

29 Bober: A Painting by Georges de la Tour



Fig. 5. Engraving after Schelte a Bolswert's reversed reproduction of a Denial of St. Peter by Gerard Seghers.

cludes works by Bartolomeo Manfredi, Gerard Seghers, Ger- ard van Honthorst and Georges de la Tour. F.-G. Pariset was the first to point out La Tour's dependence on the Antwerp artist, Gerard Seghers (1591-1651), in his late Denial of St. Peter painted a year before his death (Fig. 4, detail; Nantes Museum, signed and dated 1650).2 Pariset suggested that transmission of the Seghers' prototype was by means of engravings by or after Schelte a Bolswert (Fig. 5),3 in accordance with La Tour's frequent use of prints throughout his career. In the light of this discovery by Pariset, our painting stands as an earlier and more faithful transcription of the left portion of the same Seghers creation, the only modifications being a sim- plification and geometrizing of individual forms, plus adapta- tion of the right hand of a gaming soldier who grasped St. Peter's arm so that it might serve as the left hand of the one La Tour retained. By eliminating the accessory scene and focus- sing more closely on the three protagonists, the artist has gained in spatial concentration and intensified psychological drama.

The original reproduced in the Bolswert prints was painted for a chimney-piece in the home of the Antwerp sculp- tor, Andre Colyns de Nole (1598-1638),4 and the question of its date and of the date of the engravings becomes important for determining the chronology of our La Tour. It is clear that Seghers' painting belongs to his early Caravaggesque manner, formed during a sojourn in Italy in the period from 1611-20 under the direct influence of Bartolomeo Manfredi (ca. 1580-

2 Pariset, Georges de la Tour, Paris, 1949, p. 283. La Tour died in

January, 1652. 3 The engraving reproduced is a reversed version of Schelte's print

and is inscribed: Gerardus Seghers pinxit, A paris, chez Pierre Mariette, rue S. Jacques a l'Esperance. The impression in the Fogg Art Museum (R. 2306) bears a pencil notation: "is it by Fr. Ragot?"

4 The engravings by Bolswert's own hand are inscribed (after the legend, "Quid trepidas. .. ."): Ornatissimo viro Andreae Collyns de Nole, statuario insigni, qui nuper hanc Petri negationem coloribus ex- pressam, domo sua excepit, eandem stilo adumbratam, in amicitiae be- nevolentiaeque argumentum L.M.Q.D.C. Gerardus Segers.

Fig. 6. Gerard Seghers, Denial of St. Peter, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (Photo Courtesy of French and Co.).

1617).5 On his return to Antwerp in 1620, he abandoned this style very quickly under the spell of Rubens and Van Dyck, so that we must assume that the gift to his friend, de Nole, was executed very close to this date.6 Although there is no internal evidence to date the Bolswert prints, these must have been car- ried out about the same time. Originally from Amsterdam, it is considered likely that he traveled to Flanders with his brother in 1617, and by 1625 he was accepted into the Antwerp Guild.7

Of course, de Nole's painting was not necessarily Seghers' first treatment of the composition. Another canvas by Seghers' own hand was acquired in 1956 by the North Carolina Museum of Art at Raleigh (Fig. 6)8 and there are at least two extant9

5 Seghers' connection with Manfredi is stressed by von Sandrart in his Teutsche Akademie; see G. Gliick, Rubens, Van Dyck und ihr Kreis, Vienna, 1933, p. 214; A. von Schneider, Caravaggio und die Neder- lander, Marburg a.L., 1933, p. 103; Caravaggio en de Nederlanden Catalogus, Utrecht and Antwerp, 1952, p. 73f., no. 114 (the painting now in Raleigh, see below).

6 Cf. Gliick, op. cit., p. 213; H. Voss, Die Malerei des Barock in Rom, Berlin [1924), p. 472. Charles Blanc, Histoire des peintres de toutes les ecoles. ?cole fiamande, Paris, 1864, assigned the Seghers Denial to his Roman sojourn.

7E. W. Moes, "Schelte Bolswert," Thieme-Becker, IV, p. 255. His earliest engraving dates from 1612. The use of "nuper" in the inscription, would confirm that his reproductions followed closely after Seghers' execution of the de Nole work.

8From the Deyne collection, Ghent (1753), the Jean-Baptist Pierre Lebrun Collection, Paris (1792) and the collection of Cardinal Fesch (Catalogue des tableaux composant la Galerie . . . Fesch, Rome, 1841, p. 17, no. 310 (as Honthorst; attribution correction by George, Catalogue . . . Fesch, Rome, 1844, vol. 2-3, p. 243). I am indebted to Luba Gurdus of French & Co. for this and other information concern- ing the painting, which measures 73" X 101".

9A replica of smaller size and in reverse was also in the Fesch collection (Cat. p. 16; George, p. 244), but its present location has not been traced since the Fesch sale in 1845. The Walker Art Gallery in Minneapolis owns a replica from the collection of Benjamin West (T. B. Walker Art Gallery, n.d. p. 175, no. 328).

ART JOURNAL XXII 1 30



Fig. 7. Bartolomeo Manfredi, Denial of St. Peter, Braunschweig Museum.

Fig. 8. Gerard van Honthorst, Denial of St. Peter, Rennes Museum.

replicas as well as several variants on the theme.10 The rela-

tionship with Manfredi's Denial of St. Peter in Braunschweig (Fig. 7) is so close, that one may suggest that de Nole's pic- ture was simply a repetition of a work first realized in Rome. The play with two internal sources of light (three, if one counts the unseen fire which produces the smoke at left) and the repousse character of the foreground figures, on the other hand, derive not from Manfredi but from Honthorst, who was also active in Rome during the same decade. In fact, a striking family resemblance links all Seghers' renderings of St. Peter

denying Christ with Manfredi's two versions of the scene

(Braunschweig and Dresden),1l as with Honthorst's painting in Rennes (Fig. 8) and another formerly in the Liechtenstein collection.1 Two other canvases of uncertain attribution belong to the same inter-connected group: one exhibited as a Seghers in the Brussels exhibition of 1910,13 the other, in the Louvre, formerly catalogued as a La Tour, but apparently by a Nether- landish hand.14 I leave it to specialists in the seventeenth cen-

10 Most notable is a three-figure group in a drawing owned by the Teyler Museum in Haarlem. St. Peter is the same, save that his head turns to his left where the maid with candle and soldier (in foreground) have been set; the burning fire is made visible at left. This Seghers was engraved by Andrea de Paullis (Pauwels); Fogg Art Museum, R. 5271. Other renderings of the theme by Seghers are in Leningrad and Vienna (A. von Wurzbach, Niederlandisches Kiinslerlexicon, Vienna, 1906-11, vol. 2, p. 615).

" H. Voss, op. cit., p. 453. The maid-servant in the Dresden painting wears the same costume and turban as in Seghers' composition.

12 M. D. Henkel, "The Denial of St. Peter by Rembrandt," Bur- lington Magazine, LXIV (1934), pp. 153-9, pl. II, c, as a prototype for the Seghers' composition which he studied through the Bolswert engraving as one of Rembrandt's sources.

"1M. Rooses, Onze Kunst, XIX (1911), p. 48 and facing plate, attributed to Seghers, although this has been denied by von Schneider, op. cit., p. 103. The painting, then in the Leon Boblot collection in Paris, includes gaming soldiers at left, and a reversed approximation of our three-figure group at right.

14 G. Briere, Catalogue des peintures, Musee National du Louvre, Paris, 1924, p. 153, no. 547; attributed to La Tour on the basis of com- parison with his Nantes Denial. Earlier, it had been ascribed to one of the Le Nain family: Both de Tauzia, Notice supplementaire des tableaux exposes dans les galeries . . . et non dicrits dans les trois catalogues .., Paris, 1878. no. 806.

tury to deal with the complexities these present and to consider outstanding questions raised by our painting.

The most important of these questions is how to complete the date once given in the inscription. No one can doubt that this Denial of St. Peter must stand very early in La Tour's oeuvre, although it already foreshadows major elements of his

developed style. The yellowish light may derive ultimately from Honthorst and the figures from Seghers, but the simplifi- cation of drapery into smoother, heavier stuff,15 the stylization of features (particularly striking in the spherical form and con- tour of the maid-servant's cheek, from which the triangles of nose and lips emerge), and the single white highlight introduced into each of St. Peter's pupils are all characteristic of La Tour's later paintings. From the evidence of the de Nole pic- ture and engravings after it, a date in the decade of the 1620's would be indicated. Yet, there are certain details in the head of the soldier and elsewhere which agree more closely with the

Raleigh Seghers than with any of the prints. Is it possible that La Tour worked not from the latter, but directly from a Seghers canvas ? If Seghers first rendering was done in Rome while he was part of a circle which included Honthorst and Manfredi, can this be taken as confirmation of Pariset's suggestion that

Georges de la Tour visited that city sometime before 1613 ?16 Or does our painting belong in the years from 1621-23 when La Tour was away from Luneville and travel in the Netherlands has been assumed?17 Experts in the field may find their own answers now that the painting is brought to their attention.

15 To an archaeologist like myself, the manner in which the drapery material folds recalls the sculptures of Olympia. The fold at the waist in the blouse of the maid is especially characteristic in the mor-

phology of La Tour. 16 S. M. M. Furness concurs in the theory of a student trip by

Georges de la Tour to .Rome (Georges de la Tour of Lorraine, Lon- don, 1949, p. 17); cf. also P. Jamot, Georges de la Tour, Paris, 1942, p. 54.

'7 Sir Anthony Blunt (review of Pariset, Burlington Magazine, XCII (1950), p. 145) suggested that La Tour may have visited Utrecht during these years, coming under the influence of Terbrugghen and others.

ART JOURNAL XXII 1 32



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A Painting by Georges de la Tour