Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Some tanning and marking due to age. Year 1949. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> THE name “De la Tour” belongs to two French painters. In England except to specialists it commonly denotes but one of these two the eighteenth-century pastellist and por- trait-painter Maurice Quentin de la Tour. In France Georges de la Tour recovered within the last thirty years from almost complete oblivion is now again recognised as the “peintre fameux” that he was in his lifetime three hundred years ago. He was a native of Lorraine then an independent state with its own ducal dynasty though not long to remain so dangerously situated and continually devastated by the wars of France and the Empire. Even after annexation by France life there was hard and living insecure: and in spite of official appointments as painter to Louis XIII and Louis XIV his fame born of the prestige of a style original striking and austere did not withstand the far-reaching changes of fashion willed by Louis XIV himself. The aim of this book the first unified account of him and his work is to make both as fully known as may be: but the man himself remains something of a mystery and the small number of his known works permits the hope that more may yet be found. (LL)