At the Art Newsroom we often get art lovers and young students writing in to tell us of their favourite paintings and ask questions about where they can see the original. This, believe it or not, is one of the most popular paintings mentioned.
Two things bother us about La Tour - the first is that he is constantly described in art books, websites and art videos as a 'renaissance' painter. The renaissance was well and truly over before La Tour was born. The second mistaken notion of this over-rated artist is the fuss about his 'night scenes' and the myth that he was the first artist to master representing candle-light on canvas. Nonsense! 

La Tour (1593-1652) Le Tricheur (detail), oil on canvas, The Louvre Museum, Paris	Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi, The Cardsharps (I Bari), approx. 1595, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

There are followers and imitators of Caravaggio who painted as well as (or better) than La Tour - Cecco del Caravaggio for example. Who? You ask? Well exactly - we don't know their names because they were Italian and they were many. Their paintings fill museum deposits everywhere. We would not have learned La Tour's name unless French art historians and connoisseurs of the last century had not done a great deal of detective work.  Rarely has an obscure seventeenth century artist benefited so greatly from the mistake of nationality. La Tour is famous because he was 're-discovered' in the first half of the 20th century. He had been forgotten for three hundred years by historians, collectors, everyone it seems until Demonts noticed that a group of paintings variously attributed to Zurbaran, Murillo and Caravaggio were peculiar and obviously by the same hand. No name was forthcoming however until the 1930's when Landry purchased Le Tricheur cleaned it, and found the signature. Delighted to find the mystery artist was not Italian or Spanish, the French had in no time relaunched him as a grand old master. He is therefore, the ultimate 'arriviste'.

La Tour's gonflated wooden figures now stare at us from museum walls worldwide. 
 
 

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