Landscape with Peasants

c. 1640

Louis Le Nain

Artist, French, c. 1600/1603 - 1648

An elderly woman sits on a small stool and four children stand along the foreground of a landscape with rolling, olive-green fields leading back to low, slate-gray mountains in this nearly square painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and the sky above is filled with a sheet of steel-gray clouds that break to reveal patches of ice-blue sky. Closest to us and along the left edge of the painting, the woman sits near a structure with a fragment of wall and a column that could be made from tan-colored stone. The woman faces our right in profile and looks at or toward three children gathered on a low hill to our right. Her lined face is partially cast in shadow by her white bonnet, but her skin is yellowed where the light falls across the side closer to us. A wide, white collar lies over the shoulders of her muted, plum-purple jacket, which is tied with a narrow red belt. Her hands rest in the lap of her full, moss-green skirt that falls to her feet and covers most of the stool. To our right, two boys and a little girl stand on a low hill. They all stand with their bodies angled to our right, and all have pale skin and brown hair. To our left in the trio, the young girl wears a royal-blue dress with brick-red, long sleeves and a wide, white collar, cuffs, and cap. Next to her, a slightly older boy wearing gray knee-britches, a honey-orange jacket with a white collar, and a blue tricorn hat looks down and plays a thin pipe. His jacket is torn at the elbows, revealing a red shirt beneath. To our right, the oldest boy wears a brown cloak over a gray jacket, tan trousers, and a tan brimmed hat. He holds his right arm, closer to us, across his chest as he touches an instrument nestled in the crook of his other elbow. Another bareheaded boy wearing a red shirt and blue trousers walks beyond this trio, holding a short pole over one shoulder and a brimmed hat in his other hand. He walks to our left and looks to the horizon. More people with sheep, cows, and a person on horseback dot the rolling fields that stretch back to low hills. One house sits next to a line of trees to the left of center, in the middle distance, and more buildings, including a church spire, cluster on the horizon to our right.

Media Options

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Louis Le Nain lived in a region to the north of Paris known for its open fields that produced cereals and grain. Although he settled in Paris with his two brothers, who were also painters, he produced a series of rural images that recall the landscape of his youth.

In the Landscape with Peasants, an old woman regards three children: a little girl dressed in white collar and cap, a small boy who plays the pipe, and a boy dressed in a cloak and hat who plays a hurdy-gurdy. In the middle ground several shepherds guard their sheep while the background is dominated by a townscape and rolling hills. The clear spacing of the figures and the interlocked planes of space linking land and sky reveal how precisely Le Nain organized his composition.

Their fitted clothes and shoes suggest that the children were not peasants but perhaps members of an emerging class of farmers acquiring land in the early decades of the century. Le Nain's emphasis on the land in this composition implies that the rich soil holds potential profits for these new landowners. The Le Nains' rural subjects were very popular, suggesting their patrons appreciated the agricultural messages encoded in the structure of the paintings.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 37

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 46.5 x 57 cm (18 5/16 x 22 7/16 in.)
    framed: 71.1 x 81.9 x 10.2 cm (28 x 32 1/4 x 4 in.)

  • Accession

    1946.7.11

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Thomas Gainsborough [1727-1788], London; (his estate sale by private contract, Schomberg House, London, 30 March 1789 and days following, no. 10, as Travelling Musicians). George Hibbert [1757-1837], London; (joint sale with Sir Simon H. Clarke, Christie's, London, 14 May 1802, no. 33, bought in); George Hibbert [1757-1837], London; (his sale, Christie's, London, 13 June 1829, no. 36); Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibdin [d. 1847]; sold December 1829 to Joseph Neeld [d. 1856], Grittleton House, near Chippenham, Wiltshire; by inheritance to his brother, Sir John Neeld, 1st bt. [1805-1891], Grittleton House; by inheritance to his son, Sir Algernon William Neeld, 2nd bt. [1846-1900], Grittleton House; by inheritance to his brother, Sir Audley Dallas Neeld, 3rd bt. [1849-1941], Grittleton House; by inheritance to Joseph Neeld's descendant through an illegitimate daughter, Lionel William [Inigo-Jones] Neeld [d. 1956], Grittleton House; (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 9 June 1944, no. 18); purchased by Koetser or Rocker.[1] (Wildenstein & Co., Paris, New York, and London); sold December 1944 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1946 to NGA.
[1] According to an undated letter from early 1986, an annotated copy of the 1944 Neeld sale catalogue at the Getty Provenance Index states that "Rocker" purchased lot 18 (Julia A. Armstrong to Suzannah Fabing, in NGA curatorial files). However, two other annotated copies of the sale catalogue (photocopies from both in NGA curatorial files, one from the Knoedler Library fiche of British sales) indicate that lot 18 was purchased by "Koetser," almost certainly the dealer David M. Koetser. This theory is supported by a passage in The Paintings of The Betty and David M. Koetser Foundation (introduction by Malcolm M. Waddingham, catalogue by Christian Klemm, Zurich and Doornspijk, 1988: 10), in which Koetser's purchase of "the rare Landscape with Peasants by Louis Le Nain" is described. It is possible that "Rocker" was a pseudonym used by Koetser. It is not clear whether Koetser was buying for himself, or for, or with, Wildenstein. Koetser's letter of 20 January 1969 to Colin Eisler contains a list of some of the non-Italian paintings he sold to the Kress Foundation followed by the sentence "And indirectly, Louis Le Nain's 'Landscape'..." (copy in NGA curatorial files).
[2] The "memorandum of agreement" between Wildenstein and the Kress Foundation for the purchase of ten paintings, including Louis Le Nain's Peasants in a Landscape, is dated 28 December 1944 (copy in NGA curatorial files). Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian, Oxford, 1977: 266 n. 14, incorrectly gives the date of the Kress acquisition as 1946, misspells Hibbert's name as Hibbard, and indicates the painting sold for fifty guineas in 1789, when the Ellis Waterhouse letter to which he refers only says the painting was priced at fifty guineas. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1222.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1910

  • Pictures by The Brothers Le Nain, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1910, no. 10, repro.

1932

  • Exhibition of French Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1932, no. 109.

1934

  • Le Nain, peintures, dessins, Petit Palais, Paris, 1934, no. 27 as Paysage avec Figures.

1946

  • Recent Additions to the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1946, no. 783.

1978

  • Les frères Le Nain, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1978-1979, no. 36, repro.

1982

  • France in the Golden Age: Seventeenth-Century French Paintings in American Collections, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, 1982, no. 47, repro., as Peasants in a Landscape.

1996

  • Obras Maestras de la National Gallery of Art de Washington, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, 1996-1997, unnumbered catalogue, 70-71, color repro.

2016

  • The Brothers Le Nain: Painters of 17th-Century France, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Musée du Louvre-Lens, Lens, France, 2016-2017, no. 52, repro.

Bibliography

1933

  • Fierens, Paul. Les Le Nain. Paris, 1933: no. 19, pl. 32.

1934

  • Jamot, Paul. "Autour du problème des Le Nain." Revue de l'Art 65 (January 1934): 31, repro.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 153, repro.

1946

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. Supplement to the Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1946: 58, repro.

1952

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Great Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1952: 110, color repro.

1959

  • Cooke, Hereward Lester. French Paintings of the 16th-18th Centuries in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number Four in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 18, color repro.

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 344, repro.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 206, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 74.

1966

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 2:292, color repro.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 65, repro.

  • Gandolfo, Giampaolo et al. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Great Museums of the World. New York, 1968: 64-65, color repro.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 192, repro.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 266-267, fig. 246.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 318, no. 421, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 225, repro.

1989

  • Del Bravo, Carlo. "I Le Nain e Pierre Charron." Artibus et historiae 10, no. 20 (1989): fig. 2.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 162, repro.

1993

  • Rosenberg, Pierre. Tout l'oeuvre peint des Le Nain. Paris, 1993: 80-81, no. 34, pl. XXI, as Paysage avec vieille femme, joueur de flageolet et vielleur.

1999

  • Minor, Vernon Hyde. Baroque and Rococo Art and Culture. New York, 1999: fig. 6.39.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 175, no. 137, color repro.

2005

  • Baillio, Joseph, et al. The Arts of France from François Ier to Napoléon Ier. A Centennial Celebration of Wildenstein's Presence in New York. Exh. cat. Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 2005: 52, fig. 13, 71 (not in the exhibition).

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 70, 318-322, color repro.

Inscriptions

Attixed to the stretcher: NGA label, with "11772F" in blue marker.

Wikidata ID

Q20177173

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