^
Died on 28 December 1656: Laurent de la
Hire (or Hyre), French artist born on 27 February 1606.
— La Hire (also spelled La Hyre) was a French Baroque classical painter
whose best work is marked by gravity, simplicity, and dignity. He was the
son of the painter Étienne de La Hire (c. 1583-1643) but was most influenced
by the work of Georges Lallemont and Orazio
Gentileschi. His picture of Pope Nicolas V at the Tomb of Saint
Francis was done in 1630 for the Capuchins, for whom he executed several
other works. For the goldsmiths' company he produced in 1635 St. Peter
Healing the Sick and the Conversion of St Paul in 1637. In
1648, with 11 other artists, he helped found the French Royal Academy. Cardinal
Richelieu called him to the Palais-Royal about 1640 to paint decorative
mythological scenes, and he later designed a series of tapestries for the
Gobelins.
— LINKS
— Abraham
Sacrificing Isaac (1650) _ Laurent de la Hire (or Hyre), French Baroque
classical painter whose best work is marked by gravity, simplicity, and
dignity.
— Allegorical
Figure of Grammar (1650, 103x113cm) _ Although the Parisian painter
La Hyre seems never to have travelled to Italy, he was well aware - through
study at Fontainebleau and through the work of contemporary artists like
Vouet, Poussin and Claude - of the achievements of the Italian Renaissance.
He became a major exponent of a restrained and refined classical manner
fashionable in the French capital. The sculptural clarity and weight of
the figure in this allegorical painting, the measured regularity of the
composition with its emphasis on horizontal and vertical lines, the even
lighting and discrete local colour can all be contrasted with the sweeping
movement, dramatic play of light, shade, textures and reflections in Baroque
works by contemporaries like Rembrandt.
This unlikely gardener represents Grammar
and is one of a series of personifications of the Seven Liberal Arts painted
to decorate a room in the Paris town house of Gédéon Tallemant, one of the
counsellors of King Louis XIII. The Liberal Arts were the literary trio,
Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic, and the mathematical quartet of Arithmetic,
Music, Geometry and Astronomy. It had long been traditional to decorate
private studios and libraries with their images. They were always shown
as women, in keeping with the feminine gender of the Latin nouns grammatica,
rhetorica etc., which retain their femininity in all the Romance languages.
The other paintings of these high-minded ladies by La Hyre survive, dispersed
in various collections. We do not know precisely how they were arranged
in the room, but the pictures, of different sizes, were probably set into
carved panelling and hung above head height.
The Latin legend on Grammar's winding ribbon
can be translated as 'A learned and articulate voice spoken in a correct
manner'. The function of Grammar among the Liberal Arts was not to parse
sentences or teach conjugations but to ensure that ideas could be communicated
clearly and effectively. In Cesare Ripa's illustrated dictionary of personifications
of concepts, the Iconologia, first published in 1593, a book much used by
painters, the author comments, 'Like young plants, young brains need watering
and it is the duty of Grammar to undertake this.' La Hyre shows Grammar,
with a homely jug, watering primulas and anemones in terracotta pots as
lovingly studied from the object as any kitchenware by Chardin. The overflow
runs off through the drainage hole onto a fragment of antique Roman wall
or pillar ornamented with an egg-and-dart frieze. Behind her, grand fluted
Roman columns and a Roman urn close off our view into the garden beyond
the wall, but the mood is as friendly and serene as if she were nursing
her plants on a balcony in a quiet Paris backwater away from the traffic,
airing the ravishing harmonies of her shot-silk gown and mild blue cloak.
— The
Children of Bethel Mourned by their Mothers (1653, 97x129cm) _ La Hire
never went to Italy, and his style was formed in Paris under the Mannerist
Georges
Lallemant. All La Hire's leanings towards classical antiquity were therefore
learned at second hand, particularly from the work of Nicolas Poussin. As
early as 1630, however, a certain coldness was detectable in his art, probably
derived from Vouet, who had recently returned from Rome. Almost all of La
Hire's best pictures are of figures in classical landscapes. The Children
of Bethel Mourned by their Mothers corresponds to a type already perfected
by Poussin, namely a strong moral content with figures carefully arranged
in an equally carefully balanced landscape or architectural setting. Even
though La Hire's result was totally different from that of Poussin and it
would never be possible to confuse the two, they fall into the same general
category and would have appealed to the same type of patrons.
— Cornelia
Refusses the Crown of the Ptolomai (1646, 138x123cm) _ The painting
depicts the scene when Cornelia - the daughter of Scipio Africanus, the
widow of consul Tiberius Gracchus and mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus
- refuses the crown of the King of Egypt and his marriage proposal. The
style of La Hire is the equivalent in painting that of Corneille and Racine
in literature.
— Laban
Searching Jacob's Bagagge for the Stolen Idols (1647, 95x133cm) _ The
biblical story represented in this painting is the following. Jacob, the
son of Isaac and the twin brother of Esau, fled from his brother's wrath,
taking refuge with his uncle Laban in Mesopotamia. Laban had two daughters,
Leah and Rachel. Leah the elder, was rheumy eyed, but Rachel was graceful
and beautiful. Jacob undertook to serve Laban as a herdsman for seven years
in return for Rachel whom he wished to marry. At the wedding feast Laban
substituted Leah by a trick, and then demanded another seven years labour
from Jacob before he should obtain Rachel. At the end Jacob set off secretly
to return to Canaan with both wives and his children and possessions. In
parting, Rachel stole her father's teraphim, the small sacred figurines
which were his 'household gods'. When he discovered the theft Laban set
off in pursuit, overtook the party and searched their tents and belongings.
Rachel promptly hid the teraphim in a camel's saddle and sat on it, saying
to her father, 'do not take it amiss, sir, that I cannot rise in your presence,
the common lot of women is upon me.' Jacob and Laban had a reconciliation
before they parted.
— Landscape
with Peace and Justice Embracing (1654, 55x76cm) _ Inscribed in the
centre: Iustitia et Pax/osculatae sunt. It is unusual for the subject of
a picture to be inscribed so clearly on the painting. Although most of La
Hire's work is of many-figured compositions executed in bright, solid colours,
he is best remembered for his contribution to the development of landscape
painting. His few surviving landscapes seems to amalgamate the limpid light
of Claude
Lorrain with the antiquarian interests of Nicolas
Poussin. As there was so little landscape painting in Paris in the middle
years of the seventeenth century, the works of La Hire form an illuminating
example of the way that taste was turning towards the dry and formal.
— Theseus
and Aethra (1640, 141x118cm) _ This is a representation of Plutarch's
story in which, in the presence of his mother, the young Greek hero Theseus
finds the swords and sandals his father Aegeus has buried under a heavy
stone. Seventeenth century French masters often chose to depict some fairly
recondite theme from the Graeco-Roman history or legend, and La Hire, a
popular artist of the period, excelled in paintings of this kind. The painting
was commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu. _ detail
_ The detail shows the figure of Theseus. It is assumed that the face of
Theseus is a selt-portrait of the artist. |
^
Born on 28 December 1883: Abel (or
Abraham?) George Warshawsky, US artist who died in 1962.
