Painting as a Way of Life

"Painting as a Way of Life offers a fresh look at a brief yet transformative moment in French art. At the beginning of this period, France's painting industry was still underdeveloped compared to those in Holland, Flanders, or Italy; by the end, it was on its way to European dominance. This study considers both the "classicists" and the "realists": Nicolas Poussin, renowned for marrying ancient philosophy and visual art; Louise Moillon, who pioneered French still life in the 1630s; Georges de La Tour, a painter of nocturnes based in Lorrain; and the Brothers Le Nain, specialists in genre and portraiture. Emphasizing the day-to-day activity of artistic practice, both artisanal and ethical, Richard Neer demonstrates how French painters of the early to mid-seventeenth century devised novel approaches to pictorial meaning, pushing their art beyond the traditional task of representing external objects or events and into uncharted realms of expressivity, philosophical inquiry, and spiritual exercise. Examining a range of French painters and printmakers active in France and Italy, including Jacques Callot, Abraham Bosse, Simon Vouet, Valentine de Boulogne, and Nicolas Râegnier, this fascinating book reveals how Poussin and his contemporaries offered painting as a tool for self-transformation-a way of being in the world"--