The Matre des Jeux* (active c.1645-55)

A Portrait of the Poullain Family and their Servants gathered around a Table for a frugal Meal

Details

The Matre des Jeux* (active c.1645-55)
Matre des Jeux
A Portrait of the Poullain Family and their Servants gathered around a Table for a frugal Meal
oil on canvas
35 x 45in. (89 x 115.6cm.)

Provenance

Nicolas Poullain; Poullain family sale, Le Brun, Paris, March 15, 1780, lot 103.
Viscount Harberton, London, until 1936.
with Rosenberg and Co, New York, as Matthieu Le Nain.
Anon. Sale, Christie's, New York, May 31, 1989, lot 11.

Literature

G. Isarlo, Les trois Le Nain et leur suite, in La Renaissance, March 1938, no. 112.
Catalogue of the exhibition, Les Frres Le Nain, Paris, Muses Nationaux, 1979, p. 258.
P. Rosenberg, Tout l'oeuvre peint des Le Nain, 1993, p. 97, no. J5B.

Exhibited

Worcester, MA., Worcester Art Museum, Art of Europe, XVI-XVII Centuries, Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition, 1948, no. 16.

Lot Essay

The Matre des Jeux is a name coined by J.P. Cuzin in A Hypothesis concerning the Le Nain Brothers, The Burlington Magazine, CXX, no. 909, Dec. 1978, p. 875, for a group of paintings formerly attributed to Mattieu Le Nain which were subsequently shown at the 1979 exhibition Les Frres Le Nain.