Workshop of the LE NAIN brothers (active around 1640) The horseman's halt Oil on canvas The rider's stop, oil on canvas, by Le Nain brothers workshop 21.85 x 25.98 in. 55.5 x 66.0 cm Provenance: Collection of Colonel Clerc ; Sale of the estate of Madame Clerc; Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 9 May 1952, no. 70 (as attributed to Louis Le Nain); Edouard des Courières Collection (1896-1987), Limoges; Then by descent Exhibitions: Le Paysage Français de Poussin à Corot, Paris, Petit Palais, May-June 1925, p. 125, no. P. 177, ill. pl. XVII (as attributed to Louis Le Nain) Bibliography: Paul Fierens, Les Le Nain, Paris, 1933, p. 60, no. 10a (as a replica) Le Nain, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Petit Palais, 1934, p. 34, mentioned in the entry for no. 14 (as a replica) Claus Michael Kauffmann, Catalogue of Foreign Paintings vol I. before 1800, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1973, p. 169 Sylvie Béguin, Donation Picasso: la collection personnelle de Picasso, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1978, p. 44 Pierre Rosenberg, Tout l'œuvre peint des Le Nain, Paris, 1993, p. 83, no. 41B, repr. Hélène Seckel-Klein and Emmanuelle Chevrière, Picasso collectionneur, cat. exhibition, Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstifting, 1998, p. 152 Nicolas Milovanovic, Les frères Le Nain. Bons génies de la sympathie humaine, Paris, 2019, p. 230, cited in notice no. 55. The exhibition Le mystère Le Nain held at the Musée du Louvre Lens in 2017, and the subsequent work of Jacques Thuillier and Nicolas Milovanovic, have shown just how challenging it is to untangle the skein of the Le Nain plot. Originally from Laon, Antoine, Louis and Mathieu Le Nain produced a particularly original body of work in Paris in the 1640s. All three worked in the same studio, and many of the paintings were the result of collaboration. Although a few rare works in this corpus are signed, they bear only a surname, preventing us from identifying the artistic personality of each brother in this way. Extensive research based on primary and secondary sources, as well as stylistic comparison, has been necessary for the various art historians who have tackled the mysterious Le Nain case to attempt to define and characterise three distinct groups with often porous contours: the "Antoine" group, the "Louis" group and the "Mathieu" group. Our work, whose iconography is among those usually associated with Le Nain, depicts a group of peasants who appear to be posing in a plain landscape. It can be compared with the painting by Louis Le Nain painted around 1645 in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (0.546 x 0.673, Ionides bequest, CAI.17)1. Although the colours used are more muted, our version is fairly faithful to the London composition, apart from the dog, which is covered on our canvas, and the sheep, of which we can only make out a silhouette placed between the child's legs and those of the horseman. Hesitations about the presence of the dog can, however, be seen in the infrared reflectography. A study of the underlying layer of the painting shows that the dog was sometimes depicted standing, as in the London painting, and sometimes seated. Other discrepancies can be seen with the naked eye, such as the rider's hat, the return of his boot and the right leg of the child playing the flageolet. Nicolas Milovanovic has shown that the Le Nain studio was organised horizontally, with the three painter-brothers working without any area of specialisation, and with paintings begun by one brother being completed by the other without any hierarchy. His study also shows that subjects were regularly "recycled" within the studio2. Works were regularly left unfinished and then revised, completed or even transformed. This phenomenon of reworking and reuse is illustrated by our painting, which is a studio version in a very good state of conservation of the London painting attributed to Louis Le Nain. 1. Another version is known to us. It belonged to Pablo Picasso, who acquired it in 1919 or 1920 as an authentic work by the Le Nain brothers (oil on canvas, 0.57 x 0.67 m), and is now in the Musée Picasso (RF 1973.70). 2. On this question, see Nicolas Milovanovic, Les frères Le Nain. Bons génies de la sympathie humaine, Paris, 2019, p. 57-59. Workshop of the Le Nain brothers (active around 1640) 55.5 x 66.0 cm The exhibition Le mystère Le Nain held at the Musée du Louvre Lens in 2017, and the subsequent work of Jacques Thuillier and Nicolas Milovanovic, have shown just how challenging it is to untangle the skein of the Le Nain plot. Originally from Laon, Antoine, Louis and Mathieu Le Nain produced a particularly original body of work in Paris in the 1640s. All three worked in the same studio, and many of the paintings were the result of collaboration. Although a few rare works in this corpus are signed, they bear only a surname, preventing us from identifying the artistic personality of each brother in this way. Extensive research based on primary and secondary sources, as well as stylistic comparison, has been necessary for the various art historians who have tackled the mysterious Le Nain case to attempt to define and characterise three distinct groups with often porous contours: the "Antoine" group, the "Louis" group and the "Mathieu" group. Our work, whose iconography is among those usually associated with Le Nain, depicts a group of peasants who appear to be posing in a plain landscape. It can be compared with the painting by Louis Le Nain painted around 1645 in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (0.546 x 0.673, Ionides bequest, CAI.17)1. Although the colours used are more muted, our version is fairly faithful to the London composition, apart from the dog, which is covered on our canvas, and the sheep, of which we can only make out a silhouette placed between the child's legs and those of the horseman. Hesitations about the presence of the dog can, however, be seen in the infrared reflectography. A study of the underlying layer of the painting shows that the dog was sometimes depicted standing, as in the London painting, and sometimes seated. Other discrepancies can be seen with the naked eye, such as the rider's hat, the return of his boot and the right leg of the child playing the flageolet. Nicolas Milovanovic has shown that the Le Nain studio was organised horizontally, with the three painter-brothers working without any area of specialisation, and with paintings begun by one brother being completed by the other without any hierarchy. His study also shows that subjects were regularly "recycled" within the studio2. Works were regularly left unfinished and then revised, completed or even transformed. This phenomenon of reworking and reuse is illustrated by our painting, which is a studio version in a very good state of conservation of the London painting attributed to Louis Le Nain. 1. Another version is known to us. It belonged to Pablo Picasso, who acquired it in 1919 or 1920 as an authentic work by the Le Nain brothers (oil on canvas, 0.57 x 0.67 m), and is now in the Musée Picasso (RF 1973.70). 2. On this question, see Nicolas Milovanovic, Les frères Le Nain. Bons génies de la sympathie humaine, Paris, 2019, p. 57-59.