A Peasant Family — Antoine (brother) Le Nain

A Peasant Family

Discover Antoine Le Nain’s ‘A Peasant Family’ (1640). A realistic oil on copper depicting rural life in Baroque style. Explore this poignant, evocative artwork's rich details & historical significance.


antoine (brother) le nain (1599 - 1648)

Discover Antoine Le Nain's realistic peasant scenes & religious artworks. Explore the Le Nain brothers' influence on 17th-century French painting.

Metropolitan Museum of Art (new york, United States of America)

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The Le Nain brothers are famous for their sensitive portrayal of rural life, which they depicted without the ridicule found in many earlier images. It is often difficult to distinguish which of the three brothers executed a given painting, and this oil on copper has been attributed to both Antoine and Louis. A new taste for realism in the mid-1800s solidified the Le Nain brothers’ place in a canon of French painting that included Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet.