About the
exhibition

To compliment The Shadow exhibition, Compton Verney presented a number of key candlelight works by the French artist Georges de La Tour (1593-1652).

La Tour was born in the Duchy of Lorraine and influenced by the work of Caravaggio. His works have been attributed to a number of artists and it is only since 1915 that a group of his signed paintings were linked and attributed conclusively to LaTour.

It was not until 1972 when all his surviving works were brought together in a major retrospective exhibition at The Orangerie, Paris that he came to the attention of a wider public.This exhibition represented a rare opportunity for British audiences to view La Tour’s paintings and focussed on a number of powerful works, mainly from La Tour’s late period, which concentrate on the effect of light on the human figure.

The exhibition was  accompanied by a publication with an essay by the art historian Christopher Wright.