The brothers Antoine (1588-1648), Louis (1593-1648), and Mathieu (1607-1677) Le Nain were French painters of genre, religious scenes, and portraits.

The work of the Le Nain family, and especially that of Louis, is an ideal example of the naturalism that typifies the French national style through the ages. With them an intelligent balance was struck between the exaggerated realism of the Netherlandish and German schools on the one hand and the noble generalization and idealism of the Italian school on the other.

The Le Nain brothers were born in Laon, which is between Paris and Flanders; this closeness to Flanders perhaps accounts for their preference of the peasantry as subject matter, but their presence on French soil may account for their awareness of the value of infusing classical standards, for reasons of balance, into their art. There are distinctions within this formula, however, among the three brothers. And...