George de La Tour (1593-1652), today considered a figure of commanding importance in French 17th-century painting, is best known for his mystical night scenes.

Highly successful in his lifetime as a painter in Lorraine whose work was also known and admired at the court of Louis XIII, Georges de La Tour was virtually forgotten after his death. His work first returned to public attention in 1934 in an exhibition in Paris of the "Painters of Reality in France," when a group of paintings reasonably attributed to him seemed the strongest and most personal statement of interests similar to Caravaggio and his followers, yet so distinct as to be compared to such different artists as Nicolas Poussin and Jan Vermeer. Since then further discoveries have been made, more paintings have been added to the number believed to be surely by his hand, and his work continues to exert a wide...