Exhibition
Georges de La Tour
From September 11, 2025 to January 25, 2026From 11 September 2025 to 25 January 2026, the Musée Jacquemart-André is devoting a brand new exhibition to Georges de La Tour (1593-1652), offering a fresh look at the rare, luminous work of one of the greatest French painters of the 17th century.
Following the success of its exhibitions featuring Caravaggio (2018) and Artemisia Gentileschi (2025), the Musée Jacquemart-André is continuing its exploration of the masters influenced by the Caravaggio revolution by showcasing the work of Georges de La Tour (1593-1652). This retrospective will be the first devoted to the artist in France since the historic exhibition at the Grand Palais in 1997.
The exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André will offer a new interpretation of Georges de La Tour’s career, attempting to shed light on the questions that still surround both his work and the path he followed. Despite the scarcity of surviving originals, the art of Georges de La Tour has left a profound mark on the history of art. Through his subtle naturalism, and the spiritual intensity and purity of form in his compositions, he created a pictorial language of great emotional power that has endured for centuries. This exhibition will therefore provide an opportunity to rediscover one of the most fascinating artists of the « Grand Siècle », in all the richness and complexity of his work.
Bringing together some thirty paintings and graphic works on loan from French and foreign public and private collections, the exhibition adopts a thematic approach designed to capture Georges de La Tour’s originality. The exhibition route will explore his favourite subjects — genre scenes, figures of penitent saints, artificial lighting effects — whilst placing his life and work in the wider context of European Caravaggism, particularly the influence of the French, Lorraine and Dutch Caravaggists.
Rather than being a direct imitation of the lessons of Caravaggio, the uniqueness of La Tour’s work lies in his personal interpretation of chiaroscuro, nourished by a radical realism and an intense spirituality that give his compositions a timeless modernity.
With the support of
The team
Curator
Dr. Gail Feigenbaum is a specialist in Italian and French art of the early modern period. Previously Associate Director of the Getty Research Institute, she has worked at the National Gallery of Art, at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, where she was Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor in 2023, and at the New Orleans Museum of Art. She has published numerous works on the Carracci, Caravaggio and Georges de La Tour. She has curated exhibitions such as “Ludovico Carracci” (Kimbell Art Museum and Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna), “The Drawings of Annibale Carracci” (Washington DC, National Gallery of Art), “Degas and New Orleans: A French Impressionist in America” (New Orleans Museum of Art), and “Jefferson’s America and Napoleon’s France: An Exhibition for the Lousiana Purchase” (New Orleans Museum of Art). She also collaborated in curating the “Georges de La Tour and His World” exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. At the Getty, she supervised the publication of over 150 books. Recent books include Money in the Air: Art Dealers and the Making of a Transatlantic Art Market 1880-1930; Display of Art in the Roman Palace; Provenance: An Alternate History of Art and Sacred Possessions: Collecting Italian Art.
Pierre Curie is chief curator of the Musée Jacquemart-André. A specialist in 17th-century Italian and Spanish painting, he has also worked with 19th-century French painting at the Musée du Petit Palais, Paris, where he began his career as a curator. He was subsequently put in charge of painting at France’s national General Inventory of Cultural Heritage, and has co-authored and edited “Vocabulaire typologique et technique de la peinture et du dessin” (published in 2009). Appointed head of the painting section of the restoration department at the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France in 2007, he has coordinated and monitored several major restorations of paintings belonging to national museums (Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rembrandt, Poussin, etc.). Pierre Curie has been curator of the Musée Jacquemart-André since January 2016 and is co-curator of all its exhibitions.
Production and realization: Culturespaces
Emmanuelle Lussiez, Director of Exhibitions
Milly Passigli, Deputy Director of Exhibition Programming
Bernadette Roux, Exhibition Manager
Livia Lérès and Domitille Séchet, for the iconography
Scenography
Hubert le Gall, French sculptor, designer and scenographer
