Charles Le Brun

The painter Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) will be honoured at the Louvre-Lens. Just like Delacroix for Romanticism or Monet for Impressionism, Le Brun is the sole embodiment of the art of an era: the Grand Siècle.

The son of a simple monumental stonemason, Le Brun was the first appointed painter to Louis XIV, and held the position for almost thirty years. One of his most famous works is the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. A prime artist in the second half of the 17th century in France, Le Brun was also the Director of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and the Gobelins Royal Manufactory.

This exhibition at the Louvre-Lens does justice to his polymorphic talent, expressed both on a very grand scale – for example in tapestries and interior design scale models – and in more intimate sketches, which highlight the accuracy and emotion of his hand. The exhibition will bring his gifts, his lively imagination and his talent for organisation back to life. It was these qualities that justified the extent of the powers entrusted to him by Louis XIV and by Colbert. If Le Brun were not the "dictator of the arts" in an absolute monarchy, he was undoubtedly their director.

Curators: Bénédicte Gady and Nicolas Milovanovic, Louvre Museum.