Musicians

"The three Le Nain brothers – Antoine, Louis and Mathieu – worked in collaboration and did not sign their work individually, making it difficult to attribute their paintings definitively to a single hand. This concert scene, however, has been accepted by the art historian Pierre Rosenberg as being by Mathieu.

After many years in store, this painting has finally returned to the Gallery thanks to recent conservation. Brilliantly painted passages have emerged, such as the still life on the table, along with the figure of the boy to the right, theatrically dressed in slashed sleeves, who had previously been damaged by overcleaning. Interestingly, the same figure appears in an unfinished group portrait at the National Gallery, London."