The Hurdy-Gurdy Player

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (January 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 6,185 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Le Vielleur]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Le Vielleur}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

The Hurdy-Gurdy Player
Artist	Georges de La Tour
Year	c.1620–1625
Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	162 cm × 105 cm (64 in × 41 in)
Location	Musée d'Arts de Nantes, Nantes

The Hurdy-Gurdy Player (French: Le Vielleur) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Georges de La Tour. The artist neither signed nor dated it, but it was produced in the first phase of his career, probably between 1620 and 1625.^[1] It is also known as The Hurdy-Gurdy Player in a Hat (Le Vielleur au chapeau) or The Hurdy-Gurdy Player with a Fly (Le Vielleur à la mouche). It is now in the Musée d'Arts de Nantes.

Description[edit]

The painting depicts an impoverished blind beggar singing in the street to the music of his hurdy-gurdy, an instrument traditionally associated with street singers. The hurdy-gurdy, portrayed in great detail in de la Tour's canvas, works by means of a hand turned wheel rubbing against a set of strings, whose pitch can be adjusted by hand operated wedges.

The beggar's distorted face and worn clothing are designed to invoke sympathy in the viewer for his situation. The existence of a fly on the singer's doublet (above his right knee) gives the work its alternative name and, in its proximity to such a beautiful instrument, can be interpreted as a comment on the fragility of life.

History, attribution and provenance[edit]

The first recorded mention of the work is in the collection of the Nantes-born diplomat François Cacault (1847–1805) at Clisson – a posthumous assessment of his collection on 6 November 1808 called the work "very capital", attributed it to Murillo and valued it at 6000 francs. The city collection bought it and it was hung in mayor Bertrand Geslin's office in the town hall, before being moved to its present home in 1830.^[2] From 1830 until 1903 the museum's catalogues noted it as a work by Murillo or the Spanish school.^[3] In 1836 Prosper Mérimée, then inspector general of France's historic monuments, admired the work during a trip to survey paintings in western France.

From 1923 doubts about the attribution of the painting began to surface but it was not until 1934–35 that general acceptance of its authorship, primarily by comparison with other similar works by the artist, was achieved.

Other works on the same subject by Georges de La Tour[edit]

• 
  The Musicians' Brawl, 94 × 104,1 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, c. 1620-1625
• 
  Hurdy-Gurdy Player, fragment of A Consort of Musicians, 85 × 58 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, c. 1620-1625
• 
  The Hurdy-Gurdy Player with a Dog, 186 × 120 cm, musée municipal de Bergues, c. 1622-1625
• 
  The Waidmann Hurdy-Gurdy Player, 157 × 94 cm, musée municipal Charles-Friry, Remiremont
• 
  The Hurdy-Gurdy Player with a Ribbon (fragment), 84 × 61 cm, museo del Prado, Madrid, c.1640

References (in English)[edit]

• Conisbee, Philip. “An Introduction to the Life and Art of Georges de La Tour,” in Philip Conisbee (ed.), Georges de La Tour and His World, exh. cat. Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum 1996, pp.13-147.
• Judovitz, Dalia. “Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible”, New York, Fordham University Press, 2018. ISBN 0-82327-744-5; ISBN 9780823277445.

Bibliography (in French)[edit]

External links[edit]

• "Catalogue entry" (in French). Retrieved 2013-08-01.^{[permanent dead link]}
• "Le XVIIe siecle au musée des beaux-arts de Nantes, pages 1-3" (PDF) (in French). Retrieved 2013-08-01.