Updated October 2026 · ranked by our popularity score (searches, visits and orders for each work) · 2 works by Simon Mathurin Lantara in our catalogue
In short
If you know one Simon Mathurin Lantara painting, it's probably Spirit of God over the Waters (1752), which hangs in the Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble. Our catalogue has 2 works by Simon Mathurin Lantara. Below are the 2 people know best, each with its year, where to find it and what makes it special.
The museum that holds the most of the paintings on this page.
| Museum | City | Works by Simon Mathurin Lantara | Paintings from this list |
|---|---|---|---|
 Musée de Grenoble |
Grenoble | 1 | Spirit of God over the Waters |
10 years, 1752 to 1761: that's the whole span of Simon Mathurin Lantara's dated pieces here. Walk through it year by year.
Pick a year to see its pieces.
Top of the list is Spirit of God over the Waters (1752).
23 years old. Simon Mathurin Lantara was born in 1729, and Spirit of God over the Waters dates from 1752.
We have 2 works by Simon Mathurin Lantara in our catalogue, dated 1752 to 1761.
You'll find most of them in Musée de Grenoble (Grenoble). The museum list above has the full breakdown.
The earliest piece here is Spirit of God over the Waters (1752); the most recent is Landscape, Morning Effect (1761).
Yes. Every painting on this page is available as a hand-painted oil reproduction or a print, in the size that suits you. Just open the painting's page to order.
To understand Simon Mathurin Lantara, one must look past the polished galleries of Paris and toward the humble beginnings in Oncy. He was not born into the upper echelons of the art world; his father was a weaver, and Lantara himself began his life as a herdboy. This raw start provided a perspective that formal training at Versailles could not replicate. While he possessed significant talent and facility, his temperament remained fundamentally at odds with the structured expectations of eighteenth-century society. He found the constraints of a regular life and the company of the educated classes to be deeply tiresome.
His career was marked by a refusal to conform to the social graces required of a successful painter. While rich amateurs occasionally drew him into their homes, Lantara often failed to produce work when faced with the pressures of high living and ease. He preferred the company of obscure workmen over the refined salons of his era. This friction between his natural ability and his personal lifestyle defined his existence until his death in Paris in 1778.
Lantara’s work is characterized by a specific focus on landscape and sea-pieces. His technical skill was recognized early, yet his surviving body of work remains limited in number. Much of what we know of his output comes from the way other artists interacted with his canvases. Figures were often added to his landscapes and sea-pieces by contemporaries such as Émile Bernard and Joseph Vernet. This collaborative reality suggests that while Lantara provided the essential environmental foundation, the narrative elements were sometimes completed by others.
His compositions frequently explored natural phenomena and topographical details:
The significance of Lantara lies in his role as a precursor to later movements. His approach to landscape serves as an early link to the Barbizon School and nineteenth-century landscape traditions. Although he lived a life of perceived carelessness, his impact reached beyond his immediate circle through engravings found in the works of artists like Lebas, Piquenot, Duret, and Mouchy.
His presence in major collections confirms that his talent was not merely anecdotal. The Louvre holds a landscape titled Morning, signed and dated 1761. Other notable holdings include pieces in the Musée Carnavalet, the National Gallery of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even when his personal life lacked stability, the physical remnants of his skill remained anchored in the permanent records of French and international art institutions.
