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Georges de La Tour was long overshadowed by the works of Spanish and Italian painters and fell into obscurity until the early 20th century. As an academic research on this painter progressed in 1930s, he came to be reappreciated in recent years. All the details of La Tour as the great French painter of the 17th century have been revealed. (In March 2005, La Tour’s Art Exhibition was held at the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo for the first time in Japan.) This work Smoker was discovered in southern France in May 1973 and first introduced to the world in the book Georges de La Tour, in which it is numbered 53, jointly published by Pierre Rosenberg and François Macé de l’Epinay in the same year. When inspecting this painting with their own eyes after cleaning its dirty surface, both Rosenberg and Christopher Wright shared the same view that this work was the best of all his paintings. Their view is also agreed by Jacques Thuillier and other researchers. It is one of only some 40 existing authentic works of La Tour: Two of his paintings are in Japan; one of the two is Saint Thomas, which is in the collection of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. However, most of the researchers, except for Wright, indicate the possibility that this painting was a collaboration with his son, Etienne de La Tour. Nevertheless, seeing the beauty of balances dominating the entire picture, the powerful depiction filled with spatial effect, and the high quality of exquisite finishing surface, one cannot help but feel touched by the world of painting by La Tour. Although this work represents a theme of genre painting which is ‘smoking,’ its rigorous realism and dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio style convey full of profound spirituality like a religious painting. The tranquil view illuminated by a burning piece of wood makes viewers feel the coming of the 17th-century French classical painting.