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Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain (French: [klod lɔ.ʁɛ̃]; born Claude Gellée [ʒəle], called le Lorrain in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in Italy, and is one of the earliest important artists, apart from his contemporaries in Dutch Golden Age painting, to concentrate on landscape painting. His landscapes are usually turned into the more prestigious genre of history paintings by the addition of a few small figures, typically representing a scene from the Bible or classical mythology.

Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain's self-portrait
Born
Claude Gellée

1600 or 1604/5
Died21 November or 23 November 1682 (aged 77/78 or 82)
Known forPainting
MovementBaroque
Signature

By the end of the 1630s he was established as the leading landscapist in Italy, and enjoyed large fees for his work. His landscapes gradually became larger, but with fewer figures, more carefully painted, and produced at a lower rate.[1] He was not generally an innovator in landscape painting, except in introducing the sun and streaming sunlight into many paintings, which had been rare before. He is now thought of as a French painter, but was born in the independent Duchy of Lorraine,[2] and almost all his painting was done in Italy; before the late 19th century he was regarded as a painter of the "Roman School".[1] His patrons were also mostly Italian, but after his death he became very popular with English collectors, and the UK retains a high proportion of his works.[3]

Seaport at sunset (1639), Louvre

He was a prolific creator of drawings in pen and very often monochrome watercolour "wash", usually brown but sometimes grey. Chalk is sometimes used for under-drawing, and white highlighting in various media may be employed, much less often other colours such as pink. These fall into three fairly distinct groups. Firstly there are large numbers of sketches, mostly of landscapes, and apparently very often done at the scene; these have been greatly admired, and influenced other artists. Then there are studies for paintings, of various degrees of finish, many clearly done before or during the process of painting, but others perhaps after that was complete.[4] This was certainly the case for the last group, the 195 drawings recording finished paintings collected in his Liber Veritatis (now in the British Museum).[5] He produced over 40 etchings, often simplified versions of paintings, mainly before 1642. These served various purposes for him, but are now regarded as much less important than his drawings.[6] He painted frescoes in his early career, which played an important part in making his reputation, but are now nearly all lost.

Biography edit

 
The Roman Campagna (1639), Metropolitan Museum of Art
 
Sunrise (1646–47), Metropolitan Museum of Art
 
Worship of the Golden Calf (1653), Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe

The earliest biographies of Claude are in Joachim von Sandrart's Teutsche Academie (1675) and Filippo Baldinucci's Notizie de' professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua (1682–1728). Both Sandrart and Baldinucci knew the painter personally, but at periods some 50 years apart, respectively at the start of his career and shortly before his death. Sandrart knew him well and lived with him for a while, while Baldinucci was probably not intimate with him, and derived much of his information from Claude's nephew, who lived with the artist.[7]

Claude's tombstone gives 1600 as his year of birth, but contemporary sources indicate a later date, circa 1604 or 1605.[8] He was born in the small village of Chamagne, Vosges, then part of the Duchy of Lorraine. He was the third of five sons of Jean Gellée and Anne Padose.

According to Baldinucci, Claude's parents both died when he was twelve years old, and he then lived at Freiburg with an elder brother (Jean Gellée). Jean was an artist in inlay and taught Claude the rudiments of drawing. Claude then travelled to Italy, first working for Goffredo Wals [fr] in Naples, then joining the workshop of Agostino Tassi in Rome.

Sandrart's account of Claude's early years, however, is quite different, and modern scholars generally prefer this, or attempt to combine the two. According to Sandrart, Claude did not do well at the village school and was apprenticed to a pastry baker. With a company of fellow cooks and bakers (Lorraine had a high reputation for pâtisserie), Claude travelled to Rome and was eventually employed as servant and cook by Tassi, who at some point converted him into an apprentice and taught him drawing and painting. Both Wals and Tassi were landscapists, the former very obscure and producing small works, while Tassi (known as the rapist of Artemisia Gentileschi) had a large workshop specializing in fresco schemes in palaces.[9]

While the details of Claude's pre-1620s life remain unclear, most modern scholars agree that he was apprenticed to Wals around 1620–1622, and to Tassi from circa 1622/23 to 1625. Finally, Baldinucci reports that in 1625 Claude undertook a voyage back to Lorraine to train with Claude Deruet, working on the backgrounds of a lost fresco scheme, but left his studio comparatively soon, in 1626 or 1627. He returned to Rome and settled in a house in the Via Margutta, near the Spanish Steps and Trinita dei Monti, remaining in that neighbourhood for the rest of his life.[10]

On his travels, Claude briefly stayed in Marseilles, Genoa, and Venice, and had the opportunity to study nature in France, Italy, and Bavaria. Sandrart met Claude in the late 1620s and reported that by then the artist had a habit of sketching outdoors, particularly at dawn and at dusk, making oil studies on the spot. The first dated painting by Claude, Landscape with Cattle and Peasants (Philadelphia Museum of Art) from 1629,[11] already shows well-developed style and technique. In the next few years his reputation was growing steadily, as evidenced by commissions from the French ambassador in Rome (1633) and the King of Spain (1634–35). Baldinucci reported that a particularly important commission came from Cardinal Bentivoglio, who was impressed by the two landscapes Claude painted for him, and recommended the artist to Pope Urban VIII.[12] Four paintings were made for the Pope in 1635–1638, two large and two small on copper.[13]

From this point, Claude's reputation was secured. He went on to fulfill many important commissions, both Italian and international. About 1636 he started cataloguing his works, making pen and wash drawings of nearly all his pictures as they were completed, although not always variant versions, and on the back of most drawings he wrote the name of the purchaser, not always sufficiently clearly to identify them now. This volume Claude named the Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth).[5]

In 1650, Claude moved to a neighboring house in Via Paolina (today Via del Babuino), where he lived until his death. The artist never married, but adopted an orphan child, Agnese, in 1658; she may well have been Claude's own daughter with a servant of the same name. Sons of Claude's brothers joined the household in 1662 (Jean, son of Denis Gellée) and around 1680 (Joseph, son of Melchior Gellée).[10] In 1663 Claude, who suffered much from gout,[14] fell seriously ill, his condition becoming so serious that he drafted a will, but he managed to recover. He painted less after 1670, but works completed after that date include important pictures such as Coast View with Perseus and the Origin of Coral (1674), painted for the celebrated collector Cardinal Camillo Massimo,[15] and Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia, Claude's last painting, commissioned by Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, his most important patron in his last years.[16] The artist died in his house on 23 November 1682. He was originally buried in Trinita dei Monti, but his remains were moved in 1840 to San Luigi dei Francesi.[10]

At his death, he owned only four of his paintings, but most of his drawings. Apart from the Liber Veritatis many of these were in bound volumes, the inventory mentioning 12 bound books and a large "case" or folder of loose sheets. Five or six large bound volumes were left to his heirs including a Tivoli Book, Campagna Book, Early Sketchbook, and an "animal album", all now broken up and dispersed, though as the sheets were numbered their contents have been largely reconstructed by scholars.[17]

Style and subjects edit

 
An Artist Studying from Nature, 1639 (Cincinnati Art Museum)

Influences edit

Claude's choice of both style and subject matter grew out of a tradition of landscape painting in Italy, mostly Rome, led by northern artists trained in the style of Northern Mannerism. Matthijs Bril had arrived in Rome from Antwerp around 1575, and was soon joined by his brother Paul. Both specialized in landscapes, initially as backgrounds in large frescos, a route apparently also taken by Lorrain some decades later. Matthijs died at 33 but Paul remained active in Rome until after Claude's arrival there, although any meeting between them has not been recorded. Hans Rottenhammer and Adam Elsheimer were other northern landscapists associated with Bril, who had left Rome long before.

These artists introduced the genre of small cabinet pictures, often on copper, where the figures were dominated by their landscape surroundings, which were very often dense woodland placed not far behind figures in the foreground. Paul Bril had begun to paint larger pictures where the size and balance between the elements, and the type of landscape used, is closer to Claude's work in the future, with an extensive open view behind much of the width of the picture.

Along with other seventeenth-century artists working in Rome, Claude was also influenced by the new interest in the genre of landscape that emerged in the mid-to-late sixteenth century within the Veneto; starting with the Venetian born painter Domenico Campagnola and the Dutch artist resident in both Padua and Venice, Lambert Sustris. Interest in landscape first emerged in Rome in the work of their Brescian pupil Girolamo Muziano, who earned the nickname in the city of Il giovane dei paesi (the young man of the landscapes).[18] Following the integration of this tradition with other Northern sources, Bolognese artists such as Domenichino, who was in Rome from 1602, painted a number of "Landscape with..." subjects, drawn from mythology, religion and literature, as well as genre scenes. These usually have an open vista in one part of the composition, as well as a steep hill in another. Even when the action between the few small figures is violent, the landscape gives an impression of serenity. The compositions are careful and balanced, and look forward to Claude's. The Landscape with the Flight into Egypt by Annibale Carracci (c. 1604) is one of the best Italian landscapes of the start of the century,[19] but perhaps more a forerunner of Poussin than Claude.

In his method, Lorrain would often use a grid of median and diagonal lines to place elements in the landscape in order to create a dynamic and harmonious composition in which landscape and architecture are balanced against empty space.[20]

Early works edit

 
Landscape with a Piping Shepherd, c. 1629–1632

Claude's earliest paintings draw from both these groups, being mostly rather smaller than later. Agostino Tassi may have been a pupil of Paul Bril, and his influence is especially evident in Claude's earliest works, at a larger size, while some small works of about 1631 recall Elsheimer.[11] Initially Claude often includes more figures than was typical of his predecessors, despite his figure drawing being generally recognised as "notoriously feeble", as Roger Fry put it.[21]

More often than later, the figures were mere genre staffage: shepherds, travellers, and sailors, as appropriate for the scene. In the early 1630s the first religious and mythological subjects appear, with a Flight into Egypt probably of 1631,[22] and a Judgement of Paris,[23] both very common subjects in the "Landscape with.." genre. The pair to the latter is a very early harbour scene, already with tall classical buildings, a type of composition Claude was to use for the rest of his career.[24]

Figures and other non-landscape elements edit

 
Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia (1682), Claude's last painting

Figures edit

Although virtually every painting contains figures, even if only a shepherd, their weakness has always been recognised, not least by Claude himself; according to Baldinucci he joked that he charged for his landscapes, but gave the figures for free. According to Sandrart he had made considerable efforts to improve, but without success; certainly there are numerous studies, typically for groups of figures, among his drawings. It has often been thought that he handed the figures in some works over to others to paint, but it is now generally agreed that there are few such cases. Baldinucci mentions Filippo Lauri in this context, but he was only born in 1623, and can only have taken on such work from the 1640s at best.[25] The rider in the small Landscape with an Imaginary View of Tivoli in the Courtauld Gallery in London, LV 67 and dated 1642, is one of the last of his figures to wear contemporary dress. Thereafter all of them wore "pastoral dress" or the 17th-century idea of ancient dress.[26]

In his last years his figures tend to become ever more elongated, a process taken to an extreme in his last painting, Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia, of which even its owner, the Ashmolean Museum, says "The hunters are impossibly elongated – Ascanius, in particular, is absurdly top-heavy".[27] Its pendant View of Carthage with Dido and Aeneas (1676, Kunsthalle, Hamburg) has figures almost as extreme. With the mid-20th fashion for medical diagnosis through art, it was suggested that Claude had developed an optical condition accounting for such effects, but this has been rejected by doctors and critics alike.

Architecture edit

Claude only rarely painted topographical scenes showing the Renaissance and Baroque Roman architecture still being created in his lifetime, but often borrowed from it to work up imaginary buildings. Most of the buildings near the foreground of his paintings are grand imagined temples and palaces in a generally classical style, but without the attempt at archaeological rigour seen in Poussin's equivalents. Elements are borrowed and worked up from real buildings, both ancient and modern, and in the absence of much knowledge of what an ancient palace facade looked like, his palaces are more like the late Renaissance Roman palaces many of his clients lived in. Buildings that are less clearly seen, such as the towers that often emerge above trees in his backgrounds, are often more like the vernacular and medieval buildings he would have seen around Rome.

One example of a semi-topographic painting with "modern" buildings (there are rather more such drawings)[28] is A View of Rome (1632, NG 1319), which seems to represent the view from the roof of Claude's house, including his parish church and initial burial place of Santa Trinita del Monte, and other buildings such as the Quirinal Palace. This view takes up the left-hand side of the painting, but on the right, behind a group of genre figures in modern dress (uniquely for Claude, these represent a scene of prostitution in the Dutch Merry Company tradition), is a statue of Apollo and a Roman temple portico, both of which are either wholly imaginary or at least not placed in their actual locations.[29]

 
The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1648), National Gallery

In a generic Seaport in the National Gallery (1644, NG5) a palace facade expanding on the gateway built about 1570 between the Farnese Gardens and the Roman Forum is next door to the Arch of Titus, here apparently part of another palace.[30] Behind that Claude repeats a palace he had used before, that borrows from several buildings in and around Rome, including the Villa Farnesina and the Palazzo Senatorio.[31] It is pointless to question how Ascanius finds in Latium a large stone temple in a fully developed Corinthian order, that has evidently been crumbling into ruins for several centuries.

Shipping edit

Claude's lack of interest in avoiding anachronism is perhaps seen most clearly in the ships in his harbour scenes. Whether the subject, and the dress of the figures, is supposed to be contemporary, mythogical or from Roman or medieval history, the large ships are usually the same up-to-date merchant vessels. Some large rowed galleys are seen, as in Landscape with the Arrival of Aeneas before the City of Pallanteum (one of the "Altieri Claudes", Anglesey Abbey), where Virgil's text specifies galleys.[32] Ships in the background are more likely to attempt to reflect an ancient setting; in the London Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1648, NG 14) the ship at the centre of the composition is modern, the others less so.[33]

Critical assessment and legacy edit

 
Wash drawing of a view of the Campagna

As seen in his painting The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, Claude was innovative in including the Sun itself as a source of light in his paintings.[34]

In Rome, Bril, Girolamo Muziano and Federico Zuccaro and later Elsheimer, Annibale Carracci and Domenichino made landscape vistas pre-eminent in some of their drawings and paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but it might be argued that not until Claude's generation, did landscape completely reflect an aesthetic viewpoint which was seen as completely autonomous in its moral purpose within the cultural world of Rome.

In this matter of the importance of landscape, Claude was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography.

Claude Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death.

John Constable described Claude as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude's landscape "all is lovely – all amiable – all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart".[35]

Claude glass edit

The Claude glass, named after Lorrain in England although there is no indication he used or knew of it or anything similar, gave a framed and dark-tinted reflection of a real view, that was supposed to help artists produce works of art similar to his, and tourists to adjust views to a Claudian formula. William Gilpin, the inventor of the picturesque ideal, advocated the use of a Claude glass saying, "they give the object of nature a soft, mellow tinge like the colouring of that Master."

Claude glasses were widely used by tourists and amateur artists, who quickly became the targets of satire. Hugh Sykes Davies observed their facing away from the object they wished to paint, commenting, "It is very typical of their attitude to Nature that such a position should be desirable."[36]

Selected works edit

 
Landscape with Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus and Mercury stealing them (1645), Doria Pamphilj Gallery
 
Liber Veritatis 137, Coast scene with a battle on a bridge , of which two painted versions are known
 
Landscape with Psyche Outside the Palace of Cupid (The Enchanted Castle) (1664), National Gallery
 
Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon (1680) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ a b Kitson, 6
  2. ^ technically part of the Holy Roman Empire
  3. ^ Kitson, 6, 9–10
  4. ^ Kitson, 8, 32–51; Sonnabend & Whiteley, 57–83; Fry, 158–160; The drawings of Claude : with an essay by Roger E. Fry and notes on the drawing reproduced, 1907, London: Burlington magazine
  5. ^ a b Kitson, 53–55
  6. ^ Kitson, 51–53; Sonnabend & Whiteley, 137–151
  7. ^ Sonnabend, Whiteley, 2011, 9.
  8. ^ Sonnabend, Whiteley, 2011, 18.
  9. ^ Sonnabend & Whiteley, 9–10
  10. ^ a b c Sonnabend, Whiteley, 2011, 19.
  11. ^ a b Kitson, 13
  12. ^ Sonnabend, Whiteley, 2011, 28.
  13. ^ Kitson, Nos. 9, 10 and 14, all these now in England, the fourth in France.
  14. ^ Sonnabend, Whiteley, 2011, 15.
  15. ^ freelancis, gaspard from. "Claude Lorrain / Coast View with Perseus and the Origin of Coral".
  16. ^ Kitson, 31; Wine (1994), 101
  17. ^ Sonnabend & Whiteley, 59; Kitson, 34–35
  18. ^ Patrizia Tosini, Girolamo Muziano: dalla Maniera alla Natura, 1532–1592 (Ugo Bozzi Editore: 2008), pp. 17–77.
  19. ^ Wine (2001), 33, 63; Wine (1994), 22–24
  20. ^ Sanmiguel, David. (2003)Art of drawing. Sterling, 114-115. Print.
  21. ^ Fry, 155
  22. ^ Kitson, 13, Duke of Rutland
  23. ^ Kitson, 14–15
  24. ^ Kitson, 15; Sonnabend & Whiteley, Nos. 1 and 2; both Duke of Buccleuch
  25. ^ Wine (1994), 12–14; Wine (2001), 124 (and note); Blunt, 275, n. 243
  26. ^ Kitson, 20
  27. ^ Ashmolean Press summary 17 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine for Claude Lorrain: The Enchanted Landscape in 2011
  28. ^ e.g., to mention just those with identifiable buildings, Kitson, #s 39, 62, 63, 70, 71, 72
  29. ^ Wine (2001), 122; image on NG page
  30. ^ Wine (1994), 70
  31. ^ Wine (2001), 50–52; Image
  32. ^ Wine (1994), 99
  33. ^ Wine (2001), 86
  34. ^ Buchholz, E. L., S. Kaeppele, K. Hille, and I. Stotland. Art, a world history. Harry N. Abrams, 232. Print.
  35. ^ Australia, National Gallery of. "CONSTABLE : impressions of land, sea and sky – John CONSTABLE – Landscape with goatherd and goats, after Claude".
  36. ^ James Buzard (2002). "The Grand Tour and after 1660–1840," in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. ISBN 0-521-78140-X

References edit

  • Blunt, Anthony, Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700, 2nd ed. 1957, Penguin
  • Clark, Kenneth, Landscape into Art, 1949, page refs to Penguin ed. of 1961
  • Fry, Roger, Vision and Design, 1981 edition (originally 1920), Oxford University Press, ISBN 019281317X
  • Kitson, Michael (1969), The Art of Claude Lorrain (exhibition catalogue), 1969, Arts Council of Great Britain
  • Rossetti, William Michael (1911). "Claude of Lorraine" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 463.
  • Sonnabend, Martin and Whiteley, Jon, with Ruemelin, Christian. 2011. Claude Lorrain: The Enchanted Landscape. Farnham: Lund Humphries; in association with the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
  • Stein, Perrin, French Drawings: Clouet to Seurat (exhibition catalogue), 2005, British Museum Press, ISBN 9780714126401
  • Wine, Humphrey (1994), Claude: The Poetic Landscape (exhibition catalogue), 1994, National Gallery Publications Ltd, ISBN 1857090462
  • Wine, Humphrey (2001), National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The Seventeenth Century French Paintings, 2001, National Gallery Publications Ltd, ISBN 185709283X

Further reading edit

  • Chiarini, Marco. 1968. Claude Lorrain – Selected Drawings. Pennsylvania State University Press.
  • Kitson, Michael. 1978. Claude Lorrain, "Liber Veritatis". British Museum Publications, London.
  • Lagerlöf, Margaretha Rossholm. 1990. Ideal Landscape: Annibale Carracci, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. New Haven, Yale University Press
  • Mannocci, Lino. 1988, The Etchings of Claude Lorrain. Yale University Press
  • Rand, Richard, Claude Lorrain: The Painter as Draftsman (exhibition from the British Museum), Yale University Press, 2007
  • Röthlisberger, Marcel, Claude Lorrain: The Paintings, Hawker Art Books, 1979
  • Russell, H. Diane. 1982. Claude Lorrain, 1600–1682 (NGA exhibition). New York, George Braziller.

External links edit

  Media related to Claude Lorrain at Wikimedia Commons

  • 68 artworks by or after Claude Lorrain at the Art UK site
  • Claude's Biography, Context and Artworks
  • National Gallery
  • Web Gallery of Art
  • Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Claude de Lorrain" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  • Artcyclopedia, Claude Lorrain, Paintings in Museums and Public Art Galleries Worldwide
  • Agence Photographique de la Réunion des musées nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées
  • Works by or about Claude Lorrain at Internet Archive
  •   The Flight into Egypt., engraved by W. R. Smith for The Easter Gift, 1832, with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

claude, lorrain, french, klod, ʁɛ, born, claude, gellée, ʒəle, called, lorrain, french, traditionally, just, claude, english, 1600, november, 1682, french, painter, draughtsman, etcher, baroque, spent, most, life, italy, earliest, important, artists, apart, fr. Claude Lorrain French klod lɔ ʁɛ born Claude Gellee ʒele called le Lorrain in French traditionally just Claude in English c 1600 23 November 1682 was a French painter draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era He spent most of his life in Italy and is one of the earliest important artists apart from his contemporaries in Dutch Golden Age painting to concentrate on landscape painting His landscapes are usually turned into the more prestigious genre of history paintings by the addition of a few small figures typically representing a scene from the Bible or classical mythology Claude LorrainClaude Lorrain s self portraitBornClaude Gellee1600 or 1604 5Chamagne Duchy of LorraineDied21 November or 23 November 1682 aged 77 78 or 82 Rome Papal StatesKnown forPaintingMovementBaroqueSignatureBy the end of the 1630s he was established as the leading landscapist in Italy and enjoyed large fees for his work His landscapes gradually became larger but with fewer figures more carefully painted and produced at a lower rate 1 He was not generally an innovator in landscape painting except in introducing the sun and streaming sunlight into many paintings which had been rare before He is now thought of as a French painter but was born in the independent Duchy of Lorraine 2 and almost all his painting was done in Italy before the late 19th century he was regarded as a painter of the Roman School 1 His patrons were also mostly Italian but after his death he became very popular with English collectors and the UK retains a high proportion of his works 3 Seaport at sunset 1639 LouvreHe was a prolific creator of drawings in pen and very often monochrome watercolour wash usually brown but sometimes grey Chalk is sometimes used for under drawing and white highlighting in various media may be employed much less often other colours such as pink These fall into three fairly distinct groups Firstly there are large numbers of sketches mostly of landscapes and apparently very often done at the scene these have been greatly admired and influenced other artists Then there are studies for paintings of various degrees of finish many clearly done before or during the process of painting but others perhaps after that was complete 4 This was certainly the case for the last group the 195 drawings recording finished paintings collected in his Liber Veritatis now in the British Museum 5 He produced over 40 etchings often simplified versions of paintings mainly before 1642 These served various purposes for him but are now regarded as much less important than his drawings 6 He painted frescoes in his early career which played an important part in making his reputation but are now nearly all lost Contents 1 Biography 2 Style and subjects 2 1 Influences 2 2 Early works 3 Figures and other non landscape elements 3 1 Figures 3 2 Architecture 3 3 Shipping 4 Critical assessment and legacy 5 Claude glass 6 Selected works 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External linksBiography edit nbsp The Roman Campagna 1639 Metropolitan Museum of Art nbsp Sunrise 1646 47 Metropolitan Museum of Art nbsp Worship of the Golden Calf 1653 Staatliche Kunsthalle KarlsruheThe earliest biographies of Claude are in Joachim von Sandrart s Teutsche Academie 1675 and Filippo Baldinucci s Notizie de professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua 1682 1728 Both Sandrart and Baldinucci knew the painter personally but at periods some 50 years apart respectively at the start of his career and shortly before his death Sandrart knew him well and lived with him for a while while Baldinucci was probably not intimate with him and derived much of his information from Claude s nephew who lived with the artist 7 Claude s tombstone gives 1600 as his year of birth but contemporary sources indicate a later date circa 1604 or 1605 8 He was born in the small village of Chamagne Vosges then part of the Duchy of Lorraine He was the third of five sons of Jean Gellee and Anne Padose According to Baldinucci Claude s parents both died when he was twelve years old and he then lived at Freiburg with an elder brother Jean Gellee Jean was an artist in inlay and taught Claude the rudiments of drawing Claude then travelled to Italy first working for Goffredo Wals fr in Naples then joining the workshop of Agostino Tassi in Rome Sandrart s account of Claude s early years however is quite different and modern scholars generally prefer this or attempt to combine the two According to Sandrart Claude did not do well at the village school and was apprenticed to a pastry baker With a company of fellow cooks and bakers Lorraine had a high reputation for patisserie Claude travelled to Rome and was eventually employed as servant and cook by Tassi who at some point converted him into an apprentice and taught him drawing and painting Both Wals and Tassi were landscapists the former very obscure and producing small works while Tassi known as the rapist of Artemisia Gentileschi had a large workshop specializing in fresco schemes in palaces 9 While the details of Claude s pre 1620s life remain unclear most modern scholars agree that he was apprenticed to Wals around 1620 1622 and to Tassi from circa 1622 23 to 1625 Finally Baldinucci reports that in 1625 Claude undertook a voyage back to Lorraine to train with Claude Deruet working on the backgrounds of a lost fresco scheme but left his studio comparatively soon in 1626 or 1627 He returned to Rome and settled in a house in the Via Margutta near the Spanish Steps and Trinita dei Monti remaining in that neighbourhood for the rest of his life 10 On his travels Claude briefly stayed in Marseilles Genoa and Venice and had the opportunity to study nature in France Italy and Bavaria Sandrart met Claude in the late 1620s and reported that by then the artist had a habit of sketching outdoors particularly at dawn and at dusk making oil studies on the spot The first dated painting by Claude Landscape with Cattle and Peasants Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1629 11 already shows well developed style and technique In the next few years his reputation was growing steadily as evidenced by commissions from the French ambassador in Rome 1633 and the King of Spain 1634 35 Baldinucci reported that a particularly important commission came from Cardinal Bentivoglio who was impressed by the two landscapes Claude painted for him and recommended the artist to Pope Urban VIII 12 Four paintings were made for the Pope in 1635 1638 two large and two small on copper 13 From this point Claude s reputation was secured He went on to fulfill many important commissions both Italian and international About 1636 he started cataloguing his works making pen and wash drawings of nearly all his pictures as they were completed although not always variant versions and on the back of most drawings he wrote the name of the purchaser not always sufficiently clearly to identify them now This volume Claude named the Liber Veritatis Book of Truth 5 In 1650 Claude moved to a neighboring house in Via Paolina today Via del Babuino where he lived until his death The artist never married but adopted an orphan child Agnese in 1658 she may well have been Claude s own daughter with a servant of the same name Sons of Claude s brothers joined the household in 1662 Jean son of Denis Gellee and around 1680 Joseph son of Melchior Gellee 10 In 1663 Claude who suffered much from gout 14 fell seriously ill his condition becoming so serious that he drafted a will but he managed to recover He painted less after 1670 but works completed after that date include important pictures such as Coast View with Perseus and the Origin of Coral 1674 painted for the celebrated collector Cardinal Camillo Massimo 15 and Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia Claude s last painting commissioned by Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna his most important patron in his last years 16 The artist died in his house on 23 November 1682 He was originally buried in Trinita dei Monti but his remains were moved in 1840 to San Luigi dei Francesi 10 At his death he owned only four of his paintings but most of his drawings Apart from the Liber Veritatis many of these were in bound volumes the inventory mentioning 12 bound books and a large case or folder of loose sheets Five or six large bound volumes were left to his heirs including a Tivoli Book Campagna Book Early Sketchbook and an animal album all now broken up and dispersed though as the sheets were numbered their contents have been largely reconstructed by scholars 17 Style and subjects edit nbsp An Artist Studying from Nature 1639 Cincinnati Art Museum Influences edit Claude s choice of both style and subject matter grew out of a tradition of landscape painting in Italy mostly Rome led by northern artists trained in the style of Northern Mannerism Matthijs Bril had arrived in Rome from Antwerp around 1575 and was soon joined by his brother Paul Both specialized in landscapes initially as backgrounds in large frescos a route apparently also taken by Lorrain some decades later Matthijs died at 33 but Paul remained active in Rome until after Claude s arrival there although any meeting between them has not been recorded Hans Rottenhammer and Adam Elsheimer were other northern landscapists associated with Bril who had left Rome long before These artists introduced the genre of small cabinet pictures often on copper where the figures were dominated by their landscape surroundings which were very often dense woodland placed not far behind figures in the foreground Paul Bril had begun to paint larger pictures where the size and balance between the elements and the type of landscape used is closer to Claude s work in the future with an extensive open view behind much of the width of the picture Along with other seventeenth century artists working in Rome Claude was also influenced by the new interest in the genre of landscape that emerged in the mid to late sixteenth century within the Veneto starting with the Venetian born painter Domenico Campagnola and the Dutch artist resident in both Padua and Venice Lambert Sustris Interest in landscape first emerged in Rome in the work of their Brescian pupil Girolamo Muziano who earned the nickname in the city of Il giovane dei paesi the young man of the landscapes 18 Following the integration of this tradition with other Northern sources Bolognese artists such as Domenichino who was in Rome from 1602 painted a number of Landscape with subjects drawn from mythology religion and literature as well as genre scenes These usually have an open vista in one part of the composition as well as a steep hill in another Even when the action between the few small figures is violent the landscape gives an impression of serenity The compositions are careful and balanced and look forward to Claude s The Landscape with the Flight into Egypt by Annibale Carracci c 1604 is one of the best Italian landscapes of the start of the century 19 but perhaps more a forerunner of Poussin than Claude In his method Lorrain would often use a grid of median and diagonal lines to place elements in the landscape in order to create a dynamic and harmonious composition in which landscape and architecture are balanced against empty space 20 Early works edit nbsp Landscape with a Piping Shepherd c 1629 1632Claude s earliest paintings draw from both these groups being mostly rather smaller than later Agostino Tassi may have been a pupil of Paul Bril and his influence is especially evident in Claude s earliest works at a larger size while some small works of about 1631 recall Elsheimer 11 Initially Claude often includes more figures than was typical of his predecessors despite his figure drawing being generally recognised as notoriously feeble as Roger Fry put it 21 More often than later the figures were mere genre staffage shepherds travellers and sailors as appropriate for the scene In the early 1630s the first religious and mythological subjects appear with a Flight into Egypt probably of 1631 22 and a Judgement of Paris 23 both very common subjects in the Landscape with genre The pair to the latter is a very early harbour scene already with tall classical buildings a type of composition Claude was to use for the rest of his career 24 Figures and other non landscape elements edit nbsp Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia 1682 Claude s last paintingFigures edit Although virtually every painting contains figures even if only a shepherd their weakness has always been recognised not least by Claude himself according to Baldinucci he joked that he charged for his landscapes but gave the figures for free According to Sandrart he had made considerable efforts to improve but without success certainly there are numerous studies typically for groups of figures among his drawings It has often been thought that he handed the figures in some works over to others to paint but it is now generally agreed that there are few such cases Baldinucci mentions Filippo Lauri in this context but he was only born in 1623 and can only have taken on such work from the 1640s at best 25 The rider in the small Landscape with an Imaginary View of Tivoli in the Courtauld Gallery in London LV 67 and dated 1642 is one of the last of his figures to wear contemporary dress Thereafter all of them wore pastoral dress or the 17th century idea of ancient dress 26 In his last years his figures tend to become ever more elongated a process taken to an extreme in his last painting Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia of which even its owner the Ashmolean Museum says The hunters are impossibly elongated Ascanius in particular is absurdly top heavy 27 Its pendant View of Carthage with Dido and Aeneas 1676 Kunsthalle Hamburg has figures almost as extreme With the mid 20th fashion for medical diagnosis through art it was suggested that Claude had developed an optical condition accounting for such effects but this has been rejected by doctors and critics alike Architecture edit Claude only rarely painted topographical scenes showing the Renaissance and Baroque Roman architecture still being created in his lifetime but often borrowed from it to work up imaginary buildings Most of the buildings near the foreground of his paintings are grand imagined temples and palaces in a generally classical style but without the attempt at archaeological rigour seen in Poussin s equivalents Elements are borrowed and worked up from real buildings both ancient and modern and in the absence of much knowledge of what an ancient palace facade looked like his palaces are more like the late Renaissance Roman palaces many of his clients lived in Buildings that are less clearly seen such as the towers that often emerge above trees in his backgrounds are often more like the vernacular and medieval buildings he would have seen around Rome One example of a semi topographic painting with modern buildings there are rather more such drawings 28 is A View of Rome 1632 NG 1319 which seems to represent the view from the roof of Claude s house including his parish church and initial burial place of Santa Trinita del Monte and other buildings such as the Quirinal Palace This view takes up the left hand side of the painting but on the right behind a group of genre figures in modern dress uniquely for Claude these represent a scene of prostitution in the Dutch Merry Company tradition is a statue of Apollo and a Roman temple portico both of which are either wholly imaginary or at least not placed in their actual locations 29 nbsp The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba 1648 National GalleryIn a generic Seaport in the National Gallery 1644 NG5 a palace facade expanding on the gateway built about 1570 between the Farnese Gardens and the Roman Forum is next door to the Arch of Titus here apparently part of another palace 30 Behind that Claude repeats a palace he had used before that borrows from several buildings in and around Rome including the Villa Farnesina and the Palazzo Senatorio 31 It is pointless to question how Ascanius finds in Latium a large stone temple in a fully developed Corinthian order that has evidently been crumbling into ruins for several centuries Shipping edit Claude s lack of interest in avoiding anachronism is perhaps seen most clearly in the ships in his harbour scenes Whether the subject and the dress of the figures is supposed to be contemporary mythogical or from Roman or medieval history the large ships are usually the same up to date merchant vessels Some large rowed galleys are seen as in Landscape with the Arrival of Aeneas before the City of Pallanteum one of the Altieri Claudes Anglesey Abbey where Virgil s text specifies galleys 32 Ships in the background are more likely to attempt to reflect an ancient setting in the London Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba 1648 NG 14 the ship at the centre of the composition is modern the others less so 33 Critical assessment and legacy edit nbsp Wash drawing of a view of the CampagnaAs seen in his painting The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba Claude was innovative in including the Sun itself as a source of light in his paintings 34 In Rome Bril Girolamo Muziano and Federico Zuccaro and later Elsheimer Annibale Carracci and Domenichino made landscape vistas pre eminent in some of their drawings and paintings as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings 1 or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute but it might be argued that not until Claude s generation did landscape completely reflect an aesthetic viewpoint which was seen as completely autonomous in its moral purpose within the cultural world of Rome In this matter of the importance of landscape Claude was prescient Living in a pre Romantic era he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries such as with Salvatore Rosa He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns If the ocean horizon is represented it is from the setting of a busy port Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes his pictures include demigods heroes and saints even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography Claude Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard working keenly observant but an unlettered man until his death John Constable described Claude as the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw and declared that in Claude s landscape all is lovely all amiable all is amenity and repose the calm sunshine of the heart 35 Claude glass editThe Claude glass named after Lorrain in England although there is no indication he used or knew of it or anything similar gave a framed and dark tinted reflection of a real view that was supposed to help artists produce works of art similar to his and tourists to adjust views to a Claudian formula William Gilpin the inventor of the picturesque ideal advocated the use of a Claude glass saying they give the object of nature a soft mellow tinge like the colouring of that Master Claude glasses were widely used by tourists and amateur artists who quickly became the targets of satire Hugh Sykes Davies observed their facing away from the object they wished to paint commenting It is very typical of their attitude to Nature that such a position should be desirable 36 Selected works edit nbsp Landscape with Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus and Mercury stealing them 1645 Doria Pamphilj Gallery nbsp Liber Veritatis 137 Coast scene with a battle on a bridge of which two painted versions are known nbsp Landscape with Psyche Outside the Palace of Cupid The Enchanted Castle 1664 National Gallery nbsp Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon 1680 Museum of Fine Arts BostonLandscape with Merchants The Shipwreck 1630 National Gallery of Art Washington D C The Flight into Egypt 1635 oil on canvas Indianapolis Museum of Art Landscape with Goatherd 1636 National Gallery London The Ford 1636 Metropolitan Museum New York Port with Villa Medici 1637 Galleria degli Uffizi Florence Finding of Moses 1638 Oil on canvas 209 x 138 cm Museo del Prado Madrid Pastoral Landscape 1638 Minneapolis Institute of Arts Paysage avec le port de Santa Marinella 1638 Petit Palais Seaport 1639 National Gallery London Seaport at Sunset Odysseus 1639 Oil on canvas 119 x 150 cm Musee du Louvre Paris Village Fete 1639 Oil on canvas 103 x 135 cm Musee du Louvre Paris View of Campagna c 1639 Oil on canvas 101 6 x 135 9 cm Royal Collections Embarkation of Saint Paula Romana at Ostia 1639 Oil on canvas 211 x 145 cm Museo del Prado Madrid The Embarkation of St Ursula 1641 National Gallery London The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus 1642 oil on canvas Musee du Louvre Paris The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus 1642 43 Oil on canvas 119 x 170 cm Musee du Louvre Paris The Trojan Women Setting Fire to their Fleet c 1643 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art NY Brook and Two Bridges Oil on canvas 74 x 58 cm Voyage of Jacob The Angel s Visit View of the Church Santa Trinita Dei Monti drawing Hermitage Museum St Petersburg Seaport with Castle Howard University Gallery of Art Washington D C View of Tivoli at Sunset 1644 San Francisco Museum of Art Mercury Stealing Apollo s Oxen 1645 Oil on canvas 55 x 45 cm Galleria Doria Pamphilj Rome Landscape with Cephalus and Procris reunited by Diana 1645 Oil on canvas 102 x 132 cm National Gallery London The Judgement of Paris 1645 46 National Gallery of Art at Washington D C Sunrise 1646 47 Metropolitan Museum of Art New York The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba 1648 National Gallery London Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah 1648 National Gallery London Landscape with Paris and Oenone 1648 Oil on canvas 119 x 150 cm Musee du Louvre Paris Landscape with Dancing Figures The Mill 1648 Oil on canvas 150 6 x 197 8 cm Galleria Doria Pamphili Rome View of La Crescenza 1648 50 Oil on canvas 38 7 x 58 1 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art New York Landscape with Apollo and the Cumaean Sybil c 1650 Oil on canvas 99 5 x 125 cm Hermitage Museum St Petersburg The Rest on the Flight into Egypt 1651 or 1661 Oil on canvas 113 x 157 cm Hermitage Museum St Petersburg Landscape with Mercury and Battus 1654 Oil on canvas 74 x 98 cm Swiss private collection Landscape with Hagar and the Angel 1654 Oil on canvas 54 5 x 76 cm Dunedin Public Art Gallery Dunedin Landscape with Acis and Galatea 1657 Oil on canvas 100 x 135 cm Gemaldegalerie Dresden Landscape with Apollo and Mercury 1660 Oil on canvas 74 5 x 110 5 cm Wallace Collection London Landscape with a dance The Marriage of Isaac and Rebeccah 1663 Drawing 2 The Father of Psyche Sacrificing at the Temple of Apollo 1663 Oil on canvas 5 9 x 7 5 one of the Altieri Claudes Anglesey Abbey UK Landscape with Psyche Outside the Palace of Cupid 1664 Oil on canvas National Gallery London Coast Scene with the Rape of Europa 1667 Oil on canvas 134 6 x 101 6 cm Royal Collection London The Expulsion of Hagar 1668 Oil on canvas 107 x 140 cm Alte Pinakothek Munich Landscape with Jacob Wrestling with the Angel or Night 1672 Oil on canvas Hermitage Museum St Petersburg Russia Seaport 1674 Oil on canvas 72 x 96 cm Alte Pinakothek Munich The Landing of Aeneas 1675 Oil on canvas 5 9 x 7 5 one of the Altieri Claudes Anglesey Abbey UK Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon 1680 Oil on canvas 99 7 x 136 5 cm Museum of Fine Arts Boston 12 1050 Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia 1682 Ashmolean Museum Oxford View of a Seaport The Huntington Library San Marino California Landscape with Mercury Argus and Lo 1662 etching on laid paper Utah Museum of Fine ArtsSee also editClaude glass Black mirrorNotes edit a b Kitson 6 technically part of the Holy Roman Empire Kitson 6 9 10 Kitson 8 32 51 Sonnabend amp Whiteley 57 83 Fry 158 160 The drawings of Claude with an essay by Roger E Fry and notes on the drawing reproduced 1907 London Burlington magazine a b Kitson 53 55 Kitson 51 53 Sonnabend amp Whiteley 137 151 Sonnabend Whiteley 2011 9 Sonnabend Whiteley 2011 18 Sonnabend amp Whiteley 9 10 a b c Sonnabend Whiteley 2011 19 a b Kitson 13 Sonnabend Whiteley 2011 28 Kitson Nos 9 10 and 14 all these now in England the fourth in France Sonnabend Whiteley 2011 15 freelancis gaspard from Claude Lorrain Coast View with Perseus and the Origin of Coral Kitson 31 Wine 1994 101 Sonnabend amp Whiteley 59 Kitson 34 35 Patrizia Tosini Girolamo Muziano dalla Maniera alla Natura 1532 1592 Ugo Bozzi Editore 2008 pp 17 77 Wine 2001 33 63 Wine 1994 22 24 Sanmiguel David 2003 Art of drawing Sterling 114 115 Print Fry 155 Kitson 13 Duke of Rutland Kitson 14 15 Kitson 15 Sonnabend amp Whiteley Nos 1 and 2 both Duke of Buccleuch Wine 1994 12 14 Wine 2001 124 and note Blunt 275 n 243 Kitson 20 Ashmolean Press summary Archived 17 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine for Claude Lorrain The Enchanted Landscape in 2011 e g to mention just those with identifiable buildings Kitson s 39 62 63 70 71 72 Wine 2001 122 image on NG page Wine 1994 70 Wine 2001 50 52 Image Wine 1994 99 Wine 2001 86 Buchholz E L S Kaeppele K Hille and I Stotland Art a world history Harry N Abrams 232 Print Australia National Gallery of CONSTABLE impressions of land sea and sky John CONSTABLE Landscape with goatherd and goats after Claude James Buzard 2002 The Grand Tour and after 1660 1840 in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing ISBN 0 521 78140 XReferences editBlunt Anthony Art and Architecture in France 1500 1700 2nd ed 1957 Penguin Clark Kenneth Landscape into Art 1949 page refs to Penguin ed of 1961 Fry Roger Vision and Design 1981 edition originally 1920 Oxford University Press ISBN 019281317X Kitson Michael 1969 The Art of Claude Lorrain exhibition catalogue 1969 Arts Council of Great Britain Rossetti William Michael 1911 Claude of Lorraine In Chisholm Hugh ed Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 6 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 463 Sonnabend Martin and Whiteley Jon with Ruemelin Christian 2011 Claude Lorrain The Enchanted Landscape Farnham Lund Humphries in association with the Ashmolean Museum Oxford Stein Perrin French Drawings Clouet to Seurat exhibition catalogue 2005 British Museum Press ISBN 9780714126401 Wine Humphrey 1994 Claude The Poetic Landscape exhibition catalogue 1994 National Gallery Publications Ltd ISBN 1857090462 Wine Humphrey 2001 National Gallery Catalogues new series The Seventeenth Century French Paintings 2001 National Gallery Publications Ltd ISBN 185709283XFurther reading editChiarini Marco 1968 Claude Lorrain Selected Drawings Pennsylvania State University Press Kitson Michael 1978 Claude Lorrain Liber Veritatis British Museum Publications London Lagerlof Margaretha Rossholm 1990 Ideal Landscape Annibale Carracci Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain New Haven Yale University Press Mannocci Lino 1988 The Etchings of Claude Lorrain Yale University Press Rand Richard Claude Lorrain The Painter as Draftsman exhibition from the British Museum Yale University Press 2007 Rothlisberger Marcel Claude Lorrain The Paintings Hawker Art Books 1979 Russell H Diane 1982 Claude Lorrain 1600 1682 NGA exhibition New York George Braziller External links edit nbsp Media related to Claude Lorrain at Wikimedia Commons 68 artworks by or after Claude Lorrain at the Art UK site Claude s Biography Context and Artworks National Gallery Web Gallery of Art Herbermann Charles ed 1913 Claude de Lorrain Catholic Encyclopedia New York Robert Appleton Company Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute 2007 exhibition Claude Lorrain The Painter as Draftsman Artcyclopedia Claude Lorrain Paintings in Museums and Public Art Galleries Worldwide Agence Photographique de la Reunion des musees nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs Elysees Works by or about Claude Lorrain at Internet Archive nbsp The Flight into Egypt engraved by W R Smith for The Easter Gift 1832 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Claude Lorrain amp oldid 1195561437, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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