Masters of Art - Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain

The painter, draftsman, and printmaker Claude Gellée was born in a village in the Vosges region of northeastern France in the often contested duchy of Lorraine. In Italy, where he spent the greater part of his life, he came to be known as Claude le Lorrain, and for English-language speakers as Claude Lorrain or simply Claude. His biographers, Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688) and Filippo Baldinucci (1625–1697), knew him in Rome but give differing accounts of the beginning of his career. His date of birth may have been as early as 1600, although 1604/5 is generally accepted. One of five sons, he lost his parents when a child and may have lived briefly with an older brother who was a printmaker in Freiburg. According to Sandrart, Claude's first appearance in Rome was as a pastry cook. There, or in Naples, he apparently studied with the German-born artist Goffredo Wals (born ca. 1590–95, died 1638–40), by whose small-scale views (1997.157) he was influenced, and later, in Rome, he is believed to have entered the studio of the view painter and decorator Agostino Tassi (ca. 1580–1644). Baldinucci states that in 1625 Claude returned to Lorraine to work with Claude Déruet (ca. 1588–1660) (1976.100.6), but late in 1626 he was again in Rome living in via Margutta in the artists' quarter. Said to have been disciplined, quiet, and good hearted, he never married but lived simply among relatives and friends.Claude Lorrain arrived in Italy an ill-educated foreign village boy who, with limited formal training, must have been innately gifted. His rather stilted figures show the influence of Déruet, but otherwise his style developed out of and was influenced by the work of members of the Roman community of native-born and foreign artists among whom he settled (Bartholomeus Breenbergh's Preaching of Saint John the Baptist, although painted in 1634 in Amsterdam after his return from Italy, is a good example [1991.305]). Most importantly, in Italy Claude drew inspiration from his close, constant study of nature and changing effects of light, sketching out of doors in the countryside. Sandrart, quoted by Röthlisberger, explains that the artist "tried by every means to penetrate nature, lying in the fields before the break of day and until night in order to learn to represent very exactly the red morning sky, sunrise and sunset and the evening hours." His observation and transcription of light falling on landscape were unique in his time.Claude emerged as an independent artist in the late 1620s. His earliest dated canvas is a pastoral subject painted in 1629 (Philadelphia Museum) and among his first prints is The Storm, from 1630. His reputation grew steadily and by 1636 he had very important patrons, including Pope Urban VIII and King Philip IV of Spain. About this time, as a record-keeping device, he began a catalogue which took the form of a finished ink-and-wash drawing of each painting, usually with the country to which it was sent and the name of the purchaser on the reverse. He called his volume the Liber Veritatis (British Museum, London) and its contents are of inestimable value for the study of his career. For example, the so-called Ford (28.117), one of the first pictures he recorded, is number eight, intended for a patron in Paris. Most of Claude's early work is subjectless, in the sense that his contemporaries did not regard peasants dancing or cows fording a stream (37.3.14) as worthy subjects, nor think of landscape as an important independent genre. However, painting and print are remarkable because of the way in which the artist communicates the evanescent qualities of light (few have described light in the print medium as well as he).

Table of contents

• COPYRIGHT
• The Highlights
• RIVER LANDSCAPE
• HARBOUR SCENE WITH A VIEW OF THE CAPITOLINE HILL
• THE ROMAN FORUM
• PASTORAL LANDSCAPE
• AN ARTIST STUDYING FROM NATURE
• SEAPORT AT SUNSET
• LANDSCAPE WITH APOLLO GUARDING THE HERDS OF ADMETUS
• SUNRISE
• THE MARRIAGE OF ISAAC AND REBECCA
• THE EMBARKATION OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
• LANDSCAPE WITH DAVID AND THE THREE HEROES
• THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
• PASTORAL LANDSCAPE WITH A FLIGHT INTO EGYPT
• COAST VIEW OF DELOS WITH AENEAS
• THE ARRIVAL OF AENEAS AT PALLANTEUM
• LANDSCAPE WITH ASCANIUS SHOOTING THE STAG OF SILVIA
• The Paintings
• THE COMPLETE PAINTINGS
• ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PAINTINGS
• The Drawings
• LIST OF DRAWINGS
• The Biographies
• CLAUDE LORRAIN: PAINTER AND ETCHER by George Grahame
• BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: CLAUDE OF LORRAIN by William Michael Rossetti