PROPERTY FROM THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, SOLD TO BENEFIT THE EUROPEAN PAINTINGS ACQUISITIONS FUND

Circle of Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain (Champagne 1600-1682 Rome)

An Arcadian landscape with ruins, an artist drawing in the foreground

Details

Circle of Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain (Champagne 1600-1682 Rome)
An Arcadian landscape with ruins, an artist drawing in the foreground
inscribed and dated 'CLAVDIO I.V./ROMA/1630' (lower right)
oil on canvas
22¾ x 32 in. (57.8 x 81.3 cm.)

Provenance

Comte Mauduit, Nice, from whom acquired by the following.
with Spink, London, and with Kleinberger, New York, by 1963.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 10 July 1974, lot 117, as Claude Lorrain.
Half share bequeathed in 1975 by Harry G. Sperling, last surviving partner of Kleinberger, and half share purchased by
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Literature

M. Roethlisberger, 'Additions to Claude,' Burlington Magazine, CX, March 1968, pp. 115-116, fig. 2, as Claude Lorrain.
M. Roethlisberger, 'Nuovi aspetti di Claude Lorrain,' Paragone, CCLXXIII, November 1972, p. 25, pl. 14, as Claude Lorrain with staffage probably by Francesco Lauri.
D. Cecchi, L'opera completa di Claude Lorrain, Milan, 1975, p. 86, no. 15, as Claude Lorrain.
P. Rosenberg, France in the Golden Age: Seventeenth-century French Paintings in American Collections, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1982, pp. 277, 360, no. 7, as an early copy of a picture now in the Helen F. Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence.
M. Roethlisberger, 'Around a Landscape by Claude Lorrain,' Register of the Spencer Museum of Art, V, Spring 1982, pp. 11, 17-18, 26 note 1, 4-5, figs. 7-9, as Claude Lorrain. H.D. Russell, Claude Lorrain, 1600-1682, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1982, pp. 70-71, 78 note 6, p. 79 note 12, figs. 23-24, as 'an imitator of Claude'.
M. Kitson, 'Tercentenary of Claude Lorrain,' exhibition review, Burlington Magazine, CXXV, March 1983, p. 187, as a copy after Claude.
J. Wilson, in A. Wintermute, ed., Claude to Corot: The Development of Landscape Painting in France, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1990, pp. 31-32, 34, under no. 2, fig. 1, as a contemporary copy after Claude (entry by M. Kitson).
S.D. Borys, The Splendor of Ruins in French Landscape Painting, 1630-1800, exhibition catalogue, Oberlin, 2005, pp. 83, 85 note 5, as a contemporary copy by a follower of Claude.

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Lot Essay

The Metropolitan Museum painting replicates a prototype of higher quality by Claude Lorrain that was acquired by the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence in 1980. The present canvas is considered to be an anonymous, contemporary copy of the Kansas picture by most recent authorities (P. Rosenberg, H.D. Russell, M. Kitson, J. Wilson, S.D. Borys), with the notable exception of Marcel Roethlisberger, the doyen of Claude studies, who regards it as a second, albeit inferior version by Claude himself, with figures and staffage perhaps from another hand. "On the evidence of the signature and the execution of details such as the plants I continue to believe that it is by Claude," Roethlisberger reasserted recently (in correspondence, 24 November 2013).

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