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Lot Essay
Claude Gellée was born in 1600 in a small village in the duchy of Lorraine, but spent the greater part of his life, from about 1617, in Italy where he became known as Claude le Lorrain, and for English-language speakers as Claude Lorrain or simply Claude. He established himself as the most prominent landscape painter in Rome at the time. While his paintings were widely collected, the artist rarely parted with his drawings for which he is regarded as one of the greatest draftsmen of western art.
In his landscape drawings, as in the present sheet, Claude combined images of the world he observed around him when exploring the Roman campagna with creations from his imagination with the purpose of producing images of an idealized world. This drawing was most likely begun outdoors and finished in the studio, where Claude added the figure of Saint John caressing a sheep to provide a narrative to the composition. Claude and fellow landscape artists active in Rome in the first half of the 17th Century were fascinated by natural elements such as rocks, trees, rivers, and clouds. This sheet is a fine study of rock formations and recalls the right portion of a painting, Flock of sheep in the campagna, today at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna (fig. 1) generally dated around 1656 (see M. Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain. The Paintings. Critical Catalogue, New York, 1979, no. 240, ill.).
On the verso of the sheet, turned sideways, is a sketch in black chalk of a house by a river surrounded by a crenellated wall. Roethlisberger pointed out that this drawing represents a specific site and it is a view that recurs elsewhere in Claude’s drawings. A drawing in Rome in the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe shows the same building (Roethlisberger, op. cit., 1968, no. D392, ill). The view was taken from just a few steps away from the artist’s home in Rome, on the left bank of the Tiber looking downstream towards Ripetta. By analogy with some of the few other late sketches by Claude, Roethlisberger dated this sheet around 1669.
In his landscape drawings, as in the present sheet, Claude combined images of the world he observed around him when exploring the Roman campagna with creations from his imagination with the purpose of producing images of an idealized world. This drawing was most likely begun outdoors and finished in the studio, where Claude added the figure of Saint John caressing a sheep to provide a narrative to the composition. Claude and fellow landscape artists active in Rome in the first half of the 17th Century were fascinated by natural elements such as rocks, trees, rivers, and clouds. This sheet is a fine study of rock formations and recalls the right portion of a painting, Flock of sheep in the campagna, today at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna (fig. 1) generally dated around 1656 (see M. Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain. The Paintings. Critical Catalogue, New York, 1979, no. 240, ill.).
On the verso of the sheet, turned sideways, is a sketch in black chalk of a house by a river surrounded by a crenellated wall. Roethlisberger pointed out that this drawing represents a specific site and it is a view that recurs elsewhere in Claude’s drawings. A drawing in Rome in the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe shows the same building (Roethlisberger, op. cit., 1968, no. D392, ill). The view was taken from just a few steps away from the artist’s home in Rome, on the left bank of the Tiber looking downstream towards Ripetta. By analogy with some of the few other late sketches by Claude, Roethlisberger dated this sheet around 1669.