Background
Claude Lorrain was born Claude Gellée in the village of Chamagne near Nancy about 1600. He was the third of five children of Jean Gellée and Anne Padose.
artist draftsman etcher painter
Claude Lorrain was born Claude Gellée in the village of Chamagne near Nancy about 1600. He was the third of five children of Jean Gellée and Anne Padose.
Claude Lorrain was orphaned at about the age of 12 after the death of his parents, and then moved to Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany to live with his elder brother, Jean Gellée. Lorrain received his first knowledge in drawing from Jean who taught him engraving.
Lorrain attended the village school, but he wasn't a brilliant pupil and soon was sent to pursue his education to a pastry baker. About 1614, Claude Lorrain travelled to Rome with his fellows where he became a pupil of an Italian painter Agostino Tassi, who at first employed Lorrain as a servant. Tassi taught Claude the basics of landscape painting.
Probably after or during the apprenticeship, about 1620-22, Claude was taught perspective and architecture by Tassi's pupil, Goffredo Wals, in Naples.
In 1625, Claude Lorrain came back to France and enrolled at the Claude Deruet's studio where he took part at the restauration of a lost ceiling fresco at the Carmelite church. About two years later, Lorrain left the studio and returned to Italy. During the trip, the artist explored the nature in France, Italy, and Bavaria.
Claude Lorrain had worked as a pastry cook in the house of Agostino Tassi, the landscapist for some time, about the 1620s. Lorrain's first painting, Landscape with Cattle and Peasants, dates to 1629.
The 1630s brought Lorrain great popularity. At this period, the artist had a lot of important commissions from different significative people, such as Popes, cardinals and ambassadors. The ambassador in Rome Philippe de Béthune (1633), Pope Urban VIII (about 1635–38), Giulio Rospigliosi (future Papa Clemente IX), Cardinals Bentivoglio, Crescenzi, Carlo de Medici, and Angelo Giori were among them. About 1634–35, King of Spain, Philip IV commissioned paintings for the Palace of Buen Retiro. Due to these commissions, Claude Lorrain occupied the leading place among the landscape painters in Italy.
The painter always worked only with commissioned projects, except some paintings sold through agents. Later, he discussed the future painting details personally with the patrons.
In order to protect his works from the multiple copyists and imitators, Lorrain began a catalog of his paintings, the Liber Veritatis ("Book of Truth"), about 1636. The book contained almost 200 of his self-copied dated artworks with the names of customers on the back.
In 1650, Claude moved to Via Paolina (today Via del Babuino), Italy, where he lived till the end of his life. His remarkable works of this period were The Sermon on the Mount and Pastoral Capriccio with the Arch of Constantine.
The last following years, the artist's activity went down, but he created many notable masterpieces including Coast View with Perseus and the Origin of Coral (1674). The latter was commissioned by Cardinal Camillo Massimo. The artist's last artwork, created for Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, Lorrain's most important patron in his last years, became the Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia.
Claude Lorrain was a prolific creator of the spectacular landscape paintings, including the drawings in pen and monochrome watercolours. The artist created more than 1000 landscapes, and 44 etchings as well.
Lorrain contributed to the development of autonomous pictorialism, the basis of the 19th-century romantics and impressionists. His style had a significant influence on several Dutch painters of the late 1630s and '40s, as well as on the manner of many English landscape painters of the 19th century.
Claude Lorrain's artworks received a great popularity among English collectors after his death.
Lorrain's catalog Liber Veritatis is preserved in the British Museum in London.
Landscape with Shepherds
Pastoral Landscape
Landscape with Goatherd
Pastoral landscape
Pastoral Landscape
Landscape with the Finding of Moses
Landscape with Water Mill
Seaport at Sunset
Italian Coastal Landscape
Landscape with Shepherds – The Pont Molle
Landscape with Flight into Egypt
Pastoral Landscape with a Mill
Acis and Galatea
The Judgement of Paris
Harbour Scene with Grieving Heliades
Harbour Scene
Landscape with an Imaginary View of Tivoli
View of Tivoli
Ulysses Returning Chryseis to Her Father
Veduta of Delphi, with a Sacrificial Procession
A Seaport at Sunrise
The Father of Psyche Sacrificing at the Temple of Apollo
Hagar and Ismael in the Desert
The Campo Vaccino, Rome
Landscape with Paris and Oenone
Port at Sunset
Easter Morning
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
Roman Ideal Landscape with Cephalus, Procris, and Diana
Landscape with Repentant Magdalene
Landscape with Apollo and Mercury
Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon
Landscape with Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus
Landscape with Merchants
Harbour View at Sunrise
Villa in the Roman Campagna
Landscape with Dancing Satyrs and Nymphs
Cleopatra Disembarking at Tarsus
Landscape with Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus
Trees
Villagers Dancing
The Siege of La Rochelle by Louis XIII
Landscape with The Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah
The Rape of Europa
Seascape with Aeneas on Delos
Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus
Embarkation of Ulysses
Shepherd
Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt
The Expulsion of Hagar
View of the Campagna
Coast Scene with Europa and the Bull
Harbour Scene at Sunset
Landscape with Cephalus and Procris Reunited by Diana
The Dance of the Seasons
Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia
Landscape with Aeneas at Delos
A View of the Roman Campagna from Tivoli
Coast Scene with the Rape of Europa
Coast Scene with a Battle on a Bridge
Seaport
The Village Festival
Embarkation of St. Paula Romana at Ostia
Landscape with Rest in Flight to Egypt
Landscape with Apollo and the Muses
Landscape with Erminia in Discourse with the Old Man and his Sons
Entrance to La Rochelle Harbour
View of La Crescenza
Landscape with the Adoration of the Golden Calf
Pastoral Landscape
Seaport with the Embarkation of St. Ursula
View of Delphi
Landscape with the Nymph Egeria and Numa
Egeria Weeps over Numa
Aeneas and Dido in Carthage
Harbour with Villa Medici
The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba
The Mill
Noli Me Tangere
Landscape with Cattle and Peasants
The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet
The Sermon on the Mount
The Enchanted Castle
Coast View with Perseus and the Origin of Coral
Claude Lorrain appreciated more the presence and play of cosmic forces in nature than man’s role. At the same time, the painter was close to the classical tradition.
The real subject of Lorrain's work is not the forms of nature or the activities of men, but rather the animating power of light, emanating in varied intensities, depending upon the time of day chosen for the theme, playing upon the material realm and transforming it into a peculiar mood impression. His drawings, though great in variety, uniformly reveal a preoccupation with values of light and dark rather than with color.
As with his paintings, the magic of mood, the veiling of earth and man in an infinite variety of gently controlled radiation and reflection of light which issues from a known but unobtrusive source, is the subject. In his art, Claude Lorrain melded the northern emotive response to nature, such as that found in the works of the German Albrecht Altdorfer and the Fleming Joachim Patinir, with the more palpable control of the southern temperament.
Claude Lorriane became a member of the painters' Accademia di San Luca (Academy of Saint Luke) in Rome in 1633.
Claude Lorrain wasn't very sociable person, he didn't like much to take part in public events preferring them to work. In fact, he was an overparticular and persevering worker. However, according to his pupils, the artist was gentle and attentive.
Quotes from others about the person
John Constable, an English landscape painter of the 19th century: "The most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw in Claude's landscape; all is lovely – all amiable – all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart."
Claude Lorrain never had a wife. Although, in 1658, he adopted a five-year orphan girl, Agnese. He left all his property to her.
His two nephews, Jean Gillée and Joseph Gillée, had also lived in his house for some time.
He was a woodcarver.
