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Claude Lorrain, born Claude Gellée, called le Lorrain in French and traditionally just Claude in English (c. 1600–1682), was a French painter, draughtsman and engraver 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 often 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.
By the end of the 1630s Claude was established as the leading landscapist in Italy, and enjoyed high prices for his work. These gradually became larger, but with fewer figures, more carefully painted, and produced at a lower rate. Almost all his painting was done in Italy; before the late 19th century he was regarded as a painter of the 'Roman School'. 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.
He was a prolific creator of drawings in pen and very often monochrome watercolour 'wash', usually brown but sometimes grey. His studies for paintings are of various degrees of finish, many clearly done before or during the process of painting, but others perhaps after that was complete. This was certainly the case for the last group, the 195 drawings recording finished paintings collected in his Liber Veritatis (now British Museum). He produced over 40 etchings, often simplified versions of paintings, mainly before 1642. These were till recently widely regarded as much less important than his drawings, though art collector and historian Andrew Brink has powerfully argued that not only do they match the mastery and execution of Claude's paintings, but are seminal to the establishment of 17th- and 18th-century aesthetics in England. This gave rise to the English pictorialism in art and landscape architecture that would have international influence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Put simply, go to an English country house garden and be reminded of a Claude painting or etching!
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The Flight into Egypt contains several characteristics of the French Classical Baroque style, as well as specific features of Claude's landscape manner. There are trees placed on both sides of the landscape vista that serve to frame and give pictorial focus to the biblical narrative. The mass of trees on the right extends close to the middle of the scene before dropping off abruptly into the landscape distance; this dense concentration of figures and landscape elements on the right is balanced evenly by a vast open area of landscape space on the left side of the print. Like other landscapes by Claude, there are broad receding planes of space articulated by the expressive contrast between light and dark tonalities. The theme is the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt to escape the slaughter of first born sons in Bethlehem ordered by King Herod. It was a popular theme during the Counter-Reformation period and as can be seen in Claude's print, usually featured the Virgin and Christ Child on a donkey accompanied by Joseph and two guardian angels. Although Claude only made this one etched version of the "Flight," he returned to the theme many times in a number of later paintings and drawings dating between 1641 and 1663. Although no painting by Claude exists which relates to the particular design and details of the print, there is a drawing of the theme of the "Flight," probably dating from the mid 1630s which also has a similar grouping of figures and the same asymmetrical layout to the landscape, but in reverse. Claude's etching also notable for its rich plate tone and the delicate drypoint lines used to indicate the distant mountain rendered indistinct by atmospheric perspective.
See:
Andrew Brink, Ink and Light: The Influence of Claude Lorrain's Etchings on England (Montreal, 2013)
Liam Harty, 'Claude Lorrain', https://knox.omeka.net/exhibits/show/outside/claude
Wikipedia, 'Claude Lorrain', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Lorrain
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art June 2017