Claude Lorrain
French
1600-1682
Claude Lorrain Galleries
In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition.
In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography.
Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno).
John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart" Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | Two Frigates (mk17) | Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba | Acis and Galatea (mk17) | Wooded View (mk17) | The Rape of Europa sd | Related Artists: Sophie anderson1823-1903
was a French-born British artist who specialised in genre painting of children and women, typically in rural settings. Her work is loosely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She was the daughter of Charles Gengembre, a Parisian architect, and his English wife. She was largely self-taught, but briefly studied portraiture with Charles de Steuben in Paris in 1843. The family left France for the United States to escape the 1848 revolution, They first lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, then in Manchester, Pennsylvania, where she met and married the British genre artist Walter Anderson. She initially worked in portraiture, including work for the chromolithographers Louis Prang & Co.. In 1854 the Andersons moved to London, where she exhibited her works in the Royal Academy. They returned to New York in 1858, then finally settled in London around 1863. Over the next three decades, her work was widely shown at venues including the Royal Academy, the Society of British Artists and many regional galleries. Agostino BruniasAgostino Brunias (c. 1730 - April 2, 1796) was a London-based Italian painter from Rome. Strongly associated with West Indian art, he left England at the height of his career to chronicle Dominica and the neighboring islands of the West Indies. Painted in the tradition of verite ethnographique, his art was as escapist as it was romantic.
Brunias was born in Rome c. 1730; the exact date is uncertain. His first name has been spelled in various ways including Abraham, Alexander, August, or Austin, while his surname has been recorded as Brunais and Brunyas. Brunias was a student at the Accademia di San Luca, Rome, where he won Third Prize in the Second Class for painting in 1754. An early oil painting of his was exhibited in Rome two years earlier. EYCK, Hubert vanFlemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1370-1426
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