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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 :. | The Rest on the Flight into Egypt | Pastoral Landscape | Coast Scene with Acis and Galatea (mk17) | Landscape Pen drawing and wash (mk17) | The Embarkation of St Paula in Ostia | Related Artists: Gerolamo Dai LibriItalian Painter, ca.1474-1555 Jacques-Laurent Agasse1767-1849
Swiss
Jacques-Laurent Agasse Galleries
(b Geneva, 24 March 1767; d London, 27 Dec 1849). English painter of Swiss birth. Born into a wealthy and politically influential Huguenot family, Agasse spent his early childhood at the country estate of Cravin, where he may have developed the interest in animals and natural history that was to guide his later career as an artist in England. Agasse trained first at the Ecole du Colibri in Geneva and subsequently in Paris under Jacques-Louis David (beginning in 1787) and possibly under Horace Vernet. His early artistic output consisted chiefly of unpretentious silhouette cut-outs in the style of Jean-Daniel Huber. At this time he also undertook a serious study of dissection and veterinary science. eisabeth Vige-Lebrun (Marie Élisabeth Louise; 16 April 1755 - 30 March 1842) was a French painter, and is recognized as the most famous female painter of the 18th century. Her style is generally considered Rococo and shows interest in the subject of neoclassical painting. Vigee Le Brun cannot be considered a pure Neoclassist, however, in that she creates mostly portraits in Neoclassical dress rather than the History painting. In her choice of color and style while serving as the portrait painter to Marie Antoinette, Vigee
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