Getty Museum
Figures in a Landscape before a Harbor
Creator
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée)French Artist · 1604–1682
All works by this person →> Claude Lorrain knew the real world by heart, down to its minute details. He used it as a means of expressing the harmonious universe of his soul. > > --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe A peasant's son, Claude Gellée became known as Claude Lorrain, named after the duchy in which he was born. He had difficulty writing French and Italian and could barely count, but he could explain light's effects like a
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- late 1630s
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink and brown wash with red and yellow chalks, heightened with white opaque watercolor, on blue paper
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- 01ab3dc5-685f-45ae-88b3-0a959bceb782
An imaginative architectural setting and brilliant light effects make this drawing an excellent example of Claude Lorrain's harbor scenes. He let the light-blue paper serve as a middle ground for both water and sky. By allowing the paper to peek through his washes in other places, he used its gentle color to subtly unify his composition. Like his near-contemporary Nicolas Poussin, Claude spent most of his life in Rome, where his art was strongly inspired by the Roman *campagna* , or countryside. He probably made this drawing as a study for a painting that was commissioned by the French ambassador in Rome and is now in a private collection. This sheet could also be a copy after that picture.
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