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The landscapes of Claude Lorrain
by:
ANNE T WOOLLETT
The intoxicatingly poetic landscapes of Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellee) (c. 1604/5-1682) convey the artist's eloquently imagined view of an idyllic antique past. With his unique admixture of first-hand observation of the Roman countryside and refined artistic sensibility, Claude's ideal landscapes achieved an order and harmony that were perceived to surpass nature's own beauty. His unrivalled command of light and atmosphere infused subjects from biblical history and classical poetry with a new lyricism that enchanted elite patrons.
One of the seminal artists of the seventeenth century, Claude's impact on landscape painting, both for his contemporaries and subsequently, cannot be overstated. A number of important compositions remain in private hands, particularly in Great Britain, where his work was avidly collected in the eighteenth century. After considering several paintings over the course of two decades, the
J. Paul Getty Museum recently acquired the well-preserved Coast View with the Abduction of Europa, the first painting by Claude to enter the collection. At the Getty, this luminous scene joins a fine group of drawings, including a related harbour scene featuring the crenellated tower at the centre of the present work. It represents the artist's achievements at the height of his powers.
Claude's direct observation and recording of light, as well as ancient buildings, ruins, and vistas in on-site drawings and calculated landscape compositions based on chalk sketches, were all fundamental to his approach to painting landscape. Claude undertook regular trips into the countryside around Rome accompanied by friends such as the Dutch painter Jan Both, Gaspard Dughet and Nicolas Poussin.1 His excursions found direct expression in his painted portrayals of different light effects and times of day, often specifically morning and evening, considered the most 'poetic' moments.
Claude worked unassisted in his studio, employing a delicate technique in which thin glazes were built up in multiple, semi-transparent layers. While this process created a luminosity and vibrancy that contributed to his distinctive, melodious pictorial mood, it sometimes made his paintings vulnerable to deterioration and wear. The freshness of Claude's light effects and his wonderfully minute technique are evident in Coast View with the Abduction of Europa.
At the time Claude began his career in Rome late in 1626 or 1627, the genre of landscape, popularised in Rome by northerners such as Paul Bril, Bartholomeus Breenbergh and Adam Elsheimer was undergoing transformation under the influence of the broader, grander approach of Bolognese history painters such as Domenichino. The focus shifted from meticulously executed scenes of lush forests, shipwrecks and visions of Hell. In ambitious works, such as his first treatment of Ovid's tale of Jupiter's seduction of Europa, Coast Scene with Europa and the Bull, 1634 (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth), he explored the effects of light under different conditions and employed colouristic effects from Venetian painting. Claude's innovations in these early years include daringly direct portrayals of the sun, while his detailed architectural settings and virtuoso light effects set the stage for future port scenes.
Coast View with the Abduction of Europa is a striking example of the calm, ordered monumentality Claude achieved in his paintings of the mid1640s. In this work, his second of five painted treatments of the theme, Claude established the sweeping seascape used in later versions. Framed on one side by dark, repoussoir foliage and by a familiar square tower on the right, cool, clear light from the hidden sun rising at the left illuminates the scene. In the distance, the magnificent city of Tyre glistens in the mist. In the foreground, on the curving beach, arranged as if on a stage, the dramatic events leading up to Jupiter's abduction of the princess of Tyre unfolds. Having disguised himself as a beautiful white bull and hidden among Agenor's herd of cattle (right), Jupiter seduced the maiden and her attendants with his beauty and docility, until Europa climbed upon his back.
An artist known for his often ungainly figures, Claude here delicately rendered the diminutive group in the foreground in brilliant garments, with scarves fluttering in the breeze. His characteristically minute details are to be found throughout the canvas, from the varied rough surfaces of the watchtower, to the myriad figures in the rigging of the handsome central galleon.
In this work, Claude eschewed the more dramatic approaches taken in Venetian Renaissance painting and even by his northern contemporary Rembrandt, whose Abduction of Europa, 1632 is also at the Getty Museum, to portray the bucolic peace of an ideal ancient past. The simple, almost mesmerising joy of Europa's playfulness seems at first to be Claude's objective. However, swift undercurrents of tension run through Coast Scene. The cold dark surface of the sea and the foreboding tower behind the figures provide a menacing backdrop for Jupiter and Europa. Only the viewer can see that Jupiter is preparing to rise and will soon convey his quarry to the distant island of Crete, just visible on the horizon.
According to his biographer Filippo Baldinucci, 'cardinals, and finally princes of all ranks, began to frequent his studio: and from that moment on, the way to the acquisition of his pictures was closed forever to anyone who was not either a great prince or a great prelate or who could not procure them through the agency of one of these, at great expense, or with diligence and long patience.'2 In an attempt to safeguard himself against forgeries, Claude recorded all of his finished compositions from 1636 on in a bound volume of drawings known as the Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth) (British Museum, London).3 From the inscriptions on these sheets, it is evident that a large percentage of Claude's patrons were wealthy merchants, prelates, royalty and unnamed collectors living outside Rome. Recorded in the Liber as LV III, with the inscription 'faict pour/ paris,' the present picture falls into the last category.
By 1771, Coast View with the Abduction of Europa had entered the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who portrayed its likely subsequent owner, the banker Robert Smith (1752-1838), later first Baron Carrington. Coast View subsequently passed to Rupert George Clement Carington (1852-1929), fourth Baron Carrington of Upton, CVO, DSO (1852-1929), younger brother of Charles Robert Carrington (1843-1928) [Marquess of Lincolnshire], Governor of New South Wales.
It remained in England during Carington's illustrious military career, which included command of the third New South Wales Imperial Bushmen's Regiment during the second Boer War. The Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker acquired the picture at the Carrington Heirloom Sale in London, 1930. It was seized by Nazi authorities in July 1940 and later recovered by the Allies in 1945. After a period of custody by the Dutch government, Coast View was restituted to the daughter-in-law and sole living heir of Jacques Goudstikker, Marei von Saher, in 2006.
Representing achievements of the seventeenth-century's seminal landscape specialist at the height of his powers, Coast View with the Abduction of Europa is a notable addition to the holdings of Claude Lorrain in the United States.
NOTES
1 For Claude's drawings, see particularly Richard Rand, Claude Lorrain - The Painter as Draftsman: Drawings from the British Museum, exhibition catalogue. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006).
2 Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie de' professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, IV, p. 353.
3 M. Kitson, Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis (London, 1979). |
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