1630s Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

This study presents a typical Roman countryside landscape: an ancient mausoleum in front of which a cart is passing by followed by two peasants. If the technique (a pen drawing on graphite lines, completed with a wash of brown and grey inks) and the signature inevitably evoke the art of Lorrain, we find on the verso of this drawing additional evidences that lead us to consider this unpublished drawing as a work by the master. The motif of the mausoleum has been taken up in pen on the verso in a technique that can be found in several other drawings by Lorrain. There is also a study of three characters, which can be considered as preparatory to Lorrain’s painting entitled The Port of Ostia with the Embarkation of Saint Paula, leading us to claim this attribution with a dating of around 1639. 1. Claude Lorrain or the perfection of classical landscape in Rome in the 17th century Claude Gellée was born in 1600 in Chamagne in Lorraine. Orphaned at the age of twelve, he spent a year with his brother in Freiburg, where the latter was a woodcarver. Claude Gellée then probably arrived in Rome in 1613, where he joined the workshop of Agostino Tassi (1580 - 1644) in 1617. Between 1619 and 1620 he studied for two years in Naples in the workshop of Goffredi Wals (who was himself a former pupil of Tassi). In 1625 he returned to Lorraine for two years where he worked alongside Claude Deruet. He then returned to Rome, a city he never left for the rest of his life (except for short trips to the surrounding countryside). From 1627 to 1650 he lived in Via Margutta. From 1635 onwards he became a renowned painter and commissions started to pour in. Considered during his lifetime as the most accomplished of the classical landscape painters, his reputation never faded. Between 1629 and 1635 Le Lorrain often went to the Roman countryside to draw with his friend Joachim von Sandrart (1606 - 1686). He became a member of the Academy of Saint Luke in 1633, while being closely acquainted with the Bentvueghels, this guild which brought together the young Nordic painters active in Rome. In 1643 he joined the Congregation of the Virtuosi. In 1650 he moved to Via Paolina where he lived until his death. Little is known of his intimate life. He seems to have had a daughter, Agnes, from an ancillary love affair. In 1657/ 1658 she moved in with him. Stricken with gout in 1663, he died in 1682. 2. Description of the drawing; the technique of nature studies Two peasants are walking behind a horse-drawn cart on a road that winds through ancient tombs. While a rectangular tomb with a columned facade can be seen in the distance, the cart passes an important ancient building. It has a circular shape and its partially ruined façade is decorated with columns. The start of a second floor can...