Claude (1600-1682) was a French painter who established a tradition of landscape painting that influenced artists in Europe and America for 200 years. Claude’s full name was Claude Gellee, but he is often called Claude Lorrain, after his native province of Lorraine. Claude settled in Rome in 1627 and lived there the rest of his life. He died on Nov. 23, 1682.
Claude’s landscapes show the Italian countryside bathed in golden light. They have a feeling of calm and peace, sometimes tinged with sadness. Peasants and their farm animals appear in some of his paintings. In others, characters from mythology contribute to the mood. Claude also painted seaport or river scenes with the setting sun reflected in the water.
Like other artists of his time, Claude went into the countryside to make sketches but completed his paintings in his studio. Patrons would have been insulted to receive a mere copy of nature that the artist had not bothered to idealize. Claude’s landscapes were immediately popular and continued to be influential for generations. His work was especially popular in England in the 1700’s. There it influenced garden design and helped shape the style of the great English landscape painter J. M. W. Turner.
