Baroque: Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain:

Claude Lorrain was a French painter of the seventeenth century. He is best known for being one of the greatest masters of ideal landscape painting, an art form that seeks to present nature even more beautiful and harmonious. While his works were tributes to the beauty of nature, they usually represented historical or mythical scenes. Originally, he drew from nature, but around the beginning of 1640, he started to make his compositions more Classical and monumental. Lorrain infused the tradition of idealized landscape painting with observed accuracy and created a new method of landscape painting; he worked outdoors, painting from detailed observation and blending classical idealism with naturalistic detail. He also emphasized the dramatic contrasts of light and shade, giving his paintings a powerful feeling of the ephemeral and eternal. Through these contributions to landscape painting, Lorrain laid the foundations for a historical landscape tradition that dominated French and English paintings for at least the next 150 years, becoming influential in his life as well as in England in the mid-eighteen to mid-nineteenth century.

Claude Lorrain’s works are phenomenal. His use of light and composition to draw your eye around his paintings are well-accomplished. However, the aspect I am most impressed with is the accuracy of details and how each painting seems as if they are photographs you can step into rather than 2-D images.

Artworks:

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References:

• Kitson, Michael William Lely. “Claude Lorrain.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 31 Jan. 2016, www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Lorrain
• “Claude Lorrain Overview and Analysis.” The Art Story, The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist-lorrain-claude.htm