French 1600-1682 Claude Lorrain Galleries In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography. Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno). John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"  Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | View of Delphi with a Procession (mk17) | Ulysses Returns Chryseis to Her Father (mk05) | Landscape with Ascanius shooting Silvia deer | landscape with jacob and laban and his daughters | Four Archers (mk17) |
Related Artists:
Pieter de Ring
(1615/1620 - 22 September 1660, Leiden) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of still lifes. became famous for his opulent, flashy still lifes or banquet pieces with fruit, a lobster, a goblet, shrimps, oysters, a rug and Chinese porcelain. His signature is often a painted ring or with the Latinised form of his name, P.Ab.Annulo. De Ring was born either in Leiden, or in Ypres in Flanders, but there is no trace of his birth in the Leiden archives, and the Ypres Archives were destroyed in August 1914. Pieter de Ring started as a mason and painted still lifes in the evening. When the hall was filled with paintings he became a pupil of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, until 1635 living in Leiden. His father Daniel died in 1648; in 1657 his mother lived in Amsterdam. De Ring himself lived in a house at Hogewoerd. There are no records in the Leiden Archive on his marriage or children. He appears not to have bought a house there nor wrote a will. What is known is that he became one of the founders a member and of the Guild of St. Luke in 1648, De Ring was buried in the Pieterskerk, Leiden on 22 September 1660 and taken to church from a house in the Nonnensteeg. If he had his studio there he probably had a view on the Leiden Academy building. If he lived on the east side of the alley he had a beautiful view on the Hortus Botanicus of Leiden, the work of Clusius.
Willem van Aelst
(May 16, 1627 - in or after 1683) was a Dutch artist who specialized in still-life painting with flowers or game. Van Aelst was born in Delft to a family of prominent city magistrates. He learned to paint from his uncle, the still-life painter Evert van Aelst. On 9 November 1643 he enrolled as a master of the Guild of Saint Luke at Delft. Between 1645 and 1649 he lived in France. In 1649 Van Aelst travelled to Florence, where he served as court painter to Ferdinando II de' Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. At this time, the grand duke also employed two fellow Dutchmen Matthias Withoos and Otto Marseus van Schrieck, the latter also a still-life painter who probably influenced Van Aelst's style. In 1656 he returned to the Netherlands to settle permanently in Amsterdam. He became one of the most prominent still-life painters of his generation, which allowed him to live on the Prinsengracht. He must have at Amsterdam died in 1683 or shortly thereafter, as his latest dated work is from that year. Van Aelst taught Rachel Ruysch and several others.
Jean Joseph Vaudechamp
(1790 - 1866) was a French painter born in Rambervillers, Vosges. He was a pupil of Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. The market in Paris was competitive, so in the winter of 1831 - 32, he went to try his fortunes in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Louisiana Creole people identified with French culture and selected Vaudechamp to paint portraits for them. Over the next ten years he spent winters in New Orleans, and was a leading portrait painter in the region. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1866.