His idealized landscape paintings - inspired by ancient Greek and Roman ideals - motivated later artists, gardeners, and landscape designers.
Which 17th-century French artist was named “The Raphael of landscape painting” (by Horace Walpole)?
Claude Lorrain
Artist Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), born Claude Gellee and usually called simply Claude in English, was a French master of 17th-century ideal-landscape painting. He studied and worked in Rome, Italy, during the time of the French Baroque (ca.1600 - 1750). The Baroque occurred as a Counter-Reformation in the 17th century, supported by the established Church and occurring mainly in Catholic countries. It is a style in which painters seek a return to classical motifs, restraint, and dreamlike landscapes. The Church pressured artists that the religious contexts of their paintings should speak to the illiterate rather than to the well-informed; Baroque art tends to focus on Saints, the Virgin Mary, and other well-known Bible stories. Landscapes and genre paintings were popular as well.
Baroque art is characterized by deep colors, intense lighting, and dark shadows, thus creating a sense of drama. Renaissance art usually shows the moment just before an event takes place, but Baroque artists choose the most dramatic point of the action. For example, Michelangelo, working during the Renaissance, shows his David composed and still before he battles Goliath; David’s character traits of strength and willingness to fight are more important than his victory. In the Baroque version, David is caught in the act of hurling the stone at the giant. Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality prized during the Renaissance.
Perhaps to feed the public desire for paintings with noble themes, Claude Lorrain’s pictures include demigods, heroes, and saints, even though his many drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in outdoor scenes. He painted an ideal world of fields, pastures, and valleys near castles and towns. His paintings might include figures in the foreground or the corner, but his true subjects are the land, the water, and the sky. The German artist Adam Elsheimer influenced Claude, particularly in his detailed treatment of trees, leaves, and foliage.
Claude had a lasting effect on 18th-century English painters and gardeners. Many such collectors admired Claude's work for its resemblance to the scenery of Italy. One in particular, William Kent, invented the English style of natural garden landscapes based on classical themes of ruins of Greek and Roman art and inspired by Claude's idealized landscapes. The main ingredients of Kent’s gardens are statues, grottoes, temples, water, winding paths, and the surrounding land. Rousham, a garden designed by Kent that remains very close to his original design, can be visited today near Steeple Aston near Oxfordshire.
Another example is the garden design of Horace Walpole, the eccentric who wrote the first Gothic horror novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), after a strange nightmare. In his mock-Gothic mansion at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, where he frequently added traceries, turrets, and tombs, Walpole expressed his personal tastes in architecture as well as his preference for gloom, doom, and the bizarre. Walpole cited Claude as the originator of the naturalistic baroque garden style he favored, naming Claude the "Raphael of landscape painting." His Gothic mansion at Strawberry Hill can be visited today at Saint Mary's College in London. Currently England is gearing up a fundraising effort to restore the gardens at Strawberry Hill to their stunning state at the height of Walpole’s residence.
Sources:
Bailey, Colin J. The Art Quiz Book: 2000+ Questions on Painters and Paintings. Station Press: Scotland, 1995.
Grove Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press, 2006.
