How did a
17th-century French pastry chef end up shaping how the English felt about their
gardens?
For the answer to
that riddle, see the remarkable drawings of that onetime cook, now on view in
the National Gallery of Art in "Claude Lorrain -- the Painter as Draftsman: Drawings From
the British Museum."
Born Claude Gellee around 1600, the artist took the name Lorrain after
the French duchy where he was born. (Most simply call him Claude.) During his
long life, Claude produced some of the top pastoral scenes of his era, landing
his work in the best Italian collections. The demand for his work was constant.
Though paintings
were Claude's moneymaker, drawing
captured his creative energy. At the National Gallery, 89 works on paper attest
to his agility with chalk and wash. Claude sketched outside and in the studio.
He also made sketches of his finished paintings. At the National Gallery, a
handful of oil paintings borrowed from major collections augment the works on
paper, demonstrating the full range of Claude's
efforts in this 102-piece exhibition.
Nearly as interesting
as the pictures themselves is the story of how they got here. Of the 1,100
known Claude drawings, about half are held in the British Museum,
thanks to donations from English collectors. Why did so many Brits own Claudes, when they otherwise passed on Frenchmen in
deference to longstanding political rivalries? Turns out Claude's vision of the countryside came to represent such
a compelling link to the classical past that the British were intent on
securing it for ammunition against, of all things, Enlightenment France.
Though accounts
of Claude's early years vary, it's understood that the young Frenchman apprenticed
as a pastry chef and moved to Rome. He wound up in service to the painter
Agostino Tassi, a landscape painter of solid, if
unexceptional, repute. (The same Tassi allegedly
raped Artemisia Gentileschi, the budding painter.) Under Tassi's tutelage, Claude exchanged spatula for
paintbrush and began turning out adept seascapes and port scenes. After
traveling to Naples and perhaps back to France, Claude settled permanently in Rome.
Claude's reputation grew. Italy's
wealthiest families couldn't get enough
of his work. His exceptional landscapes transformed the Roman countryside, then
thick with thieves and rocky outcroppings, into a near state of grace. Claude
replaced unruliness with classicism, filling the frame with robust trees in
expansive vistas, some peopled by amiable peasants herding obedient sheep. At
the National Gallery, paintings such as "View of Tivoli at Sunset" (1642-44) give a sense
of Claude's ability to produce
exceptional pastorals where cows smile and trees flank the picture plan like
theater curtains. For the Roman clergy and their cronies, Claude's ideal landscapes referred to a classical past and
the myth of a lost Arcadia.
Fast-forward 100
years.
When British
landscape designers visited Italy
in the early 18th century, they were so utterly captivated by the classical
beauty of the Claudes they saw that his pictures
became templates for British gardens. The quintessential British picturesque
garden, with its strategically placed faux ruins, followed drawings like
"The Tomb of Cecilia Metella" (circa 1638),
where a dilapidated monument emerges from the land as naturally as the great
tree to its left. It's as if both
nature and man-made order had coexisted from the beginning.
England's picturesque gardens were
as much political stances as aesthetic ones. Their "naturalness" was
meant to show the French, couturiers of their own newfangled, corset-strict
Enlightenment gardens, that they had nothing on Britain's
long-standing associations with the classical past.
It just so
happened that the ammunition for England's
aesthetic battle was supplied by a Frenchman.
One British
estate that felt Claude's influence
was Chatsworth House, home to the dukes of Devonshire.
In the mid-18th century, Lancelot "Capability" Brown upturned a
segment of the estate's French-style
gardens to make three-dimensional Claudes, complete
with rolling hillocks and thick plantings. The dukes also collected Claude's drawings; many of the pictures on view at the National
Gallery hailed from Chatsworth House. Many others were culled from the
collection of Richard Payne Knight, a wealthy aesthete who lived until 1824.
It's not hard to understand Claude's appeal. He positions his viewers at a vantage
point just above the Earth but below the sky. The foreground is clear but we're not stuck in it; our eye can travel far into the
unobstructed distance. A chalk and wash drawing showing Jesus's parents resting on their flight to Egypt -- Claude favored the biblical scenes
that took place out of doors -- puts us in intimate proximity to Mary and
Joseph while giving us access to distant hills and aqueducts.
Whatever Claude
was recording, it wasn't the reality
of the 17th-century Roman countryside. The rocky terrain of the Campagna is transformed into a place where herders and
their animals can relax and enjoy the sunset, as if man and beast lived
entirely contented lives. Even chaotic seaports appear sedate in Claude's pictures.
When a commission
called for a scene of turmoil, as when a patron demanded a seascape to
illustrate his family motto, "Against Winds and Water," Claude
produced "A Storm off the Coast," a picture in which even rollicking
waves twist into artful curls. These seascapes act like scenic backdrops for
heroic plays, with boats piled into a picturesque mess as men struggle to save
their vessels.
Claude's nature isn't
neutered -- it's pruned to a
near-perfect state. That vision proved entirely palatable to Claude's patrons, who were disinclined to the vagaries of
life and preferred to think they ruled both man and nature.
But these
pictures didn't just deliver good
news. They were meant to caution patrons as much as reassure them. The ruined
temples in Claude's landscapes may
have linked 17th-century Rome
to a classical past, but that same past was dead and gone. That's why a slightly mournful quality pervades many of
Claude's pictures -- their sheer
perfection invokes the impossible.
Claude Lorrain
-- the Painter as Draftsman: Drawings From the British Museum is in the West Building
of the National Gallery of Art, Seventh
Street and Constitution Avenue NW, through Aug. 12.
Free. Call 202-737-4215 or visit http://www.nga.gov.