drawing;
sketch-book
- Museum number
- 1957,1214.176
- Description
-
Landscape with Apollo and Mercury, record of a painting in the collection of Maj-Gen E H Goulburn (England), from the Liber Veritatis; a figure on a rock in the foreground, cattle, some herded by another figure, and goats nearby, a river with wooded banks moves into the right foreground. 1666
Pen and brown ink, with grey and brown wash, heightened with white; on blue paper
- Production date
- 1666
- Dimensions
-
Height: 194 millimetres
-
Width: 256 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- See 1957,1214.6 for information on the Liber Veritatis.
Claude depicted the Ovidian episode of Apollo guarding the the herds of Admetus and Mercury stealing them on multiple occasions across his career, for the others see for instance LV92 and 128. This is the last picture that Claude made of his subject. It is also among the most highly finished drawings in Claude’s Liber, with its refined execution and attention to the effects of colour and tone. Additions of pale grey and blue wash further increase its pictorial quality. This attention to detail may in part have been triggered by the small scale of the painting that it records as the relative simplicity of the composition would have given Claude greater opportunity to focus on the technique rather than in transcribing the details. This painting, measuring 50.5 x 68.5 cm, was last recorded in the collection of Major General E. H. Goulburn (see Roethlisberger 1986, no. 241) and it measures 50.5 x 68.5 cm.
Lit: M. Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain, The Paintings, London 1961, LV170, pp. 402–403; M. Roethlisberger, ‘Claude Lorrain. The Drawings’, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1968, no. 966; M. Kitson, ‘Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis’, London 1978, no. 170; M. Roethlisberger, ‘Tout l’œuvre peint de Claude Lorrain’, Paris, 1986, no. 241
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1977 BM, Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis
- Acquisition date
- 1957
- Acquisition notes
- Accepted by H M Government in lieu of tax on the estate of the 9th Duke of Devonshire.
See M. Kitson's 'Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis', pp. 28-9, for a full account of the provenance of the sketch-book.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1957,1214.176
