- Museum number
- Oo,6.129
- Description
-
Landscape with St John the Baptist and angels; a river winding into the left foreground, trees on either bank, a bridge and hills in the distance. c.1647
Pen and brown-grey ink, with brown-grey wash
- Production date
- 1647
- Dimensions
-
Height: 199 millimetres
-
Width: 288 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The first occasion on which the present landscape occurs is the Landscape with Tobias and the Angel (for which see 1957,1214.56), and Claude must have referred back to the Liber Veritatis when composing the present composition. It is also related in subject matter and format to the painting on tin of Landscape with St John which was last recorded at Corsham Court (for which see Roethlisberger 1960, fig. 194) and which is dated 1647. Given that the painting is simpler, it is not clear whehther the drawing was made before or after the painting.
In its use of wash and gentle mood, the drawing should also be considered alongside the Saint John in the Landscape of LV 97 and the Lanscape with Mill, LV 113 (for which see 1957,1214.119). It should therefore be considered contemporaneous and as part of a period in which Claude experimented with creating a certain atmosphere in his work. It also develops from the contemporary landscape of Oo,7.156 which was clearly drawn first, and which Claude subsequently turned into a more dramatic scene.
Lit.: A.M. Hind, 'Catalogue of the Drawings of Claude Lorrain preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings', London, 1926, no. 255; M. Roethlisberger, 'Claude Lorrain: The drawings catalog', 2 vols, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968, no. 647; J.J.L. Whiteley, exhib.cat., Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, `Claude Lorrain: Drawings from the Collections of the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum`, 1998, no. 53, p.106; R. Rand, in exhib. cat., San Francisco, Legion of Honor and Williamstown (MA), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 'Claude Lorrain - The Painter as Draftsman: Drawings from the British Museum', 2007. Fig. 84, pp.133–134.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1994 Jan-Apr, London, National Gallery, 'Claude. The Poetic Landscape'
1998 Jun-Sep, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 'Claude Lorrain', no. 53 1998/9 Sep-Jan, BM, 'Claude Lorrain', no.53
2006/7 Oct-Jan, San Francisco, Legion of Honor, 'Claude Lorrain:...'
2007 Feb-April, Williamstown, Clark Art Institute, 'Claude Lorrain:...'
2007 May-Aug, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 'Claude Lorrain:...'
- Acquisition date
- 1824
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- Oo,6.129
