- Museum number
- Oo,7.141
- Description
-
Figure study for a pastoral landscape; a woman seated playing a musical instrument, a herdsman beside her. 1650-1
Black chalk, brown wash
Verso: The same herdsman, holding a staff
Black chalk
- Production date
- 1650-1651
- Dimensions
-
Height: 155 millimetres
-
Width: 229 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The disparaging of Claude's ability to render the human form is a tradition dating back to the artist's lifetime. Joachim von Sandrart, who knew Claude around 1630, wrote in his biography of the artist: 'however happy [Claude] is in representing well the naturalness of landscapes, so unhappy is he in figures and animals, be they only half a finger long, that they remain unpleasant in spite of the fact that he takes great pains and works hard on them.'(n.1) Baldinucci, who knew Claude at the end of his career, recalled the artist himself saying that he 'sold the landscapes and gave away the figures'.(n.2)
If the painted figures tend to confirm the truth of these judgements, Claude's figure drawings testify to his efforts to overcome this difficulty. Unlike the nature studies, which were never intended for direct translation into oil paint, Claude's drawings of figures do correlate closely to their painted counterparts. The BM's musical couple were used, with only minor alterations, in a `Pastoral Landscape`, now in Kansas City (fig.1) and dated by Roethlisberger to c. 1650-51.3 As much as anatomy and drapery, the focus of Claude's study is the fall of light. Its source (from the left) and the contrasts between lit and shaded areas are both carried over into the painting. The placement of the trees, however, bears no relation to the painting at all. Rather than an earlier idea for the composition, it is more likely to be a studio addition of dark wash intended to give the sheet pictorial balance and (even if unconsciously) status as an independent and finished work of art in much the same way as studio additions of dark wash can be seen in many of the studies from nature.(n.4) Given their antique dress and the limited level of detail, one assumes that studies such as this one were drawn not from life but from the artist's imagination.
On the verso is a quick preliminary sketch in black chalk exploring the pose of the male figure.
Text by P.Stein, 2005 as cited above.
Fig.1 CLAUDE LORRAIN, `Pastoral Landscape`, c. 1650-51, oil on canvas, 51 x 68.5 cm, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
Notes
1 M. Roethlisberger, `Claude Lorrain: The Paultings`, New Haven, 1961, I, p.49.
2 Ibid., p.56. The subject of Claude's difficulty with figures is discussed in exhib.cat., H. Wine, National Gallery, London, `Claude: The Poetic Landscape`, 1994, pp. 12-13.
3 The inscription on the verso of the record drawing in the `Liber Veritatis` gives the name of the buyer as 'Sr Lorette'. He has not been identified, nor does he seem to have commissioned any other works. See Roethlisberger, 1961, op.cit., I, p.302.
4 The practice of working up figure studies into more finished sheets through the addition of trees and wash can be seen in other examples from around this time; see J.L. Whiteley, exhib.cat., Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, `Claude Lorrain: Drawings from the Collections of the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum`, 1998, nos 68 and 78.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2005/6 Nov-Jan, New York, Met Mus of Art, Clouet to Seurat/BM, no. 23
2006 June-Oct, BM, Clouet to Seurat/BM, no. 23
- Acquisition date
- 1824
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- Oo,7.141
