French 1600-1682 Claude Lorrain Galleries In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography. Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno). John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"  Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | Landscape with Rest in Flight to Egypt fg | Landscape with Hagar and the Angel | Country cape with the father of Psyche that at Apollo sacrifices | Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba df | The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus dfg |
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Paul Maitland
British Painter, 1863-1909
BASSEN, Bartholomeus van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1590-1652 Dutch painter and architect. He was the grandson of Bartolt Ernst van Bassen from Arnhem, who was Clerk of the Court of Holland in The Hague. In 1613 van Bassen was admitted to the Guild of St Luke in Delft, having come from outside the city. In 1622 he became a member of the Guild in The Hague where he was also municipal architect from 1638 until his death. He married in 1624; his son Aernoudt married a daughter of Cornelis van Poelenburch.
Carel Jacobus Behr
(9 July 1812 in The Hague - 11 November 1895) was a Dutch painter, watercolorist and draftsman. He was a pupil of Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove and mainly painted cityscapes, genre scenes and portraits. In 1836 he produced, commissioned by The Hague municipal government, an image of the town hall there, which carried off the approval of connoisseurs. In 1837 he became a member of the Royal Academy in Amsterdam. His work is found in various collections and different exhibitions, like at the Hague in 1839, Rotterdam in 1840 and again at the Hague in 1841.