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Claude Quiche, Claude Lorrain and the World of the Gods
Musee d'Art Ancien et Contemporain, Epinal, France
through 20 August 2001
A remarkable exhibition has just opened in a remote town of the Vosges mountain
area of north-western France. The town is Epinal, where the great 17th century
painter Claude Lorrain was brought up. Consumer gourmets will be familiar with
the other great product of the area, the succulent ‘Quiche Lorraine’,
mainstay of innumerable delicatessen counters. This is not a large exhibition;
it contains some 14 paintings and 6 drawings, but it is of exceptional significance.
Nor is Epinal particularly worth a detour through the Vosges, although in this
instance it is a useful background to the career of a highly influential 17th
century master of landscape, mythology, and mise en scene.
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Seaport with the embarkation
of the Queen of Sheba (detail). Claude Lorrain. London National
Gallery
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Claude’s admirer and follower, the English artist Richard
Wilson, (but whose landscapes were pale imitations minus the mythology)
and the great English landscape architect Lancelot ‘Capability’
Brown, were both profoundly influenced in their work by the painting
compositions of Claude (as he is invariably known). The 18th century
philosopher Edmund Burke, who sought to clarify the contrast between
the beautiful and the sublime in scenery and experience, could find
no greater exposition of these respective values than in the paintings
of Claude. By then they formed a special craze of leading Grand
Tour grandees, who brought them back home from the continent, and
competed with each other to epitomise these landscapes of the Roman
‘campagna’ by replication, through Brown, in their own
Arcadian parks and around their classical mansion houses. Later,
Turner also caught the magic of Claude’s sublime, and developed
it anew.
±Äç±Äç±Äç±Äç±Äç±Äç±Äç±Äçççıççıççıççıççıççıççıççıeek±eek±eek±eek±uutruutruutruutrnninnninnninnninffopffopffopffop
oot8oot8oot8oot8 e e e e nnelnnelnnelnneleed eed eed eed eet eet eet eet n n n nttc ttc ttc ttc yi yi yi yiddutddutddutddutgguagguagguaggua o o o ossi
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yh yh yh yh el el el elrom Rome. Here he established a growing clientele,
seeking an escape through the mythological and classical memories
of an earlier, Arcadian golden age.
For Claude, it is the serene moment that is all-important in his
paintings. The split second, for example, at which in Ascanius’
shooting of the Stag of Silvia (in the painting of the same name
at the Prado) there is a frozen moment of calm, silent frame, plus
the absence of lust, rape, storm or terror that was the reality
of Europe at the time. In ‘Coast Scene with Europa and the
Bull’, from the Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, the figures
pause in pleasant frolic. Europa became a famous and sought after
theme in Claude’s work, for its mood of reassuring pacifism
in the mythical version. This work was first etched by Claude in
l634; here we also see the last thematic version executed in l647,
as the Thirty Years War was drawing to a conclusion.
Claude is most about sun and light. In ‘The Embarkation of
St Paul at Ostia’, Prado, he encapsulates the timeless moment
of boarding ship at sunrise; jetty flooded in golden light. In the
matching work ‘Tobias and Angel’, also from the Prado,
he defines the melancholic hush of sundown. Claude utilised classical
mythology to people these landscapes, and the figures always remain
as accessories — rather than simply providing a backdrop —
and it is the landscape that is the main subject chosen to negotiate
terms between beauty and the sublime. At Epinal, amidst the Vosges
mountains, Claude first sensed such qualities in the natural world,
and grasped these essential phenomena. This location is the ideal
place to visit, to recapture and compare key works by Claude within
such an environment, and also to sample the cuisine of the region.
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