Claude Lorrain: The Enchanted Landscape

Claude Gellée (c.1600–1682), known as Claude Lorrain, started life as a pastry cook and despite turning his attentions from pies and patisserie to painting he never lost his love for confection. Although he is revered as the father of the landscape tradition and was hailed by Constable as ‘the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw’ there is precious little that is natural in his paintings. Claude instead mixed his pictorial ingredients — a tree, a ruin, a river — just as he had his butter, flour and eggs and whisked up poetry-frosted views that delighted the delicate palates of his noble patrons.

Although these patrons included Philip IV of Spain and Urban VIII, the collectors with a real Claude-craving were the English milordi of the 18th century who on their grand tours gobbled up every crumb of him they could find. At one point fully two thirds of his paintings were in Britain, and the British Museum still owns 40 per cent of his drawings.