The Quiet Eclipse of Claude Lorrain

Eclipse

Granted,  “The Quiet Cancelling of Claude Lorrain” would have made for a stronger alliterative title  - but Lorrain is not the victim of active cancelling.  He’s just quietly slipping out of the public eye.  And for the supreme painter of irradiating luminosity (1) only an Eclipse can do poetic justice to his falling out of favour. 

In general, there is no lack of art books reproducing the pictures of the Old Masters of Western art, even though there has been a distinct shift to more recent and also more globally-inclusive artists  in the art book production.  Just as, at auction houses, too, post-war and contemporary artists are now out-selling the Old Masters (2).  This is of course not really surprising : as our age becomes increasingly focused on its own innovative & creative merits it indulges less in contemplative adoration of bygone master pieces and demands contemporary relevance. 

But even amongst Old Masters, Lorrain’s public fortunes seem to be declining. There are no blockbuster exhibitions dedicated to Claude, at best, he’s part of a thematic exhibition on landscape painting.  No recent Lorrain books have come to my attention, whereas his contemporary Nicolas Poussin evidently still elicits new editions  (I’d love to be proven wrong: do send me the details of any recently published Lorrain-book). Even in second hand bookshops, it is striking how few Lorrain monographies are to be found.  For some years now I have been scrutinising the art book shelves of my usual 2^nd hand bookshops, and I only managed to hunt down two Claude-books (3).

Why?

So why this fading away of Lorrain? Although all major museums still display his works, he seems to fail to capture today’s art lovers’ imagination. Perhaps he was not innovative and not intellectual enough to ensure continued critical attention of art experts,  perhaps he lacks the mystery or the drama which could still draw crowds?  Or could it be that the old hierarchy still holds - whereby pure landscape painting is undervalued? Maybe his luminous landscape poetics is too quietly serene? By analogy, it is true that a painter such as Alfred Sisley, with a similar “impulse to explore effects of atmosphere, light and mood”, is considered as only “the delightful minor poet of the country and the seasons” amongst the ever popular impressionists (4).   But on the other hand, one of Claude’s landscape painting heirs, Camille Corot, is today still entitled to a range of publications (from pocket guides to hefty monographies).  And didn’t the English long adore Claude as forerunner of Turner’s bold experiments with light and atmosphere?

Maybe, then, it are Claude’s mythological and bible references which are to blame for today’s public indifference -  are these references  considered too nostalgic-sentimental – reflecting obsolete aristocratic tastes? (« les yeux ouverts à la poésie des paysages agrestes peuplés de réminiscences mythologiques » (5). As wizened up post-moderns, do we feel that  the « noble simplicity and quiet grandeur »(6) evocated by Claude’s paintings is too edulcorated to still have an authentic appeal?

The longer you look at them...

So, Claude depicted landscapes which never existed and for which nostalgia may now be waning.  But  I continue to seek out Claude’s paintings in museums, in second hand books – quietly contemplating those luminous landscapes so far removed from my daily surroundings.  The longer you look at them (either taking them in as a whole, savouring their atmosphere or else lovingly looking at each detail) the happier you get (this is where one should be, this is how the world could be) .   

There are his heroic port paintings (sublime , hazy sunlight grazing seas, ships, buildings, trees and humans – all sharing in a mythical quiet grandeur), there are his bucolic landscapes (wide vistas, light playing in trees’ foliage, luminous shadows and reflections in the water of some river – and always : tall noble trees vying with tall noble buildings (7)).  And there is for instance this late painting,  which is both beautiful and heart wrenching : depicting a vast, severely harmonious landscape as a backdrop to human injustice, with the upright figure of the self-righteous Abraham sternly sending away Hagar and her son, who are standing there forlornly and subdued.

Two books

I cherish my 2^nd hand books, with their reproductions and art historical essays (from ekphrasis  to analysis to adoring evocations) : one book seems to have been translated from Russian in 1995, with a learned and sensitive analysis  by two Russian art historians, the reproductions focusing mostly on Claude pictures from the St Petersburg Hermitage (so I won't get to see the originals in my lifetime – which is of course the very least of consequences of the dreadful war). The other book is some sort of large-size portfolio  of selected Claude reproductions, part of a mass-produced weekly series on “Great Painters – The Masterpieces of Art” published in 1967 by Hachette – a time when not yet all art historians shunned poetic language to describe aesthetic experience.

 And so there I turn for a suitable quote to conclude: 

         « sa palette ensoleillée fait vibrer cette nostalgie de lumière intérieure que chaque être humain porte en soi » (8) 

 

Notes & References (including a teaser for Chat GPT on Claude Lorrain)

1.    The painter of sunrays refracting across hazy skies, of suns reflecting on the expanses of vast seas or shimmering through vibrant verdant foliage.
2.   Obsessed by the Present, Who’s Got Time for Old Masters? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
3.  A less random and more efficient Internet search did not yield much more readily available books. I spotted two exhibition catalogues (a Washington national gallery of Art catalogue from the 80s,  and the catalogue of the Ashmolean and Stadel museum exhibitions in 2011 which I have regretfully missed) and some editions of the “Liber Veritas” – a collection of Claude prints, published in the 70s. 
4.  Richard Shone – Sisley
5.  In an essay by M. R. Waddingham in “CHEFS-D’OEUVRE DE L’ART  - GRANDS PEINTRES” published in 1967 by Hachette.  ‘en vente chaque mardi chez tous les marchands de journaux’ By the way, how endearingly 20th Century was this mass reproduction of master pieces, distributed via newspaper stalls on every street corner. Yes, lacking of course the aura of the real thing, but still so utterly material and tangible. We could all collect particular books (even if just paperbacks) and reproductions and records and CD’s and cherish them in our homes ( undertaking from time to time a pilgrimage to a museum or a church or a concert hall for the live experience). It was a different kind of relation to art, in comparison with today’s unlimited on-line access to potentially all art  and “content” (however personalised a feed or a playlist can get thanks to algorithms prying on our habits).    
6.  This Winckelmann quote never goes amiss
7.  Such a scene  needn’t be heavy, as aptly described by Natalia Serebriannaïa, 1995 : «L’espace immense de la mer sur l’étendue de laquelle le soleil allonge ses reflets se perdant au loin. […] Les quelques figures isolées qui se trouvent sur le rivage y apportent une note de légère tristesse […] on voit un gracieux et léger décor formé de mâts de navires, de branches d’arbre et de colonnes »
8.  F. Grouvel, Paris, juin 1967
9.  By way of an experiment and to ensure contemporary relevance of this otherwise increasingly obsolete blog – please read on below the conversations I had with OpenAI’s Chat GPT about Claude’s waning popularity and the Frivolous Fragments - style.