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Claude Lorrain - The Painter as Draftsman: Drawings from the British Museum

May 27 – August 12, 2007
West Building, Main Floor, Galleries 72 through 77

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Ruins, Pastoral Figures, and Trees, c. 1650, pen and brown ink with graphite and brown wash over black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on apricot-prepared paper, Syma Busiel Fund and Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 1976.8.1

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: 84 drawings and 9 etchings by Claude Lorrain on loan from the British Museum, London, were shown in this exhibition, the first in the United States in 25 years to be devoted to the artist's work. Also on view were 4 drawings and 1 painting by Claude from the collection of the National Gallery of Art, together with 12 paintings on loan from other public and private collections in Europe and the United States. The presentation explored Claude's drawings as exercises in themselves and in relation to the development of his paintings. The presentation was organized in six thematic sections: drawing from nature; ports, storms, and shipwrecks; views of Tivoli and the Roman countryside; pastoral landscapes and Roman landmarks; mythological and biblical subjects including the Aeneid drawings; and late landscapes.

Richard Rand, senior curator, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, presented a special weekend lecture on July 1. Gallery talks were presented in the exhibition during June and July.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in association with the British Museum. Exhibition curator was Richard Rand, senior curator, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Curators at the National Gallery of Art were Philip Conisbee, senior curator of European paintings, and Margaret Morgan Grasselli, curator and head of old master drawings.

Sponsor: The exhibition was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Attendance: 64,989

Catalog: Claude Lorrain—The Painter as Draftsman: Drawings from the British Museum, by Richard Rand, with contributions by Antony Griffiths and Colleen M. Terry. New Haven and London: Yale University Press and Williamstown: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2006.

Lorrain, Claude
French, 1604 - 1682