(Chamagne 1604/5? – 1682 Rome)
Landscape with figures loading timber onto a boat (Loading Timber in the Golden Glow of Evening),
oil on copper, 40.4 x 51.1 cm, framed

Provenance:
Joseph McCurry (1856–1924), Belfast, by 1895 (according to a label on the reverse);
property of a noblewoman, England;
art market, England;
where acquired by the present owner

Exhibited:
Belfast Art and Industrial Exhibition, Linen Hall and Grounds, Belfast, 1895, cat. no. 414 (as ‘Scene on the Meuse’ by ‘Cuyp’) (according to a label on the reverse)


We are grateful to Helen Langdon for endorsing the attribution to Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain (Chamagne 1604/5? – 1682 Rome) after examining the present painting in the original. She dates this work to circa 1629.

A similar version of the composition is conserved in the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk (inv. no. 71.602) and the present work also relates to another version, executed on canvas, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. (acc. no. 1952.5.44).

The historian Filippo Baldinucci (circa 1624–1696) described the success of Claude’s work as being due to his skill in portraying ‘those conditions of nature which produce views of the sun, particularly on seawater and over rivers at dawn and evening’ (see F. Baldinucci, Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno, 1681, p. 355): the present panel is a significant example of such mastery in the depiction of light.

Claude Lorrain was born in the French village of Chamagne and travelled to Rome at a young age; here he may have received his first apprenticeship in the workshop of Agostino Tassi, among the leading landscape painters of the period. He is thought to have also spent two years in Naples with Goffredo Wals, a pupil of Tassi. Claude assimilated their pictorial vocabulary and lessons in perspective, which gave him a command of the elements of landscape painting. As a result of the cosmopolitan environment in which he trained, Claude’s early work often shows picturesque views of the Italian countryside with a northern influence, as is the case of the present painting. Here, the hilly landscape and calm river frame an animated scene in the foreground, with figures loading timber onto a boat. The busy protagonists of the picture are reminiscent of Flemish landscape painting. The figures are wearing contemporary clothing; in Claude’s later works this element will gradually disappear and his figures will often be shown in classical costume.

The composition of the present painting also reflects a pattern which recurs in the artist’s earlier production: a dark mass of foliage on the left side is juxtaposed with the light view of the distant architecture, on the right. This generates a contrast between intense light in the background and lyrical shadow in the foreground, achieving an immediate sense of depth through purely atmospheric elements. The contrast is harmonised by the warm golden light which appears through the foliage of the trees, a soft glow further enhanced by the material qualities of the copper panel on which this work is painted.