Paysage à la grande tour

Lot n° 2176

Circa 1635-1637

Black pencil, pen and ink with brush wash over chalk, on laid paper

15.6x22 cm, drawing; 20.2x27.4 cm, support

Provenance

The album sheet with the collector's stamp Lugt 5081 on the verso, listed there as "marque non identifée" and possibly identified as belonging to the collector Maria Paternò Castello Ricci (ca. 1847 - 1915) (the Lugt entry also mentions the group of Claude drawings auctioned by Kornfeld in 1974)

Auction Galerie Kornfeld und Klipstein, Bern, 12 June 1974, lot 66

Auction Galerie Kornfeld, Bern, 22 June 1984, lot 93

The Eberhard W. Kornfeld Collection, Bern, Lugt 913b

Literature

Marcel Röthlisberger, Dessins inédits de Claude Lorrain, in: L'œil, no. 226, May 1974, p. 35, no. 7

Exhibitions

Nancy 1980, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Autour d'une acquisition: Cent dessins de Claude Gellée, dit le Lorrain, no. 5

Nancy 1982, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Claude Gellée et les peintures lorrains en Italie au XVII siècle, Addendum, III

Munich 1983, Haus der Kunst, Im Licht von Claude Lorrain, Landschaftsmalerei aus drei Jahrhunderten, no. 32

Condition

Pale brown stain in upper right corner, mounted on old album sheet. In good overall condition

Comments

The sheet was published by Marcel Roethlisberger in a supplement to his catalogue raisonné of Claude's drawings. It belongs to a group of three other drawings (Roethlisberger 181 recto and verso and 182) that show a similar composition, although Roethlisberger leaves the sequence of their creation date open. No corresponding painting has yet been identified, but various elements can be found in the composition "Coast View with a Battle on a Bridge" (Liber Veritatis 27, Roethlisberger 183). Hardly any other such comprehensive group of similar sheets provides a comparable insight into Claude's creative process, in which a basic compositional structure is played out in several variations.