View from Tivoli

In this drawing, one of many Claude made of the Roman countryside, the artist explores the optical effects of blazing sunlight. Alternating bands of light and dark in the foreground give way to a hazy rendering of the distant hills. Against this radiant backdrop, three hunters appear in blurred silhouettes.

The French painter Claude Lorrain spent his career in Italy, where he gained renown for his classical landscapes. The present sheet was produced at the end of a decade of visits to Tivoli, a village northeast of Rome where the artist developed his practice of working en plein air. More than thirty such views of Tivoli survive among some thousand drawings known by Claude. Here, the artist depicts the rolling hills of the Italian countryside and three hunters with rifles slung across their shoulders. Claude characteristically keeps their dark figures in blurred silhouette against the alternating light and dark tones of the foreground, conveying the sloping sunlight across an idyllic and sweeping pastoral landscape. The highly finished quality of the drawing suggests that the artist completed the work in his studio.

Inventoried in 1713 in the collection of the later Prince Don Livio Odescalchi. Collection of a Polish family (1845). Swiss collection (1939). Georges Wildenstein, 1960. Norton Simon, 1968. Eugene V. Thaw, New York, about 1980. Frick, 1982.

Source: The Frick Collection: Drawings, Prints & Later Acquisitions. Volume IX. New York: The Frick Collection, 2003.