Claude, in full Claude Le Lorrain, English Claude Lorraine, real name Claude Gel�e 1600-82
French landscape painter

Born near Nancy, by tradition he is believed to have trained as a pastry cook but by about 1613 he was in Italy, where he was apprenticed to Cavaliere d'Arpino and the landscapist Agostino Tassi. In 1625 he returned to Nancy, but in 1627 returned to Rome and soon achieved a distinguished reputation as a landscape painter. Around 1635 he began recording his compositions in a book of drawings, the Liber Veritatis (now in the British Museum, London), to guard against copyists. The sources of his landscape style are the romanticized landscapes of the later Mannerists, Adam Elsheimer and the Brils. He is somewhat restricted in his subjects and natural effects and tends to be rather repetitive, but his colour is always harmonious and mellow. He also produced about 30 etchings. Philip Hamerton pronounced Le Bouvier ('The Cattleman') 'the finest landscape etching in the world'. He was a major influence on virtually every landscape painter from the 17th to the 19th centuries, including Jean Antoine Watteau, Richard Wilson and J M W Turner. The latter painted his Dido building Carthage (London, National Gallery) in emulation of Claude.