Claude Lorrain

French painter who worked in Rome. One of the leading classical painters of the 17th century, he painted landscapes in a distinctive, luminous style that had a great impact on late 17th- and 18th-century taste. In his paintings insignificant figures (mostly mythological or historical) are typically lost in great expanses of poetic scenery, as in The Enchanted Castle (1664; National Gallery, London).

The poetic sense of wonder in a legendary land is seen in such works as this one, which inspired the poet John Keats, or in the great Seaports of the National Gallery, London, and the Louvre, Paris. The duality between realist and dreamer may be seen in the comparison of these with the direct drawings from nature such as the View on the Tiber.

Unlike his friend and fellow countryman in Rome, Poussin, he was ‘classical’ only in the implication of subject and not in style. To a simple and little varying scheme of composition he added picturesque irregularities of form, and was a founder of that ‘picturesque’ tradition which, in 18th-century England, reproduced ‘Claudes’ in nature – in the landscape gardening of wealthy art-lovers' estates.