ART / Picture choices: Three painters with different views of the landscape select a work that most impresses them at the National's new Claude exhibition
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.ROGER DE GREY ON 'LANDSCAPE WITH ASCANIUS SHOOTING THE STAG OF SILVIA'
Claude's legacy is huge. He infected the 18th century and established the rules of romantic landscape that culminated in Turner. A picture which particularly strikes me is the one from the Ashmolean. He's using hard-edged areas of paint but the colour is determined by the areas of blue - the sky, the water and the shadow. He's no colourist. He uses tone. As the tones become closer together the colours are much less evident. The painting appears to give off a heavy feeling of atmosphere, suffused with the feeling of ultramarine.
PATRICK HERON ON 'LANDSCAPE WITH JACOB, LABAN AND HIS DAUGHTERS'
This great painting has nothing whatever to do with the subject indicated in the title. It exists to make visible purely visual experience of the external world and to communicate the intense emotions which the purely visual - colour, form and spatial illusion - generates. Claude's real subject matter is landscape and the organisation of his composition.
WILLIAM TILLYER ON 'SEAPORT WITH THE EMBARKATION OF ST URSULA'
Claude's paintings are theatre. Here he creates a proscenium with balanced elements to left and right and paints a blinding light beyond the horizon. Every detail is in deference to this light. The emotion comes through the poetic, organic quality of the light. 200 years later Turner was to do the same thing. Claude takes you through the picture plane, beyond the horizon into infinite space - an emotional space lit with golden light. He's at the pinnacle of the Renaissance tradition of 'virtual reality'. His space goes on and on.
Andrew Graham-Dixon's Claude review will appear in Saturday's magazine
(Photographs omitted)
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments