Claude Lorrain, who spent nearly his entire career painting the landscape around Rome, made this drawing around 1635-1636 in pen and brown ink with brush washes and touches of white gouache. It's a nature study of a steep, rocky hillside, the kind of direct observation that underpinned Claude's reputation as one of history's great landscape draftsmen — he sketched the Roman countryside firsthand to build a visual vocabulary he later drew on for his paintings. Works like this one, now held in the Art Institute of Chicago's Regenstein Collection, offer an intimate look at how Claude studied light, terrain, and foliage before idealizing them on canvas. His landscape drawings are prized today both as artworks in their own right and as a window into his working method.
Printed edge to edge on a soft, durable woven area rug with a comfortable, non-slip feel.
