Claude Lorrain drew this sun-drenched river landscape in 1661, in pen and brown ink with brush and wash over black chalk. It illustrates a story from the Book of Genesis in which Jacob offers to tend Laban's flocks in exchange for the hand of his younger daughter, Rachel — a small narrative tucked into an expansive view of trees, water, and a distant Roman aqueduct. Claude, who left his native Lorraine as a young man and made the Italian countryside his lifelong subject, often used biblical and mythological episodes like this one as a pretext for composing idealized, light-filled landscapes. The drawing, now in the Art Institute of Chicago, shows the pastoral grandeur that made him the most influential landscape artist of the seventeenth century.
Printed edge to edge on a soft, durable woven area rug with a comfortable, non-slip feel.
