Curtis_O_Baer_2010

25. Claude Lorrain French, 1600 – 1682

Study of Cows ca. 1635 – 45

Black chalk 4 7 ⁄ 8 x 7 3 ⁄ 8

inches ( 12.4 x 18.9 cm)

provenance Odescalchi family, Rome; Sotheby’s [London?] November 20 , 1957 , lot 67 , to Hans Calmann; Seiferheld Gallery, New York; Collection Curtis O. Baer exhibitions New York, Seiferheld Gallery, Master Drawings from Five Centuries , 1961 , no. 3 ; Atlanta, 1985 , cat. no. 153 b, p. 188 literature Marcel Roethlisberger, The Drawings of Claude Lorrain , Los Angeles and Berkeley, 1968 , vol. 2 , p. 141 , no. 239 , illus. Roethlisberger identified this drawing as number 17 of Claude’s “Animal Album,” a second-hand assemblage of 64 small sheets of studies by Claude, 56 of which were ani mal studies that derived from one or several original sketchbooks. The drawings date from 1635 to 1640 , the same period in which Claude executed most of his tree studies from nature. Roethlisberger saw the album before it was dismantled. It had been bound in the late 18 th or early 19 th century, at which time the sheets were numbered. The album was first documented in a 1957 sale at Sothebys as belonging to an anony mous member of the Odescalchi family, with no provenance given. Hans Calmann pur chased and dismantled the album in 1957 , mounted the individual sheets, and sold them separately. Claude began most of his drawings—including the most elaborate ink washes—in black chalk. He used black chalk almost exclusively in his studies of cattle and sheep. Each of these animal studies depict a particular species, captured in a characteristic profile. With few exceptions, the sketches were not used directly in compositions, but were essential resources for the artist’s paintings. Roethlisberger notes that there is not a single landscape painting by Claude which does not include at least a few goats, sheep, or oxen.