Collection Online as of March 25, 2023

View of the Acqua Acetosa (recto)

c. 1645

Part of a set. See all set records

Claude Lorrain

(French, 1604–1682)

France, 17th century

Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over graphite, framing lines in brown ink

Support: Cream(3) laid paper

Sheet: 26 x 40.5 cm (10 1/4 x 15 15/16 in.)

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward B. Greene 1928.15.a

Location

not on view

Description

This drawing represents a view of the famous Acqua Acetosa, a mineral spring that until the 19th century provided the favored drinking water of Romans who believed in its healing powers. Although topographically accurate, the sheet is not a plein-air study but a vision of an imagined Arcadian world carefully rendered by Gellée, one of the most original painters of the 17th century. The French-born artist spent his career painting and drawing the Roman Campagna and the Neopolitan coastline. Sublimely beautiful pen-and-ink and wash drawings such as the example here reveal the artist's highly poetic response to the natural world and his unparalleled sensitivity to light.

Inscriptions

Inscription

verso, lower left, in brown ink: beau peisage de claude Le Lorrain; lower left, in graphite: David; lower right, in graphite: Golia; upper center, in graphite: No 2599; lower center, in graphite: Claude Lorraine / From the Collection of / Lord Brownlow (The Belton / House Collection) / Signed Claudio Gellée.; lower left, in red watercolor: 55

Provenance

Sir Joshua Reynolds(?); Sir Abraham Hume; by descent to Lord Alford; by descent to the Earls of Brownlow; [sale, Sotheby's, London, 14 July 1926, lot 43]; Mr. and Mrs. Edward Belden Greene, Cleveland.

Citations

Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Gordon Bailey Washburn, and Agnes Mongan. Master Drawings, Selected from the Museums and Private Collections of America; January, 1935, the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. [Buffalo, N.Y.]: [F.W. Burow], 1935. Reproduced: cat. no. 47

A Thousand Years of Landscape East and West: Paintings, Drawings, Prints. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1945. Reproduced and Mentioned: p. 4

Smith College Museum of Art. Claude Lorrain, 1600-1682: Paintings, Drawings, Prints. Northampton, MA: Smith College Museum of Art, 1952. Reproduced and Mentioned: p. 6, no. 6

The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 589 archive.org

Van Clouet tot Matisse. Museum Boymans te Rotterdam. [Rotterdam]: [Museum Boymans], 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 39, no. 22

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Reproduced: p. 118 archive.org

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 118 archive.org

Graf, Dieter. Master Drawings of the Roman Baroque from the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf: A Selection from the Lambert Krahe Collection. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 112, under no. 45

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 172 archive.org

Schloder, John E. Baroque Imagery. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1984. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 69, no. 38

Goldfarb, Hilliard T. From Fontainebleau to the Louvre: French Drawing from the Seventeenth Century. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1989. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 72-73, no. 31; p.75, under no. 32; p. 78, under no. 35; p. 80, under no. 36

Cleveland Museum of Art, Diane DeGrazia, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000. Mentioned: cat. no. 34, p. 4, p. 6, pp. 94-97, Reproduced: p. 95

Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 157

Exhibition history

Claude Lorrain, 1600-1682: Paintings, Drawings, Prints. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA (organizer).

Master Drawings of the Roman Baroque. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany.

Drawings in the Classic and Romantic Tradition before 1830. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 7, 1932-January 11, 1933).

Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 9-December 2, 1934).

Master Drawings Selected from the Museums and Private Collections of America. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (organizer) (January 1-31, 1935).

Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 28-December 9, 1937).

Old Master Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 4-March 26, 1939).

The Silver Jubilee Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 28, 1941).

Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 17-August 24, 1942).

A Thousand Years of Landscape: East and West. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (organizer) (October 24-December 9, 1945).

Life in Eighteenth Century Venice. Fogg Art Museum/Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (organizer) (April 20-June 15, 1948).

Original Prints and Drawings by Masters of Berlin Museum Paintings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 11-March 27, 1949).

Masterpieces of Drawing: Diamond Jubilee Exhibition. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA (organizer) (November 4, 1950-February 11, 1951).

35th Anniversary Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 20-September 30, 1951).

Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 3, 1958-October 11, 1959).

French Drawings from American Collections: Clouet to Matisse. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands (July 31-September 28, 1958); Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France (October 24, 1958-January 2, 1959); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (February 3-March 15, 1959).

Italian and French Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 13, 1959-February 2, 1960).

Drawings from the Museum Collection: 15th-17th Centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 18-October 11, 1960).

Landscape. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 9-April 22, 1962).

Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 11-September 10, 1963).

European Watercolors Through the 18th Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 14-March 22, 1964).

Drawings: France, Italy, Netherlands. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 1-March 24, 1965).

Prints and Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 6-September 9, 1965).

Old Master Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 29, 1966-February 28, 1967).

Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 9, 1967-January 1, 1968).

Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 11-October 21, 1968).

Seventeenth-, Eighteenth-, and Early Nineteenth-Century Genre and French Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 31-August 19, 1979).

Brush Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art (March 3-May 10, 1981).

French Prints and Drawings in the Age of the Bourbons, 1589-1792. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 2-May 16, 1982).

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta: A Tercentenary Exhibition. National Gallery of Art, Landover, MD (organizer) (November 20, 1983-February 26, 1984).

Baroque Imagery. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 6, 1984-January 6, 1985).

From Fontainebleau to the Louvre: French Drawing from the Seventeenth Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 13, 1989-January 28, 1990).

Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 8, 1991).

French Drawings from the Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 13, 1994-March 12, 1995).

Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002).

Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 9-June 8, 2014).