Claude Lorrain's contributions

            What were Claude's contributions to an ideal landscape?.
             Claude Lorrain's contributions to an ideal landscape?.
             Claude, was born Claude Gellée who was also known by his fictitious name Le Lorraine or as Claude Lorrain, in the duchy of Lorraine (from which he derived his name) in 1604 (1). He was a French artist in the seventeenth century, who spent most of his working life in Italy. He was one of the greatest masters of classical landscape paintings. It is noted that, he was the first painter to acquire a huge reputation as a landscape artist and his popularity has remained undimmed ever since. His principal teacher, an Italian painter called Agostino Tassi, taught him the basics of perspective, landscape and seascape art (2). By 1633 Claude had found his definitive landscape style and joined Rome's Accademia di San Luca. He influenced landscape painting and garden design, though his paintings and drawings, over one thousand three hundred of them.
             Claude was distinguished from other artists in this period, and the reasons for that were his contributions to an ideal landscape. He achieved such an acclaim because he was very skilful with the manner in which he dealt with the light. He could superbly show brilliant light and tones in his paintings, as he learnt to represent the exact light and colour change, for example, the red sky in the morning, the sunrise, the sunset and the evening hours so accurately, which had fascinated him immensely. What he would do was lie in the fields before daybreak and would stay there until nightfall. Whether it would be early morning or late evening, Claude would be able to show in his paintings the exact time of day by the use of pink tonal colour for the clouds or different length shadows. These were all created by his supreme observation of nature. This way of working showed in his earlier paintings, because they have strong dramatic light effects, to his later ones, which became transparently clear.