From “Liber Veritatis” to “Liber Studiorum” (Part 1): Lorrain, Earlom, Turner, Cotman and Short

What are some of the traditional approaches to reproducing artworks?

Sometimes the art market is an unpleasant place resulting from art forgeries that not only disadvantage the original artists financially, but also undermine the integrity and the quality of their artistic practice. Certainly this was a problem for Claude Lorrain (1600–82) who suffered from widespread forgery of his paintings. To circumvent this crime, Lorrain created a compendium of drawings reproducing his paintings as a record for authentication purposes. This bound book of 195 drawings (now in the British Museum) was titled, Liber Veritatis (“Book of Truth”), by John Boydell when he published them as a suite of mezzotint prints transcribed from the drawings by Richard Earlom (1743–1822). Beyond creating an inventory of his paintings from 1635 (when he commenced work on the compendium) until he died, this archive also showcases the gradual evolution of Lorrain's manner of drawing. In the earlier post, Stylistic Consistency, for instance, I borrowed a phrase from a friend of mine who described the line work in Lorrain’s earlier etchings as looking like “shaggy goat hair,” as exemplified by The Herdsman and the Shepherdess, c.1630 (shown below). This early use of line gradually evolves to his later sensitivity in shaping each stroke to fit the context in which it is applied, as exemplified by Time, Apollo and the Seasons, 1662 (shown further below).

Claude Lorrain (1600–82)

The Herdsman and the Shepherdess [Le pâtre et la bergère], c.1630

Etching on wove paper

Third state (after removal of the number 45) (of lll)

Inscribed in reverse lower centre: “CLAVDIO GILLEE INV”

16.3 x 11.7 cm (sheet)

Russell 2; Blum 4; Mannocci 3; Robert-Dumesnil 25; Knab 116; Duplessis 25

Condition: very rich, well-inked impression, trimmed within the plate edge with traces of mounting at the corners (verso), otherwise in excellent condition.

I am selling this print for $210 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button below.

This print has been sold

Detail of Lorrain’s The Herdsman and the Shepherdess

Claude Lorrain (1600–82)

Time, Apollo and the Seasons [Le Temps, Apollon et les Saisons], 1662

Etching on thin wove paper

Seventh state (from McCreery’s 1816 edition of 200 Etchings taken from the original plates) (of Vll)

Inscribed below lower margin in two lines: “Apollo in atto di obedire al tempo. La Primavera a cominciare il ballo. Lestate non manca del suo calore. L’autunno colsuo licore / Seguita. Linverno tiene la sua staggione”; and, “Claudio Gillee inven. Fec. in Roma 1662 conlicenza de super.” (lower right).

19.4 x 25.7 cm (sheet)

Russell 50; Blum 39; Mannocci 43; Robert-Dumesnil 20; Knab 146; Duplessis 20

Condition: superb impression with no foxing or blemishes. The print has been trimmed at or within the plate edge as issued by McCreery in 1816. There is a 5mm (insect?) hole in the foliage of the trees on the upper right and sight wrinkling at the upper edge, otherwise in very good condition

I am selling this print for $310 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button below. 

Detail of Lorrain’s Time, Apollo and the Seasons

In the following discussion, spreading over three instalments, I will build upon the argument presented in the earlier post about Lorrain’s drawing style and address how he and artists following in his footsteps (in terms of creating paper museums about their art practice) used very different approaches for reproducing paintings and drawings.

Let me return back to Lorrain, as his approach to etching was undoubtedly in Richard Earlom’s mind when Earlom interpreted Lorrain’s drawings for reproduction in the Liber Veritatis.  In terms of the hallmarks of Lorrain’s approach to drawing and etching, these are showcased in the moody print, The Tempest with a Shipwreck, c.1638–41 (shown below). Here, the first critical attribute of Lorrain’s approach may be seen in the way he translates a scene of ocean turmoil, with foundering ships and struggling men, by reducing what is portrayed down to its essentials. In this print, the outcome of such a reductive process is a virtual silhouette view of three figures in the foreground with ocean battered ships further away that are semi-flattened to a shallow space along with the choppy waves supporting them.

The second important attribute in his approach is the contrast that he employs through juxtaposing a graphic treatment of key elements in a scene (i.e. the important features are portrayed in a stylised way) with mimetic treatment of the more generic elements in the scene (i.e. the non-essential components of the scene are portrayed realistically). In Lorrain’s representation of a storm in this print, for instance, the contrast is between the graphic treatment of men, ships and stormy sea juxtaposed with the mimetic treatment of a tower fortification in the near distance (see details further below). 

Claude Lorrain (1600–82)

The Tempest with a Shipwreck [Le Naufrage], c.1638-c.41

Etching on thin wove paper

Fifth state (from McCreery’s 1816 edition of 200 Etchings taken from the original plates) (of V)

12.5 x 17.8 cm (sheet)

Russell 44; Blum 12; Mannocci 35; Robert-Dumesnil 7; Knab 128; Duplessis 7

Condition: well-inked impression in excellent condition with no foxing or blemishes. The print has been trimmed within the plate edge and attached at the corners to the same support sheet as issued by McCreery in 1816.

I am selling this print for $210 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button below. 

This print has been sold

Detail of Lorrain’s The Tempest with a Shipwreck rendered as graphic space

Detail of Lorrain’s The Tempest with a Shipwreck rendered as pictorial space

As a point of comparison between Lorrain’s approach to etching and his manner of drawing, see Lorrain’s two drawings from the Liber Veritatis (shown below) that relate to his etching, The Tempest with a Shipwreck. What I find rewarding to contemplate is the evolution of the imagery, in terms of simplification, from the earlier of these drawings (dated 1628–39) to the later one (dated 1643). What is also interesting is that both drawings were executed after the print rather than being used as preliminary studies for it—this supposition is based on the fact that the earlier drawing and print are not mirror images of each other.

Claude Lorrain (1600–82)

A Storm off the Coast, 1638–39

Pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white; on blue paper

19.6 x 26.4 cm

Roethlisberger 196; Liber Veritatis 33

British Museum

© Trustees of the British Museum

Claude Lorrain (1600–82)

A Storm off the Coast, 1643

Brush drawing in white bodycolour, and black chalk, on blue paper

19.6 x 26.4 cm

Roethlisberger 528; Liber Veritatis 72

British Museum

© Trustees of the British Museum

These hallmarks of Lorrain’s approach to etching—his reductive selection of subject matter to its essentials and his contrast of graphic and mimetic treatments—lies at the heart of what makes his prints so distinctly his own. To illustrate this point further, note how in the etching, Time, Apollo and the Seasons, Lorrain has simplified the portrayed landscape so that each rise and fall in the terrain is spatially flattened like scenery on stage-flats in a theatrical production. Note also how the stylised—almost schematic—treatment of the foreground figures contrasts with the pictorially realistic treatment of the architectural features and trees in the distance (see detail further below).

Detail of Lorrain’s Time, Apollo and the Seasons

Compare the graphic treatment of the figures to the pictorial treatment of distant trees

When a contemporary audience examines Lorrain’s approach to etching, there is a high probability that his way of creating images will not seem particularly novel. After all, most contemporary viewers are accustomed to seeing artworks that are pictorially and conceptually much more adventurous than Lorrain’s prints. In fact, his approach may even seem like a very natural way to draw and to compose images. Nevertheless, when contextualised with artists working in Lorrain’s time period the distinctiveness of his practice becomes apparent. Compare, for example, Lorrain’s The Tempest with a Shipwreck with Bonaventura Peeters’ [1614-52] depiction of a very similar storm scene in A Dismasted Ship in a Rough Sea (shown below).

Bonaventura Peeters (1614-52)

A Dismasted Ship in a Rough Sea, 1635

Oil on wood

40.6 x 71.1 cm

National Maritime Museum,

Greenwich, London, Ingram Collection

(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Bonaventura_Peeters_-_A_Dismasted_Ship_in_a_Rough_Sea.jpg [viewed 17.2.2013])

With regard to Richard Earlom’s reproduction of Lorrain’s drawings, there is a conceptual gulf separating Lorrain and Earlom’s practices. Lorrain’s approach to reproducing his own paintings and drawings for the Liber Veritatis is well summed up by Sabine Conté’s (1971) term for it as being “a posteriori” (see Claude Lorrain: The Great Draughtsman, p. 66) in the sense that Lorrain’s approach is more about recording of his former ideas and designs than with creating fresh artworks. By contrast, I wish to propose that Earlom’s approach is more about reshaping Lorrain’s compositions to match Earlom’s own artistic disposition and sensitivities than creating authentic facsimiles of Lorrain’s drawings.

Arguably this difference in approach rests to a large extent with the medium Earlom chose to transcribe Lorrain’s drawings into print: mezzotint. No doubt from Earlom’s standpoint this remarkable medium gave him the facility to render gradations of tone with great subtlety as if he were laying watercolour washes (see a brief explanation of the mezzotint process in the earlier post, 18^th century Photoshop). Despite the degree of nuance that Earlom was able to command, his use of the mezzotint process to replicate Lorrain’s drawings falls short in matching the sparkling effect of looking into light that is the essence of Lorrain’s vision: the contre-jour effect (i.e. placing his subjects in front of the light source). Whereas Earlom reproduces Lorrain’s compositional arrangements of placing key features against the light, the mezzotint medium is not ideal for duplicating the glimmer of white paper shinning through the overlay of Lorrain’s pen lines. To illustrate this difference compare the degree of luminosity captured in Earlom’s No. 5. From the Original Drawing in the Collection of R.P. Knight Esq. (shown below and discussed in the earlier post Holly & Clover) with Lorrain’s drawing, Print Study, and related etching, The Tempest [La Tempête] (shown further below).

Richard Earlom (1743–1822) after

Claude Gellée known better as Claude Lorrain (1600–1682)

[Plate] No. 5. From the Original Drawing in the Collection of R.P. Knight Esq., c. 1775 from Liber Veritas published by John Boydell, 1807

Mezzotint on wove paper,

23.2 x 31.5 (plate); 30 x 42.8 cm (sheet)

Condition: faint spotting on verso and a 0.5cm tear on left margin well away from the image otherwise in excellent condition with no blemishes.

I am selling this print for $95 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you have any queries or click the “Buy Now” button below.

No. 5. From the Original Drawing in the Collection of R.P. Knight Esq.

Claude Lorrain (1600–82)

The Tempest [La Tempête], 1630

Etching on wove paper

Seventh state (from Schulze’s 1816 edition of 200 Etchings taken from the original plates) (of Vll)

12.2 x 17.8 cm (sheet)

Russell 4; Blum 1; Mannocci 6; Robert-Dumesnil 5; Knab 112; Duplessis 5

Condition: well-inked impression in excellent condition with no foxing or blemishes. The print has been trimmed within the plate edge and attached at the corners to the same support sheet as issued by Schulze in 1816.

I am selling this print for $220 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button below.

This print has been sold

Detail of Lorrain’s The Tempest

Claude Lorrain (1600–82)

Print Study (drawing), 1630

Brush drawing in brown ink, heightened with white, over red chalk; on cream paper

12.9 x 17.9 cm

Roethlisberger 46; Hind 192

British Museum

© Trustees of the British Museum

In the next post I will extend this discussion to address how artists following Lorrain’s Liber Veritatis evolved fresh ways of creating paper museums of their artistic practice.

Suspension of disbelief: Van't Padje, Scheyndel, Rosetsu, Boissieu, Pintz & Sadeler

What are some ways that artists can fully engage a viewer?

Samuel Coleridge’s famous phrase “suspension of disbelief,” from his Biographia Literaria (1817), is a fine description of the way that viewers often engage with artworks. By this I mean that they “suspend” their conscious thoughts about how the image was created and immerse themselves in a visual dialogue with the image (as discussed in the earlier post, Five key responses to art.). For instance, when I look at Reflections, by one my students, Jason Van’t Padje, a feeling of being metaphorically absorbed within the image occurs; the image is simply riveting and I find difficulty in looking away. In short, my engagement with the reality of knowing that I am looking at an image is suspended and replaced with a state of reverie in which I enter into the spatial realm of the image.

Jason Van’t Padje

Reflections, 2012

Digital image

Sadly, sometimes this “suspension” collapses when viewers are unable to overlook technical shortcomings, such as the incorrect position of the reflected moon in Gillis van Scheyndel’s (active, 1622–79) rare night-scene, Landscape in Moonshine (shown below). 

Gillis van Scheyndel (active, 1622–79)

Landscape in Moonshine, c. 1650

Etching on paper without visible chainlines, watermarked “J. Kool”

9.8 x 14.3 cm (plate); 16.7 x 20.4 cm (sheet)

Hollstein 115 lll (of lll)

Condition: strong impression with wide margins, remnants of mounting hinges (verso), in very good condition. I am selling this print for $180 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the Buy Now button below.

This print has been sold

View of whole sheet

Detail of Gillis van Scheyndel’s Landscape in Moonshine, c. 1650

Whether an artist’s goal is, or even should be, about suspending a viewer’s disbelief cannot be answered with a definitive “yes” or “no.” After all, there will always be exceptions to any broad proposal. Moreover, following a discussion with a colleague, I have come to understand that there are some viewers who will never experience total immersion in an artwork. They are simply not disposed to “letting go” (i.e. they are unable to forget that they are looking at an artwork regardless whether this may be an image or a movie) and so any endeavour to induce total immersion in an artwork is a doomed exercise.

To be frank, even I struggle to suspend my disbelief when looking at artworks as my brain’s wiring engages in flicking between rationalising what I am looking at and immersion in a flow of reverie—what some refer to as being “in the zone.”  I am fully aware of this personal propensity as I am presently looking at Nagasawa Rosetsu’s (1754–99) painting, Standing Crane (shown below), hanging in my studio. In this flicker between conscious rationalisation and subconscious absorption in looking and feeling, the moment of rationalisation is when I marvel at the confidence of Rosetsu’s ink strokes and the unapologetic awkwardness of his composition (in the sense that the crane’s body tangentially brushes against the right edge of the painting). When my mind then flicks to a subconscious phase, I view the way that he portrays the crane as a point of departure for projecting my vision of the artist’s rebellious spirit (for which Rosetsu is famous) and imagine myself in the artist’s shoes.

Nagasawa Rosetsu (also known as Gyo, Masakatsunoinn, Chougyo and Hyokei) (1754–99) or a follower of Rosetsu

(left) view of the whole scroll

(right) detail of image section

Standing Crane

Ink on paper scroll with bone roller ends

60 x 208 cm (scroll); 116 x 46 cm (image)

Condition: light surface wear to image and small perforations to mount, otherwise in good condition.

I am selling this painting for [deleted] including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page 

Rosetsu (Signature)

Gyo (Seal)

Detail of Rosetsu’s, Standing Crane

Regarding how artists work towards triggering a viewer’s shift from conscious scrutiny to subconscious engagement, one important device is the way an image is framed. To explain the subtle ways that a frame can play a major role, the following discussion will address a range frame types and underpinning issues that help to immerse the viewer into a visual dialogue with the image.

An interesting visual device to begin with is the keyhole effect that is essentially an optical illusion where the viewer examines the portrayed subject through a keyhole framed aperture. Like the Holly and Clover illusion discussed in the earlier posts, Representing light and Holly & Clover, the effect is to do with the silhouette edge and how the framing of a subject affects the way we perceive it. In the case of the Holly and Clover illusion, the effect is driven by either a scalloped format similar in shape to a holly leaf that pictorially “pushes” the framed subject backward into a void whereas a format shaped like a clover leaf pictorially “pulls” the framed subject forward. With the keyhole effect the illusion is not so much about a pictorial “push” and “pull,” but rather about creating a type of stereoscopic vision.

The illusion of three-dimensions that forms when looking at an image through a keyhole-like aperture—an “x”-shaped aperture has a similar effect to the traditional keyhole shape—is driven by a sensation of spatial disjunction. This experience probably arises from the viewer’s psychological abandonment of the surrounding space in favour of the realm visible through the opening. To demonstrate this odd phenomenon I will use Jean-Jacques de Boissieu’s (1736–1810) vignette portrait, Le Père Cotrot, Garçon Teinturier à Lyon (shown below).

Jean-Jacques de Boissieu (1736–1810)

Le Père Cotrot, Garçon Teinturier à Lyon, 1770

Etching, engraving, drypoint and roulette on Chine appliqué

20 x 16 cm (plate); 26.4 x 23.5 cm (sheet)

Signed in plate lower right: “DB 1770”

Perez 46

Condition: strong impression, damp patch lower right (2 cm from plate mark), traces of handling, otherwise in good condition.

I am selling this print for [deleted] including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested

When this print is viewed as de Boissieu intended (i.e. with the head of Cotrot dissolving into his surroundings) the graphic representation of pictorial space surrounding Cotrot is designed to extend, with indulgence of a viewer’s suspension of disbelief, to the space that the viewer occupies. Essentially the two spatial realms—the graphic of the print and the real of the viewer—are metaphorically smudged. This is not the case when a keyhole or similar aperture frames the portrait of Cotrot, as shown below.

With an overlay of this kind, the space that the viewer occupies is divorced from the space surrounding Cotrot by virtue of the keyhole acting as a privileged viewpoint in what is essentially a wall-like barrier presented by the frame. Each viewer’s reading of what they see when looking through such an aperture will be different, but, from my reading, I see a fragment of a world that seems as real as the space I occupy. This illusion of a super reality underpins the keyhole effect and how it generates a suspension of disbelief in a spatial realm of which we can only have a glimpse.

The Keyhole Effect

From my explorations using different shaped formats I discovered that horizontals and verticals featured in the format shape interferes with this perception of spatial disjuncture. For example, in the experimental watercolours, Decorative Panel A and B shown below, I am not convinced that the square-edged format employed in them triggers the same perception of a super reality exhibited with the formal keyhole shape. Instead, the effect is like the Holly and Clover illusion of “push” and “pull” underpinning Rudolf Arnheim’s insight in Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye  (1974) that “convexity makes for the figure, convexity for the ground” (p. 232).

James Brown

(left) Decorative Panel A, 1991

(right) Decorative Panel B, 1991

Watercolour on Arches paper

(each panel) 61.8 x 35.8 cm

These paintings have been sold

Compare, for example, the effect when Boissieu’s print is viewed through a “+”- shaped aperture (shown below) to the effect when it is viewed through an “x”-shaped (shown further below). To my eyes the angled aperture of the “x”-shape creates a much stronger illusion of spatial disjuncture than I see with the “+”- shaped aperture.

View through a “+”-shaped aperture

View through an “x”-shaped aperture

Of course, any framing edge to an image acts as a line of demarcation separating the physical realm occupied by the viewer from the pictorial realm of the image. Going further, usually this line of demarcation acts as a picture plane window for the spatial illusion it frames, as can be seen in I.G. Pintz’s TAB. DVII—IOB. Cap. 1. v. 16. 18. 19. Decora et Pecora Iobi proftrata (shown below). Interestingly, Printz has made his window effect a critical component of this print by facilitating a visual dialogue between the framing edge and the pictorial depth of the image. This notion of dialogue arises because the motifs represented in the engraved frame contain skulls, storm clouds with wind-blowing cherubs and what I assume are funerary urns, all of which are symbols correlating with the cataclysmic scene portrayed within the pictorial window.

I.G. Pintz [Johann Georg Pintz] (1697–1767)

TAB. DVII—IOB. Cap. 1. v. 16. 18. 19. Decora et Pecora Iobi proftrata , 1731

From Scheuchze’s (1672–1733) Physica Sacra

Engraving on laid paper

32 x 20.6 cm (plate); 42.2 x 25 cm (sheet)

Condition: superb impression with no foxing. The sheet exhibits toning at edges and traces of handling. The print has generous borders on three sides but the right side has a 1 cm border from the plate mark.

I am selling this print for [deleted] including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. 

View of the whole sheet

Detail of TAB. DVII—IOB. Cap. 1. v. 16. 18. 19. Decora et Pecora Iobi proftrata 

In terms of physical frames made of timber and glass, there is a long and well entrenched tradition of using physical frames to present images as windows to another realm. Even the poor, who were unable to afford frames for their artworks, had a solution when they came to display artworks. In the two very early engravings by Raphael Sadeler I (1560/61–1628/32) and Jan Sadeler I (1550–1600) shown below, for instance, canvas laminated to the front and the back of the prints provide a cost effective solution to making the prints more robust for handling and, importantly, for creating a window-like effect. Note that these prints still show evidence of pin holes where they were affixed to the wall and hand-colouring to make the illusion of pictorial depth more real.

Raphael Sadeler I (1560/61–1628/32)

after the design by Marten de Vos (1532–1603)

Saint Bavo, 1593-94

State 1 (of 2)

Engraving, hand-coloured with linen backing (verso) and linen frame border (recto)

18.9 x 22.5 cm (sheet)

Bartsch 7101.105 S1; Hollstein (1980) 21.124; Hollstein (1995-96) 41.1007

Condition: slightly silvery impression with no foxing but general surface dustiness.  As noted above, the print is laminated with linen verso and recto and has been coloured by an old hand.

I am selling this print for $80 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. 
Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button below.

This print has been sold

Detail of Sadeler’s Saint Bavo showing the linen frame

Jan (Johannes/Johan/Joan) Sadeler I (1550–1600)

After a lost drawing by Marten de Vos (1532–1603)

Saint Joannicius, c. 1587

(“After a career as a soldier, the saint retired to Mount Olympus in Bithynia. His death in 846 is celebrated on 4 November.” [Bartsch 70001.396])

State 1 (of 2)

Engraving, hand-coloured with linen backing (verso) and linen frame border (recto)

18.9 x 22.7 cm (sheet)

Bartsch 7001.396; Hollstein (1980) 21.426; Hollstein (1995-96) 44.1029; Senechal (1987) 18; Edquist (1990) p. 82, no. 95b

Condition: slightly silvery impression with no foxing but general surface dustiness, stains and wear. A small patch is missing lower centre where the letter “i” should be in “Dei.” As noted above, the print is laminated with linen verso and recto and has been coloured by an old hand.

I am selling this print for $80 AUD including postage and handling to anywhere in the world. Please contact me using the email link at the top of the page if you are interested or click the “Buy Now” button below.

This print has been sold

Although framing devices, especially the keyhole effect, can trigger Coleridge’s “suspension of disbelief” the image itself must support the flow of total engagement. In the next post I will discuss some of the conventions underpinning the depiction of foreground, middle distance and distance that support a viewer’s total engagement. Before ending this discussion, however, I need to point out that a viewer’s absorption in looking does not necessarily mean that an image must be a well-composed cohesive image. Indeed, sometimes a viewer’s experience of being immersed in the imagery is all about fragmentation. For instance, when I look at Saint Joannicius (shown above), my attention is fragmented into a series of spatial cells, each with its own spatial realm to explore (see the digital mapping of the key spatial realms below). What I mean to point out by this insight is that there are more elements to capturing and sustaining a viewer’s interest than artful composition. In fact, some of the most memorable images are those that challenge our expectations.

Spatial cells in Sadeler’s Saint Joannicius