A lecture by Jon WHITELEY, Curator of the exhibition "Claude Lorrain: The Enchanted Landscape", Ashmolean Museum
It is often said that Claude was not a French artist. He was born in Lorraine when it was not part of France, was trained in Italy and spent most of his working life in Rome. But he maintained constant links with France and his career conformed in many ways to a pattern of French artists whose ideal was found not in Paris but in Rome. What did it mean to be a French artist in Claude's lifetime? The answer to this question touches on wider issues of nationalism and cosmopolitanism in European art.
