
Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00011004View of the Acqua Acetosa (recto); David and Goliath (verso)
Also known as: Landscape with Cattle
About the Artwork
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
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.
Exhibition history
Master Drawings of the Roman Baroque. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany. Claude Lorrain, 1600-1682: Paintings, Drawings, Prints. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA (organizer). Drawings in the Classic and Romantic Tradition before 1830. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 7, 1932-January 8, 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. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 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). 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). Chinese Landscape Painting. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 5-December 26, 1954). 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). Brush Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (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, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 9-June 8, 2014).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Claude Lorrain (French, 1604–1682)
- Date
- c. 1645
- Medium
- pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over graphite, framing lines in brown ink
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 26 x 40.5 cm (10 1/4 x 15 15/16 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward B. Greene
- Accession no.
- 1928.15
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Open-access museum record · AT-00011004
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