There is a talk today in the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre in the National Gallery.
Jon Whiteley, Senior Assistant Keeper at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, will consider the extent to which the art of drawing for Claude Lorrain was a form of art in its own right.
Like many 17th-century Northeners in Rome, Claude never tired of walking along the Tiber Valley and recording his favourite sites in chalk, brush and pen. His drawings of the Campagna are among the most atmospheric landscape drawings ever made. They may have been drawn for the sake of understanding the details of the landscapes and the effects of light which he later used in his paintings but it seems clear that drawing for Claude was an end in itself.
Even when he made studies for specific paintings, he could never resist going beyond the immediate purpose of the drawing in order to make it into a self-sufficient work of art. The results are often eccentric and sometimes bizarre.
The talk is from 12.45pm to 1.30pm and is free of charge.
