Le Soleil levant [Harbor Scene with Rising Sun]

The creator of classical landscape painting, Claude Lorrain was an etcher of equivalent beauty and significance. Le soleil levant, based on a painting in the Hermitage, is one of the first plates of his mature style, systematic in construction, luminous in effect, and exquisite in touch. For nearly a decade, Claude did not make a print. When he resumed with the Berger et bergère, above, the conception was more improvisatory, the initial handling broader, and the plate steadily refined through multiple states. Steinberg’s six etchings by Claude are of a quality now unobtainable.