Skip to main content

Landscape with Hagar and the Angel:
Catalogue entry

Catalogue contents

About the catalogue

Full title
Landscape with Hagar and the Angel
Artist
Claude
Inventory number
NG61
Author
Humphrey Wine
Extracted from
The Seventeenth Century French Paintings (London, 2001)

Claude (Claude Lorrain) 1604/5?–1682
NG 61 
Landscape with Hagar and the Angel

Humphrey Wine, 2001

Extracted from:
Humphrey Wine, The Seventeenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2001).

© The National Gallery, London

Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 52.2 × 42.3 cm

Signed and dated at bottom near the centre: [CL] [?] AVD/16461

Provenance

Possibly Jeanne‐Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes, comtesse de Verrue (1670–1736), her posthumous sale, Paris, 27ff. March 1737 (lot 100 or 101, 380 livres);2 possibly Augustin de Blondel de Gagny (1695–1776), Trésorier Général de la Caisse des Amortissements des Dettes du Roy, of place Vendôme, Paris, Pierre Rémy, 10ff. December 1776 (lot 198, 4050 livres to Basan ‘pour langleterre’);3 probably Matthew Duane’s posthumous sale, London, Greenwood, 23 April 1785 (lot 66, £210 to Hearn on behalf of Sir George Beaumont);4 seen by Constable at Dedham in 1795;5 seen by Coleridge in Beaumont’s collection in 1804;6 probably one of the three paintings by Claude transferred by Beaumont to Coleorton Hall, Leics., in 1808;7 later noted there by Neale in the drawing room;8 transferred to the National Gallery in 1826,9 but at Beaumont’s request lent to him for life, finally entering the Gallery in 1828.

Exhibitions

London ?1816, BI (66);10 London 1945, NG , Fifty‐four pictures on exhibition at the reopening of the Gallery 17th May 1945 (no catalogue); Bologna 1962, Palazzo dell’ Archiginnasio, L’ideale classico dei seicento in Italia e la pittura di paeseggio (96); London 1973–4, Tate Gallery, Landscape in Britain circa 1750–1850 (1); London 1975, NG , The Rival of Nature. Renaissance Painting in its context (202); Leicester 1985–6, The Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, Masterpieces of Reality – French 17th Century Painting (29); London 1988, NG , ‘Noble and Patriotic’. The Beaumont Gift 1828 (4); London 1994, NG , Claude. The Poetic Landscape (19).

Related Works

Paintings
  • (1) Collection of F.W. Willis, Ratby, Leics., in 1984. Oil on canvas, ‘same size as original, apparently late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, fairly poor quality, almost certainly English’;11
  • (2) Private collection, USA(?), in 1967. Oil on twill canvas, 21⅞ × 18 in. According to a letter of 12 March 1967 from Gerard Stern, the same painting as that owned by Lord Windsor in 1894.12 A good quality albeit worn copy to judge from photographs in the NG dossier. The X‐ray photographs in the dossier show it mounted on a stretcher which is keyed and so eighteenth century or later;
  • (3) Anon. sale, Christie’s, 2 August 1956, oil on canvas, 19 × 17 in., lot 274, £6 6s. to Cohen (as ‘Woody Lake Scene with Tobias and the Angel’). A copy. Photograph in NG dossier;
  • (4) Anon. sale, Sotheby’s, 22 July 1953, 20 × 17 in., lot 127, £10 to James. Mediocre copy. Photograph in NG dossier;
  • (5) Private collection, USA(?). Support and dimensions unknown, but possibly 52 × 44 cm.13 Photograph in NG dossier. A copy;
  • (6) Collection of Mr Bingham in 1959. Photograph in NG dossier inscribed on the reverse by Martin Davies: ‘claimed to be Constable’s copy. Size approx. that of the original’. The painting of the background of this copy seems to be especially dull;
  • (7) John Constable deceased sale, London, Foster & Sons, 15 May 1838, lot 48, £53 11s., and owned by Marshall in 1853.14 A copy by Constable of 1799/1800(?);15
  • (8) Anon. sale, Phillips, Bayswater, 4 December 1995, lot 28, oil on canvas, 53.5 × 43 cm, £520 plus buyers’ premium (as ‘after Claude Lorraine, 19th Century’). No photograph made;
  • (9) Anon. sale, Newbury, Dreweatt Neate, 4 June 1997, lot 28, watercolour, 42 × 33 cm. Purchased by Richard Knight and resold by him minus the frame by the same auctioneers later that month. No photograph made. (See correspondence in NG dossier);
  • (10) Anon. sale, Bonhams, Chelsea, 6 September 2000, lot 215, oil on canvas, 54.5 × 47 cm, £340. A copy without the figures, described as ‘English School, 19th Century’.
Drawings (by Claude)
  • (1) London, British Museum, no. Oo.7‐154 ( MRD 625). Inscribed at bottom: Agare et ismael l’Angelo mostre l’acqua. Possibly a preliminary study for the figures;
  • (2) London, British Museum, no. 112. LV 106 ( MRD 626) (fig. 2). Inscribed on the verso: quadro pour paris; and on another occasion: Claudio ivf.
Prints

Technical Notes

Some blanching, some losses around the edges, some drying creases in the paint and some old toning in the foliage and foreground, but otherwise in good condition. The primary support is a twill canvas mounted on an oak panel before 1852; the canvas shows stretcher cracks and therefore was not originally so mounted. Before the 1853 Select Committee on the National Gallery it was claimed by John Seguier in relation to NG 61 that Sir George Beaumont ‘was very much in the habit of rubbing his pictures over with oil’,18 and by Baring Wall, one of the Committee members, that Beaumont was ‘in the constant habit of cleaning, varnishing, and washing with some preparation that little Claude, with which he always travelled’.19

[page 111] [page 112]
Fig. 1

X‐ray detail. © The National Gallery, London

The back of the oak panel is marked in crayon (?) X 15. NG 61 was last cleaned and restored in 1961 (it had previously been cleaned in 1852) when the partial signature and the date were discovered (see above), although the middle 6 and the 4 of the date may have been retouched. Following the 1852 cleaning Cavalcaselle claimed that orange ‘undoubtedly was once the colour of the Angel’s vestment, as may be seen indeed upon the shoulder, where traces of that tint are visible; but now the greater part of the vestment is merely the blue preparation deprived of its orange glazings. The wings of the Angel are likewise deprived of their glazings, and their original colour gone.’20 This is not, however, confirmed by examination under a microscope – although the orange‐red colour over the blue drapery on the angel is original, and slightly worn in places, it appears that Claude intended to convey the effect of shot drapery rather than paint it uniformly orange.

An X‐ray photograph (fig. 1) shows that the angel’s right arm from wrist to elbow was originally painted in, but is now covered by a wing; that the main arch of the bridge was originally slightly wider; and that some branches at the right were painted out. There also seems to have originally been an object (a water jug?) below the angel’s left foot.

[page 113]

Discussion

The subject is from Genesis 16:7–15. Hagar, an Egyptian servant, was expecting a child by Abraham and was banished from his home by his wife, Sarah, who was childless. An angel appeared to Hagar beside a spring in the desert and ordered her to return to Sarah, saying: ‘I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.’ This is the first of four paintings by Claude showing an episode from the story of Hagar.21 In addition, in his will of 1663 Claude left ‘a landscape picture with the Angel and Hagar’, presumably by himself, to the apostolic notary Renato della Borna.22 As Roethlisberger has pointed out, with the exception of the picture now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, the last to be painted, all were painted without pendants.23 LV 106 (fig. 3) records NG 61 in horizontal format, but without the boat and with a second smaller arch in the bridge to the left of the main arch,24 and, as Davies noted, more of the angel outlined against the water.25 All of these changes may be accounted for by Claude wishing to reduce the horizontal emphases in a drawing which recorded a composition already ‘stretched’ into a horizontal format.

NG 61 has been wrongly called ‘The Annunciation’ (see Prints), although the correct subject was identified in print soon after the picture permanently entered the Gallery’s collection.26 A copy of NG 61 has also been called ‘Tobias and the Angel’ (see Related Works: Paintings (3)), as may have NG 61 itself (see notes 2 and 3). The later confusion may have been encouraged by the long recognised compositional similarity between NG 61 and Domenichino’s Landscape with Tobias (NG 48; fig. 3).27 It seems unlikely, however, that Claude had the Domenichino directly in mind (assuming that he knew it at all) when planning NG 61 since he had previously used a similar composition for paintings of other subjects.28 On the other hand he surely referred to LV 106 (fig. 2) when conceiving his own Landscape with Tobias and the Angel (Leningrad, Hermitage, no. 1236) recorded in LV 160 (fig. 4).29

Fig. 2

Landscape with Hagar and the Angel, 1646. Pen and dark brown wash on blue paper, heightening, 19.4 × 25.9 cm. London, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings . © The British Museum, London , inv. 1957,1214.112 © The Trustees of the British Museum

Fig. 3

Domenichino, Landscape with Tobias laying hold of the Fish, c. 1610–13. Oil on copper, 45.1 × 33.9 cm. London, National Gallery. © The National Gallery, London

Fig. 4

Landscape with Tobias and the Angel, 1663. Pen and brown wash, heightened, on blue paper, 19.8 × 25.9 cm. London, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings . © The British Museum, London , inv. 1957,1214.166 © The Trustees of the British Museum

[page 114]
Fig. 5

John Constable, Dedham Vale, 1802. Oil on canvas, 43.5 × 34.4 cm. London, Victoria and Albert Museum . © The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London , (124-1888). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

NG 61 was greatly admired by Constable, who in 1836 called it one of Claude’s best pictures;30 he had probably first seen it some forty years previously.31 Its composition influenced his Dedham Vale of 1802 (London, Victoria & Albert Museum; fig. 5),32 and, less closely, his Dedham Vale of 1827–8 (Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland).33 It also seems to have influenced Turner’s compositions in Mercury and Herse (England, private collection) and Crossing the Brook (London, Tate Gallery).34 The latter painting was vehemently criticised in 1815 by Sir George Beaumont, who called it ‘weak’ and ‘of peagreen insipidity’,35 perhaps by comparison with, and in defence of, his dearly beloved Landscape with Hagar and the Angel, which Beaumont then owned and with which he reportedly dealt ‘almost as a man would deal with a child he loved; he travelled with it; carried it about with him; and valued it… beyond any picture that he had.’36

General References

Smith 1837, no. 106; Pattison 1884, p. 228; Davies 1957, pp. 45–6; Roethlisberger 1961, no. 106; Roethlisberger 1975, no. 171; Kitson 1978, pp. 117–18; Wright 1985b, p. 96 (and no. 29).

Notes

1. For the discovery of the signature and date, see M. Levey, ‘A Claude Signature and Date revealed after cleaning’, BM , 104, 1962, pp. 390–1. Levey was able to decipher the signature as LAVD, but the L cannot now be seen. (Back to text.)

2. The NG Library has photostats of 4 MSS of the Verrue sale from the RKDH : (i) Catalogue des Tableaux du cabinet de Me. la Comtesse De Verruë Année 1737 has as lot 100, ‘Un tableau de Claude Petit representant Tobie – 380’; (ii) Catalogue des Tableaux de Madame la Comtesse de Verrue dont la Vente a comencée le Mercredi 27 mars 1737 has as lot 101, ‘Un Tableau de Claude Petit ou Gelée dit le Lorrain represt. Tobie – 380’; (iii) Catalogue de la Vente Des Tableaux de Me. la Comtesse de Verruë. Année 1737, in its ‘14e Vacation’ has as lot 100, ‘Un de Cl. Petit representant Tobie–380’; (iv) Catalogue avec Les Prix de la vente de La Ctesse de Verrue faite en 1737. les 27 28 & c mars. has as its lot 101, ‘Claude Lorrain Tobie – 380’.

As Davies (1957, p. 47, n. 1) pointed out, ‘Petit’ in the first three of these catalogues may be assumed to refer to the picture’s size.

For the comtesse de Verrue (1670–1736) of rue du Cherche‐Midi, Paris, see Barbara Scott, ‘The Comtesse de Verrue. A Lover of Dutch and Flemish art’, Apollo, 97, 1973, pp. 20–4, who states as a fact (p. 23) that the countess owned NG 61. (Back to text.)

[page 115]

3. Described in the sale catalogue as: ‘Un paysage piquant par son site, par sa fraîcheur & la bonté de sa touche, Claude Gelée qui en est l’auteur, y a placé Tobie prosterné aux pieds de l’Ange, son conducteur. / Ce tableau est encore d’un mérite sublime sur une toile de 19 pouces 3 lignes de haut, sur 16 pouces de large.’ Curiously Rémy gave a Verrue provenance for the immediately preceding lot, NG 1018, although nothing like it is recorded in any of the MSS catalogues of the Verrue sale (for which see note 2 above). As Anne Thackray has pointed out (note in NG dossier), the cataloguer may have confused which of lots 197 and 198 had been in the Verrue collection. For Blondel de Gagny, see L. Clément de Ris, Les Amateurs d’autrefois, Paris 1877, pp. 343–58. (Back to text.)

4. Described in the catalogue (according to a typed transcript in the NG Library, Box AXI 6 17) as: ‘CLAUDE and LORAIN 66 A landscape (came out of Monsieur De Gagny’s collection).’ The typescript is annotated ‘210’ in ink in the margin. The reference to NG 61 having been in the Duane collection is in Ottley 1832, p. 32. For Matthew Duane (1707–85), lawyer, antiquary and trustee of the British Museum, see DNB .

In October 1786 Jacob More, writing to Beaumont from Rome, was ‘glad to hear you have purchased a fine Claude’, which has been assumed to be NG 61: F. Owen and D. Blayney Brown, Collector of Genius. A Life of Sir George Beaumont, New Haven and London 1988, p. 65. Felicity Owen has kindly advised me (letter of 8 February 2000) that Hearn was the same Thomas Hearn who bid for NG 19, that Beaumont met him in 1771 as Woollett’s apprentice and that Hearn accompanied Beaumont on many British tours, and even on his honeymoon. She also points out that the dates of acquisition by Beaumont of his other Claudes preclude any of them from being that acquired by him in 1785. He seems to have bought NG 58 in 1787 and NG 19 in 1790, while NG 55 was not recorded in Beaumont’s collection before 1790 at the earliest. (Back to text.)

5. Constable first saw NG 61 in July 1795 at Dedham: Ian Fleming‐Williams, Constable and his Drawings, London 1990, pp. 35, 77, and Felicity Owen, ‘Early Influences on John Constable’, in From Gainsborough to Constable. The emergence of naturalism in British Landscape Painting 1750–1810, exh. cat., Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, and Leger Galleries, London 1991, pp. 15–30, at p. 15. Felicity Owen tells me (letter of 8 February 2000) that NG 61 would have been taken to Dedham when Beaumont visited his mother there, and that it used to be transported under the roof of his carriage. Leslie 1845, pp. 5–6, and Life and Letters of John Constable, R.A., London 1896, p. 6, where said to be the first painting by Claude seen by Constable. Constable briefly referred to NG 61 as among the best by Claude in a lecture at the Royal Institution on 2 June 1836: Leslie 1845, p.383. According to Owen and Blayney Brown (cited in note 4, p. 77), NG 61 was among the paintings hung in Beaumont’s new gallery in his house at 34 Grosvenor Square (renumbered 29 in 1833), when the gallery was completed in 1792. (Back to text.)

6. Owen and Blayney Brown, 1988, p. 77. (Back to text.)

7. The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. IX, p. 3297 (entry for 17 June 1808), notes three paintings by Claude to be removed to Coleorton together with Farington’s estimate of what they had cost Beaumont:

£
Large Claude 630
Small do. 210
Small trees do. abt. 40

The ‘Large Claude’ must be NG 19 and the ‘small trees do.’ is surely NG 58, but ‘small do.’ could be either NG 61, or NG 55 (then believed to be by Claude). (Back to text.)

8. All four paintings by Claude in Beaumont’s collection were noted at Coleorton by Neale, NG 19 and 55 in the Breakfast Room, and NG 58 and 61 in the Drawing Room (Neale 1818–23, vol. 1 (1818), p. 71). (Back to text.)

9. George Agar Ellis saw NG 61 (together with NG 19, 55 and 58) at the National Gallery on 5 April 1826: Owen and Blayney Brown 1988, p. 215. (Back to text.)

10. Described in the exhibition handlist as ‘Landscape with Figures’. Since Beaumont was so attached to NG 61, the picture exhibited in 1816 at the British Institution seems more likely to have been NG 58 or NG 55. It could not have been Landscape with Narcissus and Echo (NG 19) because the anonymous author of A Catalogue Raisonné of the Pictures Now exhibiting in Pall Mall, Part Second, London 1816, wrote in connection with the exhibited pictures: ‘…we are disposed to ask why…the owner of this picture has withheld his leathern sun‐set, wherein Narcissus has all the graces of a clodhopper, and Echo is so characteristically made to look the image of a Q‐in‐a‐corner’ (p. 19). The subject of NG 55 was surely too well known to have been described simply as ‘Landscape with figures’. (Back to text.)

11. Note in NG dossier by M. Wilson dated 11 April 1984. (Back to text.)

12. For the intermediate provenance, see Roethlisberger 1961, p. 269. (Back to text.)

13. Letter in NG dossier of 14 October 1972 from M.E. Petersen, Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, Ca. (Back to text.)

14. Report of the Select Committee on the National Gallery, London 1853, para. 5072. (Back to text.)

15. Farington’s diary entry for 29 May 1800 records, ‘Sir George Beaumont I called on this morning – Constable copying small upright Claude.’ (The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 4, p. 1399). See also Leslie 1845, p. 10, for an undated letter from Constable to John Dunthorne expressing his hope ‘to go on with my copy from Sir George Beaumont’s little Claude’. The letter may have been written in the spring of 1800: see John Constable’s Correspondence, II, ed. R.B. Beckett, Ipswich 1964, p. 23. (Back to text.)

16. The anonymous author of the accompanying text (John Landseer?) recognised the subject as more probably intended to represent Hagar and the Angel. (Back to text.)

17. But called Agar dans le desert by Charles Blanc in the text (p. 15). (Back to text.)

18. Report of the Select Committee on the National Gallery, London 1853, para. 3025. (Back to text.)

19. Ibid. , para. 5080. (Back to text.)

20. Letter of 9 June 1853 printed and translated in Report of the Select Committee on the National Gallery, London 1853, pp. 784–7. (Back to text.)

21. The others are Roethlisberger 1961, nos 133, 140, 174. (Back to text.)

22. See Roethlisberger 1961, p. 67. (Back to text.)

23. Roethlisberger 1961, p. 268; and M. Roethlisberger, ‘The Subjects of Claude Lorrain’s Paintings’, GBA , 55 (1960), pp. 209–24, at p. 218. (Back to text.)

24. It does not appear, pace Roethlisberger 1961, p. 269, that this smaller arch ever existed in NG 61. (Back to text.)

25. Davies 1957, p. 46. (Back to text.)

26. Ottley 1832, pp. 31–2; and Valpy’s National Gallery, pp. 41–2; and see note 16 above. Beaumont himself called the picture ‘A small Hagar & Ishmael’ in June 1823: NG Archive, NG5/1/1823. (Back to text.)

27. Recognised implicitly in Valpy’s National Gallery, pp. 39–42, where the discussions of the two pictures follow each other and the engravings appear side by side. See also Kitson 1961, 2, p. 155; Roethlisberger 1961, p. 268; and Bologna 1962, p. 243. The Domenichino was certainly in the Palazzo Colonna, Rome, in 1783 and quite possibly long before then: Levey 1971, p. 92. Jaffé noted as the main difference between the two paintings that in the Domenichino ‘there is no such light‐drenched atmosphere of intimate enclosure [redolent of Elsheimer]’: M. Jaffé, ‘The Lunettes and After: Bologna 1962’, BM , 104, 1962, pp. 410–19 at p. 418. (Back to text.)

28. See LV 47, 88, 92 recording paintings dating from 1639/40 to 1645. The compositional affinities between NG 61 and these other three paintings were noted by Roethlisberger (1961, p. 268). (Back to text.)

29. See Roethlisberger 1968, p. 339. (Back to text.)

30. John Constable’s Discourses, compiled and annotated by R.B. Beckett, Ipswich 1970, p. 54. (Back to text.)

31. Leslie 1845, pp. 5–6. (Back to text.)

32. G. Reynolds, Victoria and Albert Museum. Catalogue of The Constable Collection, London 1973, p. 46; L. Parris and I. Fleming‐Williams, Constable, Tate Gallery, London 1991, no. 2. (Back to text.)

33. Parris and Fleming‐Williams, op. cit. , no. 169. There are numerous other references in the Claude and Constable art historical literature to the inflence of NG 61 on Constable’s two paintings of Dedham Vale. (Back to text.)

34. M. Butlin and E. Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner. Revised Edition, New Haven and London 1984, nos 114 and 130, exhibited respectively in 1811 and 1815. (Back to text.)

35. Ibid. , p. 94. (Back to text.)

36. Lord Mounteagle in evidence to the Select Committee on the National Gallery: see its Report, cited in note 14, para. 5080. (Back to text.)

Abbreviations

BM
Burlington Magazine, London, 1903–
DNB
Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 1917–
LV
Liber Veritatis
MRD
Roethlisberger 1968b (Marcel Roethlisberger: Catalogue raisonné of Drawings)
RKDH
Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistoriche Documentatie, The Hague

List of references cited

Blanc 1861–76
Blanc, Charles, et al. , Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles, 11 vols, Paris 1861–76
Butlin and Joll 1984
Butlin, Martin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, 2 vols, revised edn, New Haven and London 1984 (first edn, 1977)
Clément de Ris 1877
Clément de Ris, L., Les Amateurs d’autrefois, Paris 1877
Complete Peerage 1910–59
Doubleday, H.A., Lord Howard de Walden, G.H. White and R.S. Lea, eds, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant, 12 or 13 vols, 2nd edn, London 1910–59
Constable 1962–8
Constable, John, John Constable’s Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett, 6 vols, Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962–8
Constable 1970
Constable, John, John Constable’s Discourses, compiled and annotated by R.B. Beckett, Ipswich 1970
Cunningham 1833
Cunningham, A., The Cabinet Gallery of Pictures, selected from the splendid collections of art, public and private, which adorn Great Britain; with biographical and critical descriptions, 2 vols, London 1833
Davies 1946
Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The French School, London 1946 (revised 2nd edn, London 1957)
Davies 1957
Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The French School, 2nd edn, revised, London 1957
Dictionary of National Biography
Dictionary of National Biography, London 1885– (Oxford 1917–)
Engravings from the Pictures of the National Gallery, London 1840
Farington 1978–98
Farington, Joseph, The Diary of Joseph Farington, eds Kenneth Garlick, Angus Macintyre and Kathryn Cave, index compiled by Evelyn Newby (vols I–VI ed. Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre; vols VII–XVI ed. Kathryn Cave), 16 vols, New Haven and London 1978–98
Fleming‐Williams 1990
Fleming‐Williams, Ian, Constable and his Drawings, London 1990
Jaffé 1962
Jaffé, M., ‘The Lunettes and After: Bologna 1962’, Burlington Magazine, 1962, 104, 410–19
Kitson 1961
Kitson, M., ‘The Relationship between Claude and Poussin in Landscape’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1961, 24, 142–62
Kitson 1978
Kitson, M., Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis, London 1978
Leslie 1845/1937
Leslie, C.R., Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq., R.A., London 1845 (Shirley, A., ed., London 1937)
Leslie 1896
Leslie, C.R., Life and Letters of John Constable, R.A., London 1896
Levey 1962
Levey, M., ‘A Claude Signature and Date revealed after cleaning’, Burlington Magazine, 1962, 104, 390–1
Levey 1971
Levey, M., National Gallery Catalogues: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1971 (reprint, 1986)
Mahon 1962a
Mahon, D., ‘entries’, in L’Ideale Classico del Seicento in Italia e la Pittura di Paesaggio (exh. cat.), Bologna 1962
Mahon, Kitson and Arcangeli 1962
Mahon, D., M. Kitson and F. Arcangeli, L’Ideale Classico del Seicento in Italia e la Pittura di Paesaggio (exh. cat. Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna, 1962), Bologna 1962
National Gallery. A Selection of its Pictures. Engraved by George Doo…and others, London 1875
National Gallery of Pictures by the Great Masters presented by Individuals or purchased by grant of Parliament, 2 vols, London n.d. [1838?]
Neale1818–23
Neale, J.P., Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, 6 vols, London 1818–23, 1st series
Ottley 1832
Ottley, William Young, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery with critical remarks on their merits, London 1832
Owen 1991
Owen, Felicity, ‘Early Influences on John Constable’, in From Gainsborough to Constable. The Emergence of Naturalism in British Landscape Painting 1750–1810, ed. Hugh Belsey (exh. cat. Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, and Leger Galleries, London 1991), Sudbury 1991, 15–30
Owen and Brown 1988
Owen, Felicity and David Blayney Brown, Collector of Genius: A Life of Sir George Beaumont, New Haven and London 1988
Owen and Brown exh. cat. 1988
Owen, Felicity, David Brown, with catalogue by John Leighton, Noble and Patriotic: The Beaumont Gift 1828 (exh. cat. National Gallery), London 1988
Parris 1973
Parris, Leslie, Landscape in Britain (exh. cat. Tate Gallery), London 1973
Parris and Fleming-Williams 1991
Parris, Leslie and Ian Fleming‐Williams, Constable (exh. cat. Tate Gallery), London 1991
Pattison 1884
Pattison, M., Claude Lorrain. Sa vie et ses oeuvres d’après des documents inédits, Paris 1884
Report 1853
Report from the Select Committee on the National Gallery, London 1853
Reynolds 1973
Reynolds, G., Victoria and Albert Museum. Catalogue of The Constable Collection, London 1973
Roethlisberger 1960
Roethlisberger, M., ‘The Subjects of Claude Lorrain’s Paintings’, Gazette des Beaux‐Arts, 1960, 55, 209–24
Roethlisberger 1961
Roethlisberger, M., Claude Lorrain: The Paintings, 2 vols, London 1961
Roethlisberger 1968b
Roethlisberger, M., Claude Lorrain. The Drawings, 2 vols, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1968
Roethlisberger 1975
Roethlisberger, M., Gaspard Dughet, Rome 1615–1675, New York and London, Richard Feigen & Co. and Herner Wengraf Ltd, 1975
Scott 1973
Scott, B., ‘The Comtesse de Verrue. A Lover of Dutch and Flemish art’, Apollo, 1973, 97, 20–4
Smirke 1816
[?Smirke, R.], A Catalogue Raisonné of the Pictures now Exhibiting in Pall Mall, [London?] 1816
Smith 1837
Smith, John, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters … (with Supplement), vol. 8, French Painters, London 1837
Valpy’s National Gallery of Painting and Sculpture…, London n.d. [1831?]
Wright 1985a
Wright, C., Poussin paintings: a catalogue raisonné, London 1985
Wright1985b
Wright, C., Masterpieces of reality: French 17th century painting (exh. cat. Leicester 1985–6), 1985

List of exhibitions cited

Bologna 1962
Bologna, Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio, L’Ideale Classico del Seicento in Italia e la Pittura di Paesaggio, 1962 (exh. cat.: Mahon, Kitson and Arcangeli 1962)
Leicester 1985–6
Leicester, Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, Masterpieces of Reality. French 17th Century Painting, 1985–6 (exh. cat.: Wright 1985a)
London 1816, British Institution
London, British Institution, Catalogue of pictures of the Italian and Spanish Schools, 1816
London 1945
London, National Gallery, Fifty‐four pictures on exhibition at the reopening of the Gallery 17th May 1945, 1945
London 1973–4
London, Tate Gallery, Landscape in Britain circa 1750–1850, 20 November 1973–3 February 1974 (exh. cat.: Parris 1973)
London, National Gallery, The Rival of Nature: Renaissance Painting in its Context, 9 June–28 September 1975
London 1988
London, National Gallery, ‘Noble and Patriotic.’ The Beaumont Gift 1828, 1988 (exh. cat.: Owen and Brown exh. cat. 1988)
London, National Gallery, Claude. The Poetic Landscape, 1994 (exh. cat.: Wine 1994)

The Organisation of the Catalogue

This is a catalogue of the seventeenth‐century French paintings in the National Gallery. It includes one painting by a Flemish artist (NG 2291 by Jakob Ferdinand Voet) and two which may or may not be French (NG 83 and NG 5448). An explanation of how the terms ‘French’ and ‘seventeenth‐century’ are here used, are given in the Preface.

The artists are catalogued in alphabetical order. Under each artist, autograph works come first, followed by works in which I believe the studio played a part, then those which are entirely studio productions or later copies. Where there is more than one work by an artist, they are arranged in order of acquisition – that is, in accordance with their inventory numbers.

Each entry is arranged as follows:

TITLE: I have adopted the traditional title of each painting, except where it might be misleading to do so.

DATE: Where a work is inscribed with its date, the date is recorded immediately after the note of media and measurements, together with any other inscriptions. Otherwise, the date is given immediately below the title; an explanation for the choice of date is provided in the body of the catalogue entry.

MEDIA AND MEASUREMENTS: All the paintings have been physically examined and measured by Paul Ackroyd (or in the case of NG 165 by Larry Keith) and myself. Height precedes width. Measurements are of the painted surface (ignoring insignificant variations). Additional information on media and measurements, where appropriate, is provided in the Technical Notes.

SIGNATURE AND DATE: The information derives from the observations of Paul Ackroyd, Larry Keith and myself during the course of examining the paintings. The use of square brackets indicates letters or numerals that are not visible but may reasonably be assumed once to have been so.

Provenance: I have provided the birth and death dates, places of residence and occupations of earlier owners where these are readily available, for example in The Dictionary of National Biography, La Dictionnaire de biographie française, The Complete Peerage and Who was Who. Since I have generally not acknowledged my debt to these publications in individual notes, I am pleased to do so here. In some cases basic information about former owners is amplified in the notes.

Exhibitions: Although they are not strictly exhibitions, long‐term loans to other collections have been included under this heading (but do not appear in the List of Exhibitions forming part of the bibliographical references at the back of the catalogue). Exhibitions are listed in date order. A number in parentheses following reference to an exhibition is that assigned to the painting in the catalogue of the exhibition.

Related Works: Dimensions have been given for paintings, where known, and these works may be assumed to be oil on canvas unless otherwise indicated. I have not given dimensions or media for drawings and prints, except for those that are illustrated, where these details are given in the caption.

Technical Notes: These derive from examination of the paintings by, and my discussions with, Martin Wyld, Head of Conservation, and Paul Ackroyd and Larry Keith of the Conservation Department; from investigation of the paintings by Ashok Roy, Head of the Scientific Department, and his colleagues Raymond White and Marika Spring; and from the publications and articles (mainly in various issues of the National Gallery Technical Bulletin) referred to in the relevant notes.

In the discussion of each painting I have tried to take account of information and opinions that were in the public domain before the end of 2000. Exceptionally, because I knew in advance that Poussin’s Annunciation (NG 5472) would be lent to an exhibition held at the Louvre, Paris, early in 2001, I have mentioned, albeit in a note and without discussion, Marc Fumaroli’s suggestion in the exhibition catalogue concerning the picture’s original function. Except where otherwise indicated, translations are my own and biblical quotations are from the Authorised Version (King James Bible).

General References: In the case of pictures acquired by 1957, I have included a reference to Martin Davies’s French School catalogue of that year; I have referred to his 1946 catalogue only when there was some material development in his views between the two dates. In the case of subsequently acquired paintings, I have referred to the interim catalogue entry published in the relevant National Gallery Report. In addition, General References include relevant catalogues of pictures (not necessarily catalogues raisonnés), but not other material.

List of Publications Cited: This includes only publications referred to more than once.

List of Exhibitions: This is a list both of exhibitions in which the paintings here catalogued have appeared and of exhibition catalogues cited in the notes. The list is in date order.

About this version

Version 1, generated from files HW_2001__16.xml dated 07/03/2025 and database__16.xml dated 09/03/2025 using stylesheet 16_teiToHtml_externalDb.xsl dated 03/01/2025. Structural mark-up applied to skeleton document in full; document updated to use external database of archival and bibliographic references; entries for NG30, NG61, NG62, NG1449, NG2967, NG4919, NG5597, NG5763, NG6331, NG6471, NG6477 and NG6513 prepared for publication.

Cite this entry

Permalink (this version)
https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E92-000B-0000-0000
Permalink (latest version)
https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E74-000B-0000-0000
Chicago style
Wine, Humphrey. “NG 61, Landscape with Hagar and the Angel”. 2001, online version 1, March 9, 2025. https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E92-000B-0000-0000.
Harvard style
Wine, Humphrey (2001) NG 61, Landscape with Hagar and the Angel. Online version 1, London: National Gallery, 2025. Available at: https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E92-000B-0000-0000 (Accessed: 20 March 2025).
MHRA style
Wine, Humphrey, NG 61, Landscape with Hagar and the Angel (National Gallery, 2001; online version 1, 2025) <https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E92-000B-0000-0000> [accessed: 20 March 2025]