Claude Lorrain, traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Le Lorrain) (c. 1600 – 21 or 23 November 1682) was an artist of the Baroque era who was active in Italy, and is admired for his achievements in landscape painting. Lorrain was born in 1604 or 1605 into poverty in the town of Champagne, Vosges in Lorraine – then the Duchy of Lorraine, an independent state until 1766 and now in northeast France.

He was one of five children. His actual name was Claude Gellée, but he is better known by the province in which he was born. Orphaned by age of twelve, he went to live at Freiburg with an elder brother, Jean Gellée, a woodcarver.

He afterwards went to Rome to seek a livelihood and then to Naples, where he apprenticed for two years, from 1619 to 1621, under Goffredo (Gottfried) Wals. He returned to Rome in April 1625 and was apprenticed to Augustin Tassi. He got into a fight with Leonaert Bramer.

He apparently was able to tour in Italy, France and Germany, including his native Lorraine, suffering numerous misadventures. Claude Deruet, painter to the duke of Lorraine, kept him as assistant for a year; and at Nancy he painted architectural subjects on the ceiling of the Carmelite church. In 1627 Lorrain returned to Rome.

Here, two landscapes made for Cardinal Bentivoglio earned him the patronage of Pope Urban VIII. From about 1637 he rapidly achieved fame as a painter of landscapes and seascapes. He apparently befriended his fellow Frenchman Nicolas Poussin; together they would travel the Roman Campagna, sketching landscapes.

Though both have been called landscape painters, in Poussin the landscape is a background to the figures; whereas for Lorrain, despite figures in one corner of the canvas, the true subjects are the land, the sea, and the air. By report, he often engaged other artists to paint the figures for him, including Courtois and Filippo Lauri. He remarked to those purchasing his pictures that he sold them the landscape; the figures were gratis.

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