Description of the picture:
Harbor Morning – Claude Lorren. 1630. Oil on canvas, 157×113 cm
Depicting on his canvas an early morning in the sea harbor, the artist, as always, created an unrealistic landscape, prompted by his own imagination, with motifs from the Roman surroundings. All the buildings in the picture are antique buildings, dilapidated, overgrown and already losing their former greatness. Sailors in the foreground are loading heavy bales and barrels onto the ship – getting ready to sail. Port boys catch fish on makeshift fishing rods. The harbor lives its usual everyday life.
But still, the main character on Lorren’s masterpiece is the sun, in the blinding rays of which the eternal sea splashes with large and small sailboats and very tiny boats of fishermen. Soft, ocher-golden light combines compositional plans and creates a virtuoso-built light-air perspective with the subtlest transitions from bright light to deep shadows. The narrow sunny path, as conceived by the author, shifted away from the viewer, stretched to the shore, reinforcing the impression of the depth and breadth of the sea. The delicate mood of the freshness of the sea morning, light breeze, foggy haze, weightless clouds, masterfully embodied by Lorren in one of his early works that adorn the Hermitage Museum now."
