Artwork of Claude Gellée

Claude Gellée (1600-1682) was a French baroque painter.

He spent most of his life in Italy and his œuvre focuses on landscape painting, whose compositions he developed from sketches he made outside in the Italian countryside. His paintings are often charactrised by their use of contre-jour and focus on light and colour to create a sense of depth within the frame.

He elevated the status of his landscapes by the inclusion of a narrative element such as mythological or biblical figures to combine landscape with genre or history painting. He was a highly successful painter during his lifetime ; his patrons were mostly Italian until after his death when he saw great popularity in England.