Dark Moon: Environments Source: Claude Lorrain

A Baroque artist who was active in Italy for most of his live, Claude Lorrain's landscape paintings were pioneering in that landscapes were not seen as being fit for immortality on a canvas until the mid-17th century, as paintings in that era were only seen as being acceptable if they had a mythical of religious theme.

I have addressed Lorrain because of the areas and landscapes that he painted. Where artist like Bierstadt and Church painted nature at its most miraculous and Robert capturing scenes of urban and man-made structure, I feel that Claude Lorrain fills the gap between urban and natural environments, painting the invisible seams that join the man-made world to the nature. He incorporated the two, hardly ever painting one or the other. If there was a seascape, it would contain a ship, or be of a dock. If it was out in nature, there would be a type of man-made structure, or people at the very least.