Heroic Landscape. Verso: Landscape with a coastal city in the distance

Claude often made sketching excursions in the countryside around Rome, one of which inspired the present sheet. He likely sketched the landscape in black chalk en plein air before returning to the studio to add the pen work and washes. The intentional smudging of the chalk in the trees imparts an especially lively sense of the foliage, lending it atmosphere and motion. The building in the background remains unidentified but it was probably a real structure--a view of it from a different angle appears on the reverse of this drawing. -- Exhibition Label, from "Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection"