Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain Chamagne, Lorraine 1604/5 - 1682 Rome

From an album belonging to the Odescalchi family, Rome, listed in the 1713 inventory of the family;
Sale, Sotheby's, 20 November 1957, lot 67, (the whole album; bought by Hans Calmann and dismembered)

M. Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain, The Drawings, Berkeley 1968, vol. I, p. 144, no. 264; vol. II, fig. 264

This was previously the first page in what Roethlisberger has called 'The Animal Album,' a late 18th or early 19th-century binding containing 64 sheets of studies by Claude pasted to its pages.  The album came from the Odescalchi family and was dismembered by Hans Calmann after the 1957 sale.  The majority of the studies were of animals, except for a small group of trees and plants at the end, which may date from later in Claude's career.  Roethlisberger dates the animal studies to the 1630s and 40s, the period in which Claude made most of his nature drawings.  This page is the only one which is signed, and the inscription identifies the location as the park of the Villa Borghese, which was renowned for its deer from the early 17th century.  One of the characteristics of the studies in the Animal Album is that each sheet contains only a single species of animal and over half of the pages seem to have been dedicated to studies of oxen; four are of deer.  This drawing, with its unusual mise en page, is full of the charm of an open-air study, quickly capturing the images of the animals.