Shepherd Playing the Flute

Description

Beginning in 1774, Richard Earlom produced 200 mezzotints after a famous album of Claude Lorrain landscape drawings then in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth (now at the British Museum). Published in two volumes in 1777, the Liber Veritatis became Earlom’s most influential publication. Most famously, it inspired J. M. W. Turner’s partially mezzotint Liber Studiorum, especially his “elevated pastoral” category.

Medium

Mezzotint in brown on cream laid paper