Claude Lorrain, born in 1604 or 1605 into poverty in the town of Chamagne, Vosges, in the Duchy of Lorraine; his actual name is Claude Gellée, but he is better known by the province in which he was born.

One of five children and an orphaned by the age of twelve, he had gone to live at Freiburg with an elder brother, Jean Gellée, a woodcarver.

He had afterwards gone to Rome to seek a livelihood, then to Naples, where he apprenticed for two years, from 1619 to 1621, under Goffredo (Gottfried) Wals.

Returning to Rome in April 1625, he had been apprenticed to Agostino Tassi; he once got into a fight with Leonaert Bramer, suffering numerous misadventures while managing to tour in Italy, France and Germany, including his native Lorraine, where

Claude Deruet, painter to the duke, kept him as assistant for a year; at Nancy, he painted architectural subjects on the ceiling of the Carmelite church.

Claude had returned in 1627 to Rome, where two landscapes made for Cardinal Bentivoglio had earned him the patronage of Pope Urban VIII.

From about 1637 he rapidly achieves fame as a painter of landscapes and seascapes.