A Forgotten Golden Age: New Book Maps French Landscape Painting Under Louis XIV

Between the death of Nicolas Poussin and the rise of Antoine Watteau, French landscape painting went through a boom that history almost forgot. A new book by the art historian Hugo Coulais, Une nature rêvée. Peindre le paysage sous Louis XIV (“A Dreamed Nature: Painting Landscape under Louis XIV”), sets out to bring it back to light, with 472 pages and some 900 illustrations.

Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after Claude Lorrain, The Judgment of Paris, 1645–46 (National Gallery of Art, Washington). Not a painting from the book: shown here as an example of the classical landscape tradition that the painters of Louis XIV’s reign inherited. Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.

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Quick facts
What: Une nature rêvée. Peindre le paysage sous Louis XIV, by Hugo Coulais, with a preface by Alain Mérot
Publisher: Arthena, Paris, 2026 (ISBN 978-2-903239-79-4)
Format: Hardback, 24 × 32 cm, 472 pages, 900 illustrations; €99 (pre-publication subscription open until 16 November 2026)
Who: Hugo Coulais, PhD in art history from Sorbonne University, whose 2022 thesis was devoted to landscape painting under Louis XIV
Section: Books & Ideas

What the book does

According to the publisher, Arthena, the book is the result of twelve years of research and the first overview of landscape painting during the reign of Louis XIV. It covers the period between the death of Poussin in 1665 and the emergence of Watteau in the early eighteenth century, when landscape was still seen in France as a minor, decorative genre. One reason the subject has been neglected is practical: many of these pictures are very hard to attribute.

The core of the volume is a set of monographs and catalogues raisonnés of about thirty of the leading landscape painters of the time, from the Allegrain family to the Millets, and from Jean Forest to Domenchin de Chavanne, including Ferguson, Hérault, Rousseau and Rysbrack. The publisher says the study brings to light hundreds of previously unpublished works and reassesses in particular the contribution of Francisque Millet and Jean Forest. Art History News, which recently flagged the book, notes the scale of the project: 472 pages and no fewer than 900 illustrations.

Why it matters

When people think of French landscape in the seventeenth century, they usually think of two names, Poussin and Claude Lorrain, both of whom spent most of their careers in Rome. What happened in France in the decades that followed is far less known. Coulais argues that this was not a gap but a decisive moment, at the meeting point between the “classical” landscape and a new sensibility built on colour, atmosphere and emotion, the sensibility that would lead to Watteau and the eighteenth century. A book that attributes, catalogues and illustrates hundreds of these pictures could change how museums, dealers and collectors look at a whole group of anonymous French landscapes.

The painting behind the story

The painters studied in the book grew up in the shadow of Claude Lorrain. His Judgment of Paris, painted in 1645–46 and now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, shows the young shepherd Paris choosing among three goddesses, but the real subject is the landscape: tall trees, a soft golden light and a distance that opens out towards the sea. That ideal of nature, calm, luminous and composed, is the “classical” landscape that the next generation in France would inherit and transform. Read more about the painting in our story on Munich’s French paintings, from Claude Lorrain to Boucher.

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Hang Claude Lorrain’s Judgment of Paris — the golden light, the tall trees and the dream of a classical landscape — as a vintage art poster from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.
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The original: Claude Lorrain, The Judgment of Paris, 1645–46. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Fine-art print available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.

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Prefer the original? Hang Claude Lorrain’s Judgment of Paris as a print, canvas or framed print from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.
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💬 Over to you: Can you name a French landscape painter between Poussin and Watteau? And where in the world are you reading from? Tell us in the comments.

Sources

• Arthena: Une nature rêvée. Peindre le paysage sous Louis XIV, by Hugo Coulais (publisher’s page)
• Art History News: Landscape Painting in the Age of Louis XIV
• Centre André-Chastel, Sorbonne University: Hugo Coulais
• theses.fr: L’Éveil du paysage. Peindre la nature sous le règne de Louis XIV (thesis, 2022)
• Wikipedia: Claude Lorrain