Also Claude-glass. [Named from Claud (of) Lorraine (1600–82), the French landscape painter.] A somewhat convex dark or colored hand-mirror, used to concentrate the features of a landscape in subdued tones. Sometimes applied to colored glasses through which a landscape, etc., is viewed.
1789. W. Gilpin, Beauty (1792), I. 124. The only picturesque glasses are those, which the artists call Claud Loraine glasses. They are combined of two or three different colours; and if the hues are well sorted … give the objects of nature a soft, mellow tinge, like the colouring of that master.
1824. Scott, Redgauntlet, let. v. Didst ever see what artists call a Claude Lorraine glass, which spreads its own particular hue over the whole landscape which you see through it.
1882. E. Gosse, Gray, viii. 187. Gray walked about everywhere with that pretty toy, the Claude-Lorraine glass in his hand, making the beautiful forms of the landscape compose in its lustrous chiaroscuro.
