Floodplain with a watering-place (Albertina): cattle at drink on the river flats — the pastoral's daily hydraulics observed plain; the paintings' fords begin in sheets like this.

A grove of trees (National Gallery of Art; pen and brown ink): trunks and canopy as pure subject — the tree-portraiture that gave the painted coulisses their truth, in the confident pen of the mature campaigns.

Two women in classical dress (National Gallery of Art; pen and black chalk): figure-studies for the staffage — drapery rehearsed, stance tried; the sheets behind the paintings' queens and nymphs, where Claude worked at the part of the art that never came easily.

Harbor with a Large Tower (etching): the port formula's printed statement at full development — quay, shipping and the great round tower against light: the painted harbours' matter, circulating in ink.

Rocky landscape with a seated figure (Teylers Museum; ink): crag and contemplative — the wilder scenery of the Retiro years studied from the Sabine outcrops, with the seated figure as the mode's built-in viewer.

Landscape with three figures (Nationalmuseum): a wash landscape with walkers — the middle-distance humanity of the pastorals, sketched at its natural scale: small, on the way somewhere, part of the land's traffic.

Landscape with ruins, pastoral figures and trees (National Gallery of Art; pen, ink and graphite): the full painted formula rehearsed on paper — ruin, herd, coulisse and distance composed as a sheet: the studio side of the drawing practice, invention rather than observation.

The Herd Returning in Stormy Weather (etching): wind in the trees, the cattle hurried home — weather the canvases refused, given to the needle: among the later plates' finest, and the etched œuvre's great storm.

The Herd Returning in Stormy Weather (second impression): the storm plate's second pull — its popularity kept the copper working late into wear.

Shepherd and Shepherdess Conversing (etching): the pastoral couple in printed conversation — courtship at herding's pace, the mode's tenderness carried into the 1650s plates.

Queen Esther approaching the palace of Ahasuerus (Metropolitan Museum of Art): a large finished composition drawing for the famous painting of Esther's approach — the ceremonial-procession mode worked out in wash: courts, terraces and the small brave queen; among the grandest of the independent late sheets.

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Albertina; gouache, ink and pencil): the sacred pause as a finished drawing, heightened with gouache — the devotional subject in the collector-sheet format the late decades favoured: drawing as complete work, not preparation.

Mercury and Argus (etching): the lulling of the hundred-eyed — the myth of the painted versions in late bitten line: the deadly lullaby, portfolio edition.

Time, Apollo and the Seasons (etching): the late allegorical plate — the dance of the year under Time's fiddle: Claude's only pure allegory in any medium, and fittingly a dance; the etched œuvre closes philosophizing as the painted one never quite allowed itself.

The Goatherd (etching): the last pastoral plate — herdsman piping to his goats in the late manner's pale tone: the etched œuvre ends where the whole art began, with music, animals and evening; thirty years after the first goat plates, the needle's farewell to the subject of a lifetime.

Study of a plant, perhaps sorrel (Nationalmuseum): a single weed observed to the leaf — the botanical end of the sketchbooks' attention; the great distances were built by an eye that also stooped to this.

Perseus and the origin of coral (Metropolitan Museum of Art; ink, sepia and pastel): the finished late drawing connected with the Holkham painting — Medusa's blood flowering into coral among the nymphs, in the trembling spiritual line of the final decade; one of the celebrated independent sheets the essay's drawings chapter describes.

Landscape with Aeneas landing in Latium (Nationalmuseum): the late Virgilian matter in wash — the Tiber-mouth landfall studied for the 1670s series; Stockholm's sheet pairs with its 1673 companion below.

Landscape with the landing of Aeneas in Latium (Nationalmuseum): the landfall again, a year on — the old master circling the epic's arrival as the paintings took shape; the two Stockholm sheets show late invention in motion.

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (National Gallery of Art; pen and brown ink): drawn in the year of his death — the lifelong subject one last time, in the last hand: the line tremulous, the design serene; among the very final works, and the works-on-paper section's quiet terminus.

A round temple and trees on a hillside (Nationalmuseum): the Tivoli rotunda's type among trees — the sacred-architecture motif in swift wash.

A standing peasant woman (Nationalmuseum): a staffage study from the life — the country figures of the paintings met at their source, on the road or at the market's edge.

A Tree (Nationalmuseum): one tree, entire — trunk, spring of branches, mass of crown: the atomic unit of Claude's art, studied singly, as he studied it for sixty years.

A veiled female figure (Nationalmuseum): drapery and stance for a mourner or matron — the staffage repertory's graver register, rehearsed in chalk.

A farmstead in a landscape (Nationalmuseum): working buildings among trees — the campagna's vernacular architecture, the barns and byres beneath the paintings' towers.

Cattle (Nationalmuseum): the herd studied head-on and at rest — Claude's most constant models, drawn with the familiarity of decades; the painted fords are populated from sheets like this.

Diagram of a sphere, from the 'late sketchbook' (Nationalmuseum): a perspective-geometry exercise in the old master's last notebook — the constructional understint of the art, still being practised in the final years.

Figures in a landscape (Nationalmuseum): walkers in open country — the human traffic of the campagna noted in passing wash.

Four Cows (National Gallery of Art; black chalk): a row of studies of the essential beast — patient, particular, affectionate: the œuvre's true supporting cast, drawn from life.

Sheep, a cow and a goat with two figures, from the 'late sketchbook' (Nationalmuseum): the mixed herd of the pastorals inventoried on one page of the last notebook.

Pollarded branches, from the 'late sketchbook' (Nationalmuseum): lopped tree-limbs studied close — the working countryside's pruned economy, observed by the painter of ideal groves.