Lot 60
60
No Description

Details
No Description
Provenance
1st Earl of Leicester
Literature
A. Blunt, Poussin and his Roman Patrons, in Walter Friedlaender zum 90, Geburstag, Berlin, 1965, p. 64, illustrated
A. Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, Washington, 1967, p. 283, illustrated
M.Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain, The Drawings, Berkeley, 1968, under no. 421
W. Friedlaender and A. Blunt, Catalogue Raissoné, The Drawings of Nicolas Poussin, London, 1974, V, p. 125, no. 455, fig. 322
A. Blunt, The Drawings of Poussin, Hartford, 1979, p. 121, fig. 139 H. Diane Russell, Claude Lorrain, Washington, 1982, under no. 27
A.E. Popham and C.E. Lloyd, Old Master Drawings at Holkham Hall, Chicago, 1986, no. 286
P. Rosenberg, review of A Loan Exhibition of Drawings by Nicolas Poussin from British Collections, The Burlington Magazine, CXXXII, 1991, p. 212 (as 'certainly by Poussin')
Exhibited
London, Arts Council, Old Master Drawings from the Collection of the Earl of Leicester, 1948, no. 39
London, Royal Academy, Landscape in French Art, 1949, no. 493
Norwich, Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Exhibition of Old Master Drawings lent by the Earl of Leicester, 1949, no. 43
London, Arts Council Gallery, French Drawings from Fouquet to Gauguin, 1952
London, Thos. Agnew and Sons Ltd., Old Master Drawings from Holkham, 1977, no. 25
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, Cézanne and Poussin, The Classical Vision of Landscape, 1990, no. 27, illustrated
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, A Loan Exhibition of Drawings by Nicolas Poussin from British Collections, 1991, no. 56, illustrated

Lot Essay

This drawing had been attributed to Claude until Blunt proposed an attribution to Poussin, and suggested a date in the 1640s. He compared the technique and handling with the Uffizi View of the Aventine and studies in the Louvre for The Finding of Moses and The Baptism of Christ, H. Brigstocke, A Loan Exhibition of Drawings by Nicolas Poussin from British Collections, 1990, figs. 40 and 37. Brigstocke suggests that a drawing in the Winslow Ames collection attributed to Claude is also by Poussin, M. Roethlisberger, op. cit., no. 421. If the Ames drawing is not by Poussin, it suggests Claude must have seen landscape studies drawn from life such as this one.

The fullest account of the drawing is in the Edinburgh catalogue: 'few studies from nature by Poussin are more economical in means or harmonious in construction than the Holkham drawing. Three broad bands of wash, gradually lightening in tone, serve to define the extent of the view. Reducing the entire motif to horizontal and diagonal accents, Poussin imbues it with an order and rationality comparable to that of certain of Cézanne's mature watercolours of the Mont Saint-Victoire'

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