.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This painting was hanging in the salon at Woburn Abbey by 1751 when Horace Walpole recorded it in his Journal of Visits. Listed as one of 'two fine large Gaspar Poussins,' it hung in a room which though 'too high and too narrow' for Walpole's taste, was filled with Titians and a celebrated group of Van Dyck portraits. It was one of the earliest Old Master paintings to enter the Bedford collection, probably bought by the fourth Duke, and predates the more lavish acquisitions made by Francis Tavistock in the second half of the eighteenth century.
By the mid-nineteenth century, when Waagen made one of two recorded visits to Woburn Abbey, the attribution had changed to 'Nicolas Pousin (?)'. Perspicacious as ever, Waagen described it as 'A highly poetic landscape, with luminous horizon, conception and handling [that], incline me to consider this a fine work by Gaspar Poussin.' By the end of the century, Scharf in his catalogue of the Bedford collection, attributed the landscape to Dughet and the figures to Poussin.
The errant attribution is interesting not only as a sign of changing taste, but also as an indication of the perplexing artistic relationship between Poussin and Dughet. Their works were very close in style while the two artists shared a studio, but after that period Dughet developed an independent, more naturalistic style of landscape decorations for the Salone del Pussino in the Palazzo Doria Pamphili of the early 1650s. Dughet's compositions became more ordered, once more reflecting the influence of Poussin, though there is no contemporary suggestion of collaboration. It was to these works that the British collectors of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were most attracted, and so it was natural for the fourth Duke of Bedford to choose this landscape for his collection.
By the mid-eighteenth century there were works by Dughet in numerous British collections among them: the Royal Collection, Chatsworth, Stourhead and Burghley House and, in almost all cases, they were painted after the 1650s. The present canvas has been dated to circa 1670 by both Ann Sutherland Harris and Marie-Nicole Boisclair and corresponds in compositional type and palette to Landscape with a Horseman by a Lake (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Landscape with Fisherman and Bathers (Buckingham Palace, Royal Collection). Dughet's compositions from this period are carefully balanced and often centered on a body of water, a device which derives from Poussin. The calm water acts as a resting point for the eye and brings to the picture a sense of nature's permanence.
At Woburn Abbey this landscape hung with a canvas of the same size, a coastal scene, which is now in the City Museum and Art Gallery of Birmingham. The Birmingham Seascape with Brigands is dated to the mid-1650s and it is possible, as Harris suggests, that the later picture was painted as a companion piece. (Harris in Feigen, 1985, op.cit., p.172).
By the mid-nineteenth century, when Waagen made one of two recorded visits to Woburn Abbey, the attribution had changed to 'Nicolas Pousin (?)'. Perspicacious as ever, Waagen described it as 'A highly poetic landscape, with luminous horizon, conception and handling [that], incline me to consider this a fine work by Gaspar Poussin.' By the end of the century, Scharf in his catalogue of the Bedford collection, attributed the landscape to Dughet and the figures to Poussin.
The errant attribution is interesting not only as a sign of changing taste, but also as an indication of the perplexing artistic relationship between Poussin and Dughet. Their works were very close in style while the two artists shared a studio, but after that period Dughet developed an independent, more naturalistic style of landscape decorations for the Salone del Pussino in the Palazzo Doria Pamphili of the early 1650s. Dughet's compositions became more ordered, once more reflecting the influence of Poussin, though there is no contemporary suggestion of collaboration. It was to these works that the British collectors of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were most attracted, and so it was natural for the fourth Duke of Bedford to choose this landscape for his collection.
By the mid-eighteenth century there were works by Dughet in numerous British collections among them: the Royal Collection, Chatsworth, Stourhead and Burghley House and, in almost all cases, they were painted after the 1650s. The present canvas has been dated to circa 1670 by both Ann Sutherland Harris and Marie-Nicole Boisclair and corresponds in compositional type and palette to Landscape with a Horseman by a Lake (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Landscape with Fisherman and Bathers (Buckingham Palace, Royal Collection). Dughet's compositions from this period are carefully balanced and often centered on a body of water, a device which derives from Poussin. The calm water acts as a resting point for the eye and brings to the picture a sense of nature's permanence.
At Woburn Abbey this landscape hung with a canvas of the same size, a coastal scene, which is now in the City Museum and Art Gallery of Birmingham. The Birmingham Seascape with Brigands is dated to the mid-1650s and it is possible, as Harris suggests, that the later picture was painted as a companion piece. (Harris in Feigen, 1985, op.cit., p.172).