Although Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) is widely regarded as the
father of French classicism, he spent almost all of his mature
career in Rome. Born in Normandy, Poussin went via Venice to
the Eternal City in 1624. He remained there except for an unhappy two-year interlude in Paris, from 1640 to 1642, when he served as premier peintre du roi under Louis XIII, executing commissions for Cardinal
Richelieu and undertaking the decoration of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre.
This small but sumptuous exhibition of drawings from Windsor
Castle is the last stop on a tour that began at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London last year and has included stops at the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The sixty-five works (including some double-sided sheets) traverse most of Poussin’s career, beginning with some fledgling
efforts completed in Paris in the early 1620s and going through
1650. In addition to desultory drawings on mythological themes, the
exhibition includes preparatory sketches for a number of Poussin’s
greatest masterpieces, including the Met’s own Rape of the Sabine
Women (1633–34), the Triumph of Pan and Triumph of Bacchus
(both mid-1630s), and the second set of Sacraments Poussin painted
in the 1640s, a magnificent series that is on long-term loan to
the National Gallery of Scotland.
Poussin must surely have done his share of life studies; but—until
recently—none had been identified among his drawings. Instead, he
tended to base his figure drawings on wax figurines that he posed
with elaborate staging and lighting. Accordingly, the organizers of
this exhibition have trumpeted the discovery of a life study that
was found verso when a drawing was lifted off its antique mount.
As it happens, the work in question—a faint chalk drawing featuring
a pair of legs—is mostly of academic interest.
More compelling in this exhibition is the revelation of Poussin’s artistic
development, from a Venetian, Titianesque voluptuousness to
the sober, history-drenched classicism whose tutelary spirit was
Raphael.
As Martin Clayton, Assistant Curator of the Print Room at Windsor
Castle, notes in his introduction to the catalogue, Poussin was not
especially gifted as a draftsman. Indeed, one can discern certain
clumsinesses in his drawings, especially in those done before his
move to Rome. And although Poussin rapidly gained confidence in the
late 1620s and early 1630s, a growing tremor, probably brought on by
the effects of syphilis, required that he resort to various
expediencies—short, rapid hatching instead of long, flowing lines.
Which brings us to the question of what makes Poussin’s drawings so
remarkable. None of them display the elaborate finish of a
presentation study; few show much in the way of technical
virtuosity. Yet the best of them—a partial list includes Perseus
and Andromeda: The Origin of Coral, The Triumph of Bacchus and
Ariadne, The Saving of the Infant Pyrrhus, Medea Killing Her
Children, as well as some of the studies for The Rape of the
Sabine Women—are alive with the drama of human emotion. Poussin’s
great gift in this respect was his mastery of composition. His most
affecting drawings, like most of his great paintings, are carefully
staged tableaux in which extremities of human emotion are caught in
the sharp, time-stopping light of contemplation. The action is not
so much frozen as distilled: the entire episode swept up into a single trembling moment of unstoppable clarity.
A catalogue of the exhibition, written by Martin Clayton, has been
published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in association with
Merrell Holberton (208 pages, $35 paper).