Gaspard Dughet (French, 1615-1675) (Circle of)

Circle of Gaspard Dughet, also known as Gaspard Poussin (French, 1615-1675)

An Italianate Landscape with Figures Resting

Oil on Canvas

• Provenance; the collection of William Hardman,  one of the foremost art collectors in Manchester at the end of the 18th century - see label verso and notes below.
• With old Christie's stencil verso.
• Painting - 48.5cm x 63.5cm
• Frame - 65cm x 79cm 

Notes

A very fine old master oil painting on canvas from the circle of Gaspard Dughet depicting classical figures resting by rocks with an Italianate landscape beyond.  The painting with an old label and Christie's stencil verso.

Provenance;

The painting has a wonderful provenance having been part of the collection of William Hardman.  The label verso inscribed 'Gaspar Poussin - 38 An Italian Landscape and Figures - Canvas - From the Collection of the late Wm. Hardman, Esq.'

There were two very substantial art collectors in Manchester at the end of the eighteenth century - John Leigh Phillips and William Hardman.  Hardman's collection of paintings - which ranged widely and included, reportedly, works by Titian, Canaletto, Veronese, Ruisdael, Rembrandt, Wilson, Wright and Fuseli - was said to have cost between thirty and forty thousand pounds and by 1807 numbered around seventy pictures.  See - The culture of capital; art, power and the nineteenth-century middle class.  Janet Wolff and John Seed (eds), Manchester University Press, 1988. Pages 49-50.

Condition

In very fine 'gallery' condition.   Professionally lined and conserved in the late 20th century.  Clean, most attractive, well framed and ready to hang.

Artist Information

Gaspard Dughet, also known as Gaspard Poussin, was a French painter born in Rome.  Dughet was born in Rome, the son of a French pastry-cook and his Italian wife. He has always generally been considered as a French painter, although in fact he never visited France. Between around 1631 and 1635 he became a pupil of Nicolas Poussin, who had married his sister Anne five years earlier. Because of this connection he was widely known as "Gaspard Poussin." After leaving Poussin's studio his works developed a more fluid style and developed his pictures of storms which account for 30 out of his 400 known works. 

He specialised in painting landscapes of the Roman Campagna becoming, along with his exact contemporary Salvator Rosa, one of the two leading landscape painters of his time. He painted several cycles of frescoes, including one, showing various sites around Rome, at the Colonna Palace. He worked with Pier Francesco Mola, Cozza, and Mattia Preti at the Palazzo Pamphilj in Valmontone. He often collaborated with Guillaume Courtois who painted the staffage in his landscapes. This was the case, for instance, in the works for the Palazzo Pamphilj. There is another fresco cycle by Dughet, though in a bad state of preservation, in San Martino ai Monti.  Dughet died in Rome on 25 May 1675.