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Gaspard Dughet [Poussin]

Gaspard Dughet (1616-1675), a protégé and brother-in-law of Nicolas Poussin, also known as Gaspard Poussin. Dughet was also a close associate of Claude Lorrain, whom he at times accompanied on painting excursions into the Roman countryside. For a time, Gaspard Dughet, Claude Lorrain, and Nicolas Poussin collaborated with Jan Both and Herman Swanevelt (two Dutch painters resident in Rome whose Italian works were also collected by Melville) “in the famous series of large anchorite paintings commissioned for the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid” (Harris 168). In Rome, Dughet received lucrative commissions to paint landscapes in fresco at the Pamphili, Borghese, Quirinale, and Colonna family palaces—while also painting the landscapes on canvas with which he competed with those of Claude and Poussin. In England in the 1730s and 1740s, Dughet was more widely engraved and imitated than either Claude or Nicolas Poussin (French 9). His influence on English taste extended into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as seen in his direct influence on painters as different as Richard Wilson, Thomas Gainsborough, and John Constable (all represented in Melville’s print collection).

  • Works cited in this section:
  • Boisclair, Marie-Nicole. Gaspard Dughet: Sa vie et son oeuvre (1615-1675). Paris: Arthéna, 1986.
  • ------. “Dughet [Poussin], Gaspard [Gasper, Gaspere, Gusper, Gaspere, Guaspre].” Grove Dictionary of Art Online, 2003.
  • Cantor, Sarah Beth. The Landscapes of Gaspard Dughet: Artistic Identity and Intellectual Formation in Seventeenth-Century Rome. Doctoral Thesis, University of Maryland, College Park, 2013.
  • French, Anne. Gaspard Dughet called Gaspar Poussin: 1615-1675: A French Landscape Painter in Seventeenth-Century Rome and his Influence on British Art. London: Kenwood House, 1980.
  • Gems of Art, forming a choice collection engraved from pictures of acknowledge excellence, beauty and variety, painted by esteemed masters of all ages and countries. London: W. B. Cooke & Henry G. Bohn, 1848.
  • Harris, Ann Sutherland. “Gaspard Dughet.” In Landscape Painting in Rome, 1595-1985. New York: Richard L. Feigin, 1985, 168-74.
  • Hayden, Arthur. Chats on Old Prints. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1906.
  • Hazlitt, William. Criticisms on Art, and Sketches of the Picture Galleries of England. Edited by his son. 2 vol. in 1. London: J. Templeton, 1843.
  • Roethlisberger, Marcel. Gaspard Dughet; Rome 1615-1675. New York: Richard L. Feigen & Co., 1975.
Gaspard Dughet [Poussin]