Word: poussins
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Cezanne claimed that all he wished to do was "revive Poussin in the contact with nature." Even Picasso, using Poussin as a pianist might an exercise in arpeggios, steadied his nerves by copying one of the past master's works while gunfire echoed through the streets of Paris...
...Nicolas Poussin was to painting what his 17th century contemporary Descartes was to philosophy: a believer in reason above all. An architect with canvas, he organized his scenes like luminous lessons in logic, seeing structure where skin was and portraying fleshy maenads as marble caryatids. His discipline twice earned him the title of First Painter to the King of France - and the respect of every generation...
...genteel affair. To and fro across carpeted floors swept the art lovers, sipping sherry. Safely up on the wall were the paintings, framed and titled, with prices on request. But no longer do the panes of varnish give onto idyllic visions of pinky Titian nudes, fluffy Millet sheep, plush Poussin valleys. Nowadays, avant-garde gallerygoing is more like the full 100 yards, with the visitors swivel-hipping through art works that threaten to tackle the visitor's body as well as his sensibilities (see color pages...
...three restored portraits in Spanish costumes. El Greco's alabaster Cardinal Niño de Guevara glowers within sight of the Spanish master's only landscape, View of Toledo, and his last great commission, St. John's Vision. In adjacent quarters Poussin's Sabine women are abducted in the passionless postures of French neoclassic actors. Through another doorway the visitor is delivered into 18th century England, attended by four Gainsboroughs, three Reynolds portraits, a Romney, and a dozen other chamois-cheeked countenances that peer down, mellow within their lacework gilt frames, between ornate black marble period...
Rough Drafts. "He copies nature with his soul," wrote a French critic in 1857 of Daubigny. Unlike his forerunners, Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, the gentle naturalist looked more to the effects of nature than to rearranging its contours into earthen architecture. He and his Barbizon mates abandoned the brown studies of strong lights and darks that the Dutch masters used to dramatize thickets and glades that never existed outside their minds. Instead, Daubigny sketched directly from nature, in the volatile light and weather of the moment...