Word: rome
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was the greatest French artist of the 17th century, the founder of his country's classical school. With him, French painting shook off its provinciality and became a European affair, mirroring the power of its grand siecle, the age of Louis XIV. After Poussin, Rome could no longer condescend to Paris. But without Rome there would have been no Poussin: Rome formed and trained him, gave him his conception of professional life, his myths, his essential subjects, his sensuality and measure -- in short, his pictorial ethos...
...Amazingly enough, no U.S. museum until now has tried to tell us: there has never been a Poussin retrospective in this country, even though some of his greatest works are in American collections. But now the gap has been filled. Through Nov. 27, "Poussin: the Early Years in Rome," containing 36 paintings and 58 drawings by the master, is on view at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. The show comes with a detailed, argumentative and altogether excellent catalog by the art historian Konrad Oberhuber, who has carried Poussin studies well beyond the point at which they were left...
...17th century the classical world was the locus of ideal beauty, but how did a Frenchman enter it? A writer could read Vergil without leaving Paris, but a painter had to go to Rome. There, ancient sculpture and architecture abounded; from them, antiquity could be reimagined. It was the strength of the reimagining, not just its archaeological correctness, that counted. Poussin's main regular job during his Roman years was drawing records of ancient sculpture for a rich antiquary and scholar named Cassiano dal Pozzo. This gave him excellent access to collections, and the time to develop the repertoire...
POUSSIN: THE EARLY YEARS IN ROME, Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth. The first major show in North America devoted to the 17th century master who was the father of classical French painting. Through...
...Russian Dancers of 1899, three women in clumping boots, locked together in a straining mass like Goya's witches. Both the allegory and the freshness can be found in his first real masterpiece, done in 1858-67 after he got back to Paris from his studies in Rome: The Bellelli Family, that marvelously observed group portrait of his neurotic aunt Laura, her lazy and distracted husband Gennaro and their two daughters. For though it is a tour de force of realist observation -- how much more concrete and present the Bellellis seem to us, surrounded by the furniture and other stuff...