Paysage ("Landscape") by Gaspard Dughet

Here, Italian painter Gaspard Dughet presents an idyllic vision of the Roman countryside at sunset. The composition is perfectly structured, revealing travelers on their way, a lake and then a built-up city, gradually leading the eye to the golden-blue horizon. However, nothing works like the classical landscape codified by Nicolas Poussin.

Gaspard Dughet is supposed to have been strongly influenced by Nicolas Poussin, having become his brother-in-law in 1630, when Poussin moved to Rome. The young Gaspard began an apprenticeship with the painter in early 1631, which led his entourage to refer to him as Gaspard Poussin. His earliest surviving works date from 1633-1634, and were painted in his brother-in-law's studio.

The trees in the foreground of his compositions are characteristic of his early works. These dark trees in the foreground are arranged in such a way as to intrigue the eye, which must make its way beyond this dark mass. The human presence here is astonishing, concentrated around a vast hut where men are busy gathering wood, and whose attire makes it impossible to date the scene, rendering it timeless. In the foreground, donkeys loaded with packages are being led by a man.

The mountain and the golden-blue horizon are reminiscent of the landscape in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. This time, the figures are dressed in togas, but their activities are just as mysterious, as they are two groups of men conversing amid nature.

In the landscape preserved at the Château de Maisons, the activity is less intellectual, reflecting the work of men in the Roman countryside: goods are being transported and wood is being stored, while a shepherd leads his sheep.

It is indeed the trees in the foreground that give this fantastic tone to the landscape, wilder than Poussin's classical visions, and much closer to the inspiration of Salvator Rosa's paintings, with rocky outcrops and strangely shaped trees. The two painters are exact contemporaries. Rosa, a Neapolitan, was in Rome from 1634 to 1636. On his return from his first stay in Rome, he painted strange, overgrown landscapes in Naples, with picturesque scenes of shepherds, bandits, sailors and soldiers. Gaspard Dughet may have met him around 1635, when he broke away from Poussin and began to frequent the Bamboccianti circle. In 1636, he made friends with the painter Jean Miel (1599-1656), as well as Pier Francesco Mola (1612-1666) and Pierre de Cortone (1596-1669).

Many of Dughet's paintings can be found in Rome's major gallery-museums: Barberini, Corsini, Spada, Colonna, etc. Works by Gaspard Dughet, like those by Claude Lorrain, were also highly prized by English collectors in both the 17^th and 18^th centuries. British museums are therefore very rich in the painter's works.

Marie-Nicole Boisclair, Gaspard Dughet. Sa vie et son œuvre 1615-1675, Paris, Arthéna, 1986.