Saturday, November 7, 2015

After

after Louis Ferdinand Elle
Portrait of Nicolas Poussin
1757
etching, drypoint
British Museum

Nicolas Poussin died in 1665, firmly established as the most respected French artist in the world. During the century that followed, innumerable prints and copies appeared. Some claimed to reproduce the great man's features (as above) while others reproduced aspects of his works. The sheets immediately below are from a collection of etchings published around 1680. By examples taken from his paintings, they promise to teach Poussin's system of bodily proportions to the aspiring imitator.

Jean Pesne after Nicolas Poussin
Book of Proportions, Plate 4
c. 1680
etching
British Museum
 

Jean Pesne after Nicolas Poussin
Book of Proportions, Plate 3
c. 1680
etching
British Museum


Jean Pesne after Nicolas Poussin
Book of Proportions, Plate 11
c. 1680
etching
British Museum


Jean Pesne after Nicolas Poussin
Book of Proportions, Plate 10
c. 1680
etching
British Museum


Jean Pesne after Nicolas Poussin
Book of Proportions, Plate 2
c. 1680
etching
British Museum

Below, some of the other forms taken by pastiches and tributes that poured forth all through the 18th century and into the 19th. Not until the arrival of militant machine-age modernism did artists finally stop hoping they could ever imitate Poussin. The name itself is still held in highest respect, like the name of the poet Homer, but the example has become both unreachable and irrelevant to any possible practice.  

after Nicolas Poussin
Anonymous copy of landscape painting, Man Washing his Feet at a Fountain 
1780s
wash drawing
British Museum

after Nicolas Poussin
Anonymous copy of painting, Nymph discovered by Satyrs
18th century
mezzotint
British Museum

after Nicolas Poussin
Anonymous copy of painting, The Testament of Eudamidas
1762
etching
British Museum

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Copy of painting, The Testament of Eudamidas
early 19th century
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum

after Nicolas Poussin
Copy of figure from painting, The Finding of Moses
c. 1825
drawing
British Museum

FĂ©lix Bracquemond
The Death of Poussin
1870
etching
British Museum

Thomas Rowlandson
Venus discovered by a Satyr, after Poussin
1790s
hand-colored etching
British Museum

after Nicolas Poussin
Venus and Cupid with Aeneas
c. 1770-1820
hand-colored etching printed in fan-shape
British Museum

I am grateful for the excellent reproductions made available by the British Museum.