Tuesday, June 6, 2017

The Poussins at Chantilly

Nicolas Poussin
Massacre of the Innocents
ca. 1631-32
oil on canvas
Musée Condé, Chantilly

Nicolas Poussin
Theseus finding his Father's Sword
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Musée Condé, Chantilly

Nicolas Poussin
Landscape with Nymphs and a Snake
1659
canvas
Musée Condé, Chantilly

"But," I remarked to her, feeling that the only way to rehabilitate Poussin in her eyes was to inform her that he was once more in fashion, "M. Degas affirms that he knows nothing more beautiful than the Poussins at Chantilly."

"Really?  I don't know the ones at Chantilly," said Mme. de Cambremer, who had no wish to differ from Degas, "but I can speak about the ones in the Louvre, which are hideous."

"He admires them immensely too."

"I must look at them again.  My memory of them is a bit hazy," she replied after a moment's silence, and as though the favourable opinion she was certain to form of Poussin before very long would depend, not upon the information that I had just communicated to her, but upon the supplementary and this time definitive examination that she intended to make of the Poussins in the Louvre in order to be in a position to change her mind."

 Marcel Proust, from Sodom and Gomorrah (1922)

Nicolas Poussin
Bacchanal of the Andrians
1627-28
oil on canvas
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
Inspiration of the Poet
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
St John the Baptist baptizes the People
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
Jews gathering Manna
ca. 1637-39
oil on canvas
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
Finding of Moses
1638
oil on canvas
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
Miracle of St Francis Xavier
canvas
1641-42
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
Judgment of Solomon
1649
oil on canvas
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
Christ Healing the Blind
1650
oil on canvas
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
Holy Family with St Elizabeth and St John the Baptist
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
Apollo and Daphne
1664
oil on canvas
Louvre

Nicolas Poussin
Self-portrait
1650
oil on canvas
Louvre

Altogether, more than thirty canvases by Poussin are preserved at the Louvre, and an additional few also exist at Chantilly.