Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
18th century French painter and draftsman
(Normandy, France, 1594 - 1665)
Poussin was born into a family of some local distinction in Normandy, where he probably received early training in painting. He spent most of his formative years in Paris, and he then went to Italy by at least 1624. He was a popular and influential painter who successfully subordinated dramatic narrative and the expression of extreme states of human passions to the formal harmony of designs, which were based on the beauty and precision of abstract forms. His work epitomized the contemporary search for equilibrium and synthesis between the forces of the Classical and the Baroque around which most artistic critical debate in Rome was concentrated during the 1630s.
7 objects
1635
pen and brown ink and brown wash on paper
Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III
1811.116
ca. 1726
oil on canvas
Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III
1813.10
1674
etching and engraving on paper
Museum Purchase, James Phinney Baxter Fund, in memory of Professor Henry Johnson
1993.15
1642
engraving on paper
Gift of David P. Becker, Class of 1970
1994.10.278
1642
engraving on paper
Gift of David P. Becker, Class of 1970
1994.10.279
1676
engraving on paper
Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund
1998.20
1641
engraving on cream antique laid paper
Bequest of David P. Becker, Class of 1970
2011.69.285