Gaspard Dughet, called Gaspard Poussin (Rome 1615-1675)

One of the most renowned and highly sought-after landscape painters working in Rome in the 17th century, Gaspard Dughet's paintings continued to enjoy significant fame in Britain long into the 18th century.
This pastoral landscape reveals a significant debt to the artists' brother-in-law, Nicholas Poussin, to whom he was apprenticed between 1631 and 1635. The older artist encouraged him to paint views of the Roman Campagna, often including classical ruins and small-scale figures in classical costume. Dughet's assemblage of buildings by a lake with a reclining figure recalls Poussin's celebrated, Landscape with three men, of around 1651, in the Prado, Madrid. While he drew on his natural surroundings for this painting, Dughet carefully structured the composition, using intersecting diagonals to suggest shifting patterns of light and shade across the terrain, and moving away from the more static, horizontal planes of his master.
We are grateful to Professor Giancarlo Sestieri for proposing the attribution to Gaspard Dughet on the basis of photographs.