Property from the Collection of the Late Howard Hodgkin
Gaspard Dughet
An Italianate wooded landscape with a drover and cattle, ruined buildings beyond
Lot Closed
July 4, 10:43 AM GMT
Estimate
12,000 - 18,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from the Collection of the Late Howard Hodgkin
Gaspard Dughet
Rome 1615–1675
An Italianate wooded landscape with a drover and cattle, ruined buildings beyond
oil on canvas
unframed: 77.5 x 60 cm.; 30½ x 23⅝ in.
framed: 90.3 x 72.5 cm.; 35½ x 28½ in.
With Thomas Agnew & Sons, London (as Master of the Silver Birches, according to a mount at the Witt Library, London);
Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Lady'), London, Sotheby's, 24 April 2008, lot 91, for £62,900 (as The Silver Birch Master);
Where acquired.
M.-N. Boisclair, Gaspard Dughet: étude de sa vie et de son œuvre, PhD thesis, Paris 1978, vol. I, pp. 54, 57, vol. II, p. 9, no. 8 (as Gaspard Dughet);
M.-N. Boisclair, Gaspard Dughet: Sa vie et son œuvre (1615–1675), Paris 1986, p. 171, no. 8, reproduced fig. 11 (as Gaspard Dughet).
The classification of works produced by artists in the orbit of Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) has prompted debate among scholars over the last 75 years or so. In 1950, Anthony Blunt brought together a group of pictures that featured trees with silver-coloured barks and feathery foliage, attributing these to the eponymous Silver Birch Master.1 The present painting, though not included in Blunt's article, must have been attributed to this master at some point over the later 20th century owing to the large tree just left of centre, that bears the same features. In 1963, however, this group of works was attributed to Gaspard Dughet by John Shearman,2 while Clovis Whitfield, in 1979, proposed that they were in fact by Poussin himself, towards the early stages of his career.3
Today, many of these pictures have been re-attributed to the young Dughet. One such example, that likewise includes a grouping of slender trees that resemble silver birches, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.4
1 A. Blunt, 'Poussin Studies, V: The Silver Birch Master', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 112, no. 564, March 1950, pp. 69–73.
2 A. Blunt and J. Shearman, The Drawings of Nicolas Poussin, vol. IV, London 1963, p. 33ff.
3 C. Whitfield, 'Poussin's Early Landscapes', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 121, no. 910, January 1979, pp. 10–19.
4 Acc. no. CAI.107; oil on canvas, 68.5 x 50 cm.; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O80599/italian-landscape-oil-painting-dughet-gaspard/.
