POUSSIN, poo-san, Gaspar, Italian painter: b. Rome, 1613; d. there, 15 May 1675. He was the son of a Frenchman named Dughet, who had settled at Rome but in signing his etchings he Italianized the paternal name into Duche. When his sister married Nicolas Poussin he took the name of his brother-in-law, whose studio he entered as pupil. The standard land scape of his day was that of Claude Lorraine, but Poussin was not so conventionally classical but more true to the animalism of nature than his great rival, the transparent lucidity of whose aerial perspective he never attained to. As he painted on a red background his pictures have so darkened by age that it is hard to imagine their effect when first produced. It can, how ever, be seen that he discerned the true lines of a landscape; that he composed with natural grace his groups of forest trees and antique ruins; and that his land storms, in which the trees seem to quiver and bend, are genuine transcripts from tempest-harried plain and mountain. He was imitated by many painters
of his day. The best of his pictures are at Rome. They are painted in tempera or oil, and examples of both styles may be seen in the Palazzi Doria, Colonna Barberini, Borghese and Corsini and in the gallery of the Accademia San Luca. At Rome he executed the frescoes 'History of Elijah and Elisha' in the church of San Martino a' Monti. There are pictures of his to be found in the galleries of Paris, Petrograd, Florence, Munich, Stockholm, Vienna, London, Madrid and Dresden, and a great number are scattered through the private gal leries of England and through the public gal leries of many small European cities. He was one of the most prolific and finished painters of his time so that to-day more than 200 of his pictures are to be found in various European galleries and collections. Two of his land scapes are in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.