Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was, until the last century or so, widely regarded as the greatest French artist ever. Until, that is, Edouard Manet, the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists, and the Cubists came along and changed the story of French, and global, art forever.
But Nicolas Poussin, to our modern eyes at least, can sometimes come across as a bit stuffy, a bit formal, a bit still, and a bit austere. His work is easy to admire, it's hugely accomplished and he makes wonderful use of colour, but it's more difficult to get excited about.
With Poussin, the shock of the old, it seems, has gone. The National Gallery, with their current exhibition - Poussin & the Dance, are trying to redress that balance. Not least on the accusation of stillness. Though the curators, and an accompanying film, make it clear that Poussin did become very much an establishment painter in his later years, the idea here is to balance that out by proving that the younger, it's all relative, Poussin was a painter of motion, a painter of movement, and a painter of dance.
The Adoration of the Golden Calf (1633-4)
Though, in my opinion, they haven't fully succeeded - they have made a decent fist of it. As well as telling some of Poussin's story. How the Normandy painter yearned to be among, and to be compared to, the Renaissance and ancient wonders of Rome and how, at the age of twenty-nine, he made that happen.
Rome was, to Poussin, a seventh heaven and he soon set about obsessively studying the antiquities he was surrounded by. Some of those which most fascinated him were the ones that show bodies twisted, contorted even, in dance. Or even in ecstatic supplication in front of no lesser deity than the Golden Calf, a substitute God for those who believed that God had abandoned them.
Poussin's academic reputation did not stop pioneers and mavericks ranging from Paul Cezanne to Pablo Picasso to Francis Bacon admiring his work but it is, perhaps, their forays into modernism that have left Poussin's work looking a little too classicist for a 21st, 20th even, century audience.
Dancing Votary of Bacchus (about 1635)
I was hoping Poussin & the Dance would educate me as to why that is and possibly even correct me in some way. It didn't quite do that and I was left with the overall impression that Poussin was, of course, a brilliant painter who made hugely important work but, also, that he was in many ways a painter of his time.
He was unable to fully celebrate the wild excesses of the drunken bacchanal without placing them in the context of a classical lineage and while Titian is the most obvious influence he is clearly in hock to many other greats of the Italian Renaissance. The bridge that is being suggested was built, by Poussin, between them and modernism is not a sturdy one. There are many many more artists that are required for that journey to be taken safely and surely and Poussin, to me, is merely a small step in that direction.
The major artworks are padded out with some useful preliminary sketches where you can see how Poussin experimented in finding his way forward when it came to incorporating movement into his work. There are satyrs dancing on wineskins (inspired by Virgil's the Georgics) and there is a rather camp dancing votary of Bacchus but, interesting though these are, you can't help but find your attention wander to the larger, more colourful, and fuller paintings.
Satyrs Dancing on a Wineskin (about 1636)
The Realm of Flora sees the goddess of flowers and spring dancing in what's described as a 'human garden' and is later revealed to be a garden where the humans transform into flowers. You can definitely see in it Poussin capturing the feel of movement, of dance, and of transformation but, again, he is unable to leave the classical world behind. Both Narcissus and Hyacinth feature.
The Realm of Flora (1630-1)
Study for the Abduction of the Sabine Women (about 1633)
There's some stuff about Poussin's use of wax figurines that didn't detain me long and then a bit about how Poussin became obsessed with emulating The Borghese Dancers, a 2nd century relief then housed at the Villa Borghese (it was in the exhibition and there's a photo below) which contained much of what would go on to make up his paintings of this era.
Antique statues, jugs of wine, and dancers (of course) all set out among ancient and idyllic looking glades. You can see a prime example of a few nubile youngsters busting moves and on the edge of getting it on in front a slightly demonic looking statue in A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term. A Term not, in this instance, being a fixed period of time but a pillar in the shape of a human head and bust.
A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term (about 1632-3)
Roman Sculptor - Relief with Five Dancers before a Portico ('The Borghese Dancers') (2c)
Attic Workshop - Krater with a Procession of Dionysus ('The Borghese Vase') (1c BC)
Bacchanal (about 1635)
The Triumph of Silenus (about 1636)
The Triumph of Bacchus (1635-6)
In his series of Triumphs, Bacchus, Silenus, and Pan all feature, Poussin has incorporated motifs from ancient vases (Silenus) and shows orgiastic happenings in which these gods appear only too human. The pot bellied Silenus, the tutor and companion of Bacchus, drunkenly stretches a leg over a tiger in an image that also includes people crashed out from overdoing it and the punishment of an amorous donkey.
Later, Bacchus himself can be found overseeing the riotous and rowdy goings on from his chariot. Approvingly one assumes. There are trumpets, there are tambourines, there are panpipes, and there are, of course, satyrs. That chariot's never late.
Where Bacchus' triumph reads almost frieze like from one side of the painting to the other, that of Pan is more like a static image. Commissioned by Cardinal de Richelieu, Chief Minister of Louis XIII, in 1635 (so they've bunged in a portrait of him from time), it shows a group of drunken and scantily clad 'merrymakers' in the very act of making that merry in some woods. Seductions are carried out beneath golden horned statues but, as ever, Poussin always makes sure that there is erudition amongst the erotica. The spent wine jars in the foreground are designed to look like respected Roman antiquities.
The Triumph of Pan (1636)
Philippe de Champaigne and studio - Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu (probably 1642)
You'd call it sacrilege if it wasn't oh so tastefully done. All of which leads us up to the pinnacle of the exhibition. Which comes with A Dance to the Music of Time which has been borrowed from the Wallace Collection. As the Wallace Collection is only about a mile's walk away and is perfectly easy to visit I found it hard to understand why this was such a big deal!
We learn how Poussin, once in Rome, only ever returned once to France and we then learn how to 'read' A Dance to the Music of Time. The four dancers represent both the seasons and the constantly changing states of human fortune. In green, with his back to us, is Poverty. In a simple orange gown we find Labour, with golden sandals and pearls in her hair Wealth is a show off, and in blue with a floral crown Pleasure is having a hell of a time presumably unaware that Poverty is just round the corner. They all spin round to the music of Time's lyre and overseeing the whole scene is the sun god Apollo, Dawn (scattering flowers), and the Hours (dancing too). It was a neat way to end the exhibition and it was, the Golden Calf aside - who doesn't love a Golden Calf, my favourite painting there. Not least because it was explained to me what it all meant. It had been a good, rather than a great, experience for me.
By the end of the 1630s, Poussin left behind these dancers and parties forever, grew up, and became boring. Like we all must do. After I'd seen A Dance to the Music of Time I went home, started coughing, and went to bed. The next morning I woke up and went for a PCR test which revealed, as suspected, I'd contracted Covid somewhere along the way. It's fair to say Poussin and I took different paths. But luckily I'm recovering at the moment and I my dance to the music of time is not over yet.
A Dance to the Music of Time (about 1634)
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