POUSSIN PAINTING ‘COPY’ TO HANG IN MAIN GALLERIES WITH NEW LABEL

 The Triumph of Silenus was relegated to storerooms but new study casts it in a new light

A detail from The Triumph of Silenus probably about 1637 Oil on canvas 142.9 x 120.5 cm © The National Gallery, London Photograph: © The National Gallery, London

Dalya Alberge

It was bought by the National Gallery in the 1820s as a painting by Nicolas Poussin, the 17th-century French master. But The Triumph of Silenus – a bacchanalian revel – has long been relegated to the storerooms, having been repeatedly rejected by some of the 20th-century’s foremost experts as a mere copy.

Now doubts about the picture have been dispelled and it will hang in the main galleries with a new label bearing Poussin’s name.

It will also receive pride of place in a forthcoming Poussin exhibition organised by the National Gallery in London and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Conservation treatment and technical study have cast this 1630s painting in a new light, the gallery will announce on Thursday through a scholarly article in the May issue of the Burlington Magazine.

The picture depicts an inebriated Silenus, attendant of the Greek god Bacchus, supported by revellers, one leg slung over a tiger, amid festivities of unbridled ecstasy and merry-making in a wooded glade. A satyr drinks from a cup of wine, a companion is sprawled out asleep and two centaurs punish an amorous donkey, branding its head with a torch.

The National Gallery boasts one of the world’s greatest collections of Poussin’s paintings. Staff had noted the irony that its very first acquisition had seemed an unfortunate choice.

It was among 38 paintings owned by John Julius Angerstein that formed the nucleus of the National Gallery when it was founded in 1824. Its attribution to Poussin became increasingly less certain and, by the 1940s, it was deemed a copy, eventually catalogued merely as “after Nicolas Poussin”.

Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, the National Gallery’s associate curator of paintings 1600 to 1800, realised that the painting holds “the dubious honour of having been rejected by many, though not all, of the 20th-century’s Poussin specialists”.

She told the Guardian: “Until at least 1929, it was considered a full Poussin … It’s around the second quarter of the 20th century that people begin to have these doubts about it. Given all the amazing Poussins we do have in the collection, it was very much edged out and not presented to the public.”

The doubters had included Anthony Blunt, the former director of the Courtauld Institute of Art and Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures (until his unmasking as a Soviet spy), and Denis Mahon, a leading connoisseur of 17th-century old masters.

 

But Pierre Rosenberg, former Louvre director, believed that it was a Poussin in a “disastrous state”. Following its conservation, he will include it in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné, a definitive study of Poussin’s paintings.

Emily Beeny, an associate curator at the Getty, had also sensed its potential and was excited to see details worthy of the master: “For example, the kneeling satyr pouring wine in the foreground, pine needles in his crown. Who else could have painted those? The finesse of touch feels specific to Poussin.”

Whitlum-Cooper said: “The varnish on it was so thick and discoloured. It was very hard to tell what was going to be underneath.”

Research and technical analysis carried out by the gallery confirms that this was one of three pictures from a suite of “bacchanalian triumphs” commissioned by Cardinal de Richelieu, the all-powerful French minister.

The others are The Triumph of Pan (also in the National Gallery) and The Triumph of Bacchus (in the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City).

Chemical composition of the paints and the canvas weave analysis revealed that all three were painted on canvas cut from the same bolt of cloth. Infrared reflectography and X‐ray fluorescence scanning showed changes made during painting, undermining the argument that it is a copy of a finished work.

Part of the problem had been how to reconcile the high degree of finish of the Pan and the Bacchus with that of the Silenus. Whitlum-Cooper writes: “Yet recent conservation treatment has shown the Silenus to be far closer to the Pan than previously thought.”

She spoke of her excitement: “This canvas has languished for such a long time, and been overlooked. People will see it in a new light.”

All three paintings will feature in the National Gallery’s forthcoming landmark exhibition, titled Poussin and the Dance, the first to focus on this artist’s fascination with dancers and revellers. Scenes of ancient rites and revels helped make his name and his fortune during the 1620s and 1630s.

The exhibition is at the National Gallery from 9 October until 2 January 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/apr/29/poussin-painting-copy-to-hang-in-main-galleries-with-new-label