Add to Collection

Add this item to an existing or new collection.
Harvard Art Museums
Incorrect Username, Email, or Password
This object does not yet have a description.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1958.290
People
Nicolas Poussin, French (Les Andelys, France 1594 - 1665 Rome, Italy)
Title
The Infant Bacchus Entrusted to the Nymphs of Nysa
Other Titles
Alternate Title: The Birth of Bacchus
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
c. 1656
Culture
French
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/303415

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Brown ink and brown wash over traces of black chalk, squared in red chalk on off-white antique laid paper, framing lines in brown ink, laid down on off-white antique laid paper
Dimensions
22.9 x 37.5 cm (9 x 14 3/4 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • watermark: Difficult to decipher: oval with design.
  • inscription: verso, lower left, blue ink: DOUANE / EXPOSITION / PARIS / CENTRALE

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Paris; his sale, Paris, 11 April 1825 and following days, lot 499; Sir Thomas Lawrence, London (without his mark, L.2445); William Coningham, Brighton (without his mark, L.476); possibly Colnaghi, London (by 1846); Pierre Defer, Paris; his son-in-law, Henri Dumesnil, Paris, by descent (their mark, L.739, lower right) ; Dumesnil and Defer-Dumensil families, by descent; their sale, Drouot (Boudin and Foucault), Paris, 10-12 May 1900, lot 204; sale, Drouot (Ader), Paris, 14 May 1958, lot 28; Stephen Higgins, Paris; Mr. and Mrs. Donald S. Stralem, New York; Harvard Art Museums/ Fogg Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Donald Stralem, 1958.290

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Donald S. Stralem
Accession Year
1958
Object Number
1958.290
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Publication History

  • Eunice Williams, Gods and Heroes: Baroque Images of Antiquity, A Loan Exhibition from North American Collections for the Benefit of the Archeological Exploration of Sardis, exh. cat., Wildenstein Gallery, New York (New York), n.p.
  • Agnes Mongan, "The Infant Bacchus Entrusted to the Nymphs by Poussin", Annual Report (Fogg Art Museum), Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, 1958-1959), pp. 29-37, pp. 29-37
  • Anthony Blunt and Walter Friedlaender, Poussin, 1594-1665, exh. cat., Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts (Minneapolis, 1959), p. 8
  • Anthony Blunt, “Poussin Studies IX: Some Addenda to the Poussin Number", The Burlington Magazine, The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd. (London, 1960), vol. 102, no. 690, September, pp. 396-403, p. 141
  • Attilio Podestà, "Rassegna bibliografica", Emporium: vista mensile d’arte e di cultura, Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche (Bergamo, 1961), vol. 133, no. 794, February, p. 95, p. 95
  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III, European Art and the Classical Past, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, 1964), p. 112
  • Walter Friedlaender, Nicolas Poussin: A New Approach, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (New York, 1966), p. 190
  • Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue, Phaidon Press (London, 1966), pp. 92-93
  • Anthony Blunt, "Nicolas Poussin", The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, New York University Press (New York, 1967), ser. 35, no. 7, vol. 1, pp. 318-19
  • Stephen E. Ostrow, Visions and Revisions, exh. cat., Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art (Providence, 1968), cat. no. IV-1, pp. 17-18
  • W. Chandler Kirwin, Five College Roman Baroque Festival, exh. cat., Amherst College (Amherst, 1974), cat. no. 23
  • Jacques Thuillier, L'opera completa di Nicolas Poussin, Rizzoli Editore (Milan, 1974), p. 110
  • Walter Friedlaender and Anthony Blunt, The Drawings of Nicolas Poussin: Catalogue Raisonné, The Warburg Institute (London, 1974), vol. 5, cat. no. 433, p. 105
  • Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée, L’Univers de Poussin, Henri Screpel (Paris, 1977), pp. 72, 83
  • Joseph Meder, The Mastery of Drawing, Abaris Books (New York, 1978), vol. 2, pl. 152
  • Caroline Houser, Dionysos and His Circle: Ancient Through Modern, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, 1979), cat. no. 48, p. 70
  • Anthony Blunt, The Drawings of Poussin, Yale University Press (U.S.) (New Haven, 1979)
  • Doris Wild, Nicolas Poussin: Leben, Werk, Exkurse, Orell Füssli Verlag (Zurich, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 68, 193, 195, vol. 2, p. 181
  • Hilliard T. Goldfarb, “A Pastoral Scene with Classical Figures by Claude Lorrain", Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, 1983), April, pp. 169-70
  • Kristin A. Mortimer and William G. Klingelhofer, Harvard University Art Museums: A Guide to the Collections, Harvard University Art Museums and Abbeville Press (Cambridge and New York, 1986), cat. no. 275, p. 235
  • Jean-Jacques Lévêque, La vie et l’oeuvre de Nicolas Poussin, ACR Édition (Paris, 1988), p. 97
  • Hilliard T. Goldfarb, From Fontainebleau to the Louvre: French Drawing from the Seventeenth-Century, exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art/Indiana University Press (Cleveland, 1989), cat. no. 23 pp. 58-61
  • Alain Mérot, Nicolas Poussin, Abbeville Press (New York, 1990), p. 224
  • Jacques Thuillier, Nicolas Poussin, Flammarion (1994), p. 264
  • Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat, Nicolas Poussin 1594-1665: catalogue raisonné des dessins, Leonardo (Milan, Italy, 1994), vol. 1, cat. no. 364, pp. 702-703, vol. 2, p. 1211
  • Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat, Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665, exh. cat., Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Paris, 1994), cat. no. 229, p. 500
  • Richard Verdi, Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665, Royal Academy of Arts and Zwemmer (London, 1995), fig. 171
  • James Cuno, Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Ivan Gaskell, and William W. Robinson, Harvard's Art Museums: 100 Years of Collecting, ed. James Cuno, Harvard University Art Museums and Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 214
  • Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey, Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and the Love of Painting, Princeton University Press (Princeton, 1996), pp. 298-302
  • Masterpieces of world art : Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1997
  • Malcolm Bull, "Poussin and Nonnos", The Burlington Magazine, The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd. (London, 1998), vol. 140, no. 114, November, pp. 724-38, pp. 736-38
  • Stephan Wolohojian and Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Harvard Art Museum/ Handbook, ed. Stephan Wolohojian, Harvard Art Museum (Cambridge, 2008), p. 100
  • Pierre Rosenberg and Keith Christiansen, ed., Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art / Yale University Press (New York, 2008), cat. no. 59, pp. 274-75
  • Laurence Lhinares, "Alexis-Nicolas Pérignon (1785-1864), peintre, expert, marchand et collectionneur", Revue du Louvre: La Revue des Musées de France (December 2013), no. 5, pp. 69-78, p. 73
  • Louis-Antoine Prat, Le dessin français au XVIIe siècle, Somogy Éditions d'Art (Paris, 2013), pp. 83, 637
  • Nicolas Milovanovic and Mickäel Szanto, ed., Poussin et Dieu, exh. cat., Hazan (Paris, 2015), pp. 146-47
  • Richard Verdi, Poussin as a Painter: From Classicism to Abstraction, Reaktion Books (London, 2020), p.252; repr. as fig.192 on p.252
  • Alvin L. Clark, Jr. and Edouard Kopp, French Drawings from the Age of Claude, Poussin, Watteau, and Fragonard: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2022), cat. no. 20, repr.; detail repr. p. 75

Exhibition History

  • A Catalogue of One Hundred Original Drawings by Claude Lorrain and by Nicolas Poussin Collected by Sir Thomas Lawrence, Royal Academy of Arts, 01/01/1835 - 12/31/1835
  • Visions and Revisions, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, 10/18/1968 - 11/24/1968
  • Five Colleges Roman Baroque Festival, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, 04/04/1974 - 04/28/1974; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, 04/07/1974 - 04/30/1974
  • Dionysos and His Circle: Ancient through Modern, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 12/10/1979 - 02/10/1980
  • From Fontainebleau to the Louvre: French Drawings from the 17th Century, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 12/13/1989 - 01/28/1990; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 02/24/1990 - 04/08/1990; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 05/06/1990 - 06/17/1990
  • Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 09/27/1994 - 01/02/1995
  • HAA 10 Survey Course: The Western Tradition, Art Since the Renaissance, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 03/08/2008 - 04/06/2008
  • Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 02/12/2008 - 05/11/2008
  • HAA 10 Survey Course (S421): The Western Tradition: Art Since the Renaissance (Fall 08 Rotation 2), Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 10/23/2008 - 11/16/2008
  • HAA 10 Survey Course (S421): The Western Tradition: Art Since the Renaissance (Fall 09 Rotation 2), Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 10/16/2009 - 11/08/2009

Related Works

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu