oil on canvas Unframed: 49 x 66.5 cm. (19 1/4 x 26 1/4 in.) Framed: 62 x 80 cm. (24 1/2 x31 1/2 in.)Provenance:Collection of Rev J. Cavalier-Chester, according to label attached verso. The Property of a GentlemanNotes:Born in Rome in 1615, Gaspard Dughet was exposed to the artistic milieu of the Eternal City from an early age. His sister had married the renowned painter Nicolas Poussin in 1630, and the young Gaspard went to live and apprentice in the workshop of his brother-in-law for the next three years, adopting his teacher’s surname.1 Enchanted with the Roman Campagna, Gaspard devoted his entire career to painting Italianate landscapes of the countryside. Although his style can be described as a combination of Poussin’s classicism and the poetic atmosphere of Claude Lorrain, Gaspard did not populate his scenes with religious or mythological figures.2 Present instead are hunters, travellers, and shepherds going about their daily routines, or sometimes no figures at all. Gaspard’s landscapes were in high demand throughout his lifetime and beyond. He produced frescos for various palaces throughout Rome, and a room bearing his name in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj displays more than a dozen of his large-scale canvases. Gaspard’s fame continued well into the eighteenth century, when Grand Tour collectors acquired his paintings in large quantities and brought them back to England for display in stately country homes. Equally outspoken in their admiration for Gaspard’s work were the leading figures of British landscape painting. John Constable once proclaimed that the paintings of Gaspard Dughet ‘contain the highest feeling of Landscape painting yet seen – such a union of patient study with a poetical mind.’3 The composition of the present painting echoes several of Dughet’s works now in various institutions and private collections. The use of a tree to frame the left side of the scene, along with the body of water nestled amongst rocky cliffs topped with buildings, recalls a canvas in the Columbus Museum of Art (inv. no. 1981.001) and one offered at Sotheby’s London in 1981,4 while a similar reclining figure in the foreground appears in a painting in Burghley House (inv. no. PIC462).References 1J. Bryant, Kenwood: Paintings in the Iveagh Bequest (Swindon 2012), p. 40 2J. Bryant, p. 40 3J. Bryant, p. 42; R.B. Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence VI (Suffolk 1968), p. 66 4Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 8 July 1981, lot 31.