Poussin as a Painter

Universally regarded as the father of French painting, Nicolas Poussin is arguably the greatest of all painters of the French school. Yet Poussin’s reputation has been founded more on the intellectual and philosophical qualities of his art than its sheer visual beauty.

In Poussin as a Painter: From Classicism to Abstraction, Richard Verdi redresses the balance, describing and analyzing Poussin’s outstanding gifts as a pictorial storyteller, designer, and colorist—in short, the purely aesthetic (and often abstract) aspects of his art that have inspired so many later painters, from Turner to Cézanne to Picasso. The book features more than two hundred illustrations, the majority in color, and encompasses all aspects of Poussin’s art from the mid-1620s to his death in 1665. This groundbreaking study will shed new light on this significant French painter.