Poussin, NICOLAS, a painter of great celebrity, was born at Les Andelys in Normandy in June 1594, went at the age of eighteen to Paris, and studied under Ferdinand Eile, the Fleming, Lallemand, and others, but chiefly improved himself by drawing from casts, and drawings and prints after Raphael and Giulio Romano, in the collection of M. Courtois, who accorded him access to them. After a long and hard struggle he attained the object of his desire—the means of visiting Rome. He was thirty years of age when he arrived there, and a considerable period elapsed after that before he obtained much employment. At length, however, he received several important commissions from the Cardinal Barberini, which he executed so successfully that he afterwards rapidly acquired fame and fortune. After an absence of sixteen years he returned to Paris with M. de Chanteloup, and was introduced by Cardinal Richelieu to Louis XIII., who appointed him his painter in ordinary, with apartments in the Tuileries and a small salary. But in 1643, annoyed by intrigues against him, he returned to Rome; and there, after producing a large quantity of admirable work, he died on 19th November 1665. His style is a combination of classical ideals and Renaissance tendencies; his colours have changed so as to interfere with the harmony of his pictures, whose noble designs may be admirably studied in the numerous engravings of them. The finest collection of his works is in the Louvre; but some of the best are in the National Gallery, at Dulwich, and in English private collections.—His nephew, Gaspar Dughet (1613–1675), assumed his uncle's name, and as GASPAR POUSSIN became famous as a landscapist, his renderings of the Roman Campagna being especially noted. He worked also in tempera and fresco. The National Gallery possesses his 'Sacrifice of Abraham.'
See works on Nicolas Poussin by St Germain, Bouchitté (1858), and Poillon (2d ed. 1875), with an article by Lady Dilke (E. F. S. Pattison) in L'Art (1882).