6g The Crossing of the Red Sea
Red chalk; H: 15.5 cm (6 Ysin.); W: 22.6 cm (8% in.)
86.GB.4Ó6
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: None.
PROVENANCE:}. Isaacs, London (sale, Sotheby's, Lon-
don, February 27, 1964, part of lot 69); art market, Lon-
don; Anthony Blunt, London; art market, Zurich; art
market, Boston.
EXHIBITIONS: The Sir Anthony Blunt Collection, Cour-
tauld Institute of Art, London, 1964, no. 60.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. Friedlânder and A. Blunt, The
Drawings of Nicolas Poussin (London, 1974), vol. 5, p. 66,
no. 386; A. Blunt, The Drawings of Poussin (New Haven,
1979), pp. 89-90; D. Wild, Nicholas Poussin: Katalog der
Werke (Zurich, 1980), vol. 2, p. 63, under no. 63; H. T.
Goldfarb, From Fontainebleau to the Louvre: French Draw-
ings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. (Cleveland
Museum of Art, 1989), pp. 48-49, under no. 17; H.
Brigstocke, A Loan Exhibition of Drawings by Nicolas
Poussin from British Collections, exh. cat. (Ashmolean Mu-
seum, Oxford, 1990), under no. 23.
THIS IS ONE OF SIX KNOWN STUDIES POUSSIN MADE
in preparation for his Crossing of the Red Sea, a picture
commissioned by Amadeo del Pozzo and executed in the
mid-i63os (National Gallery of Victoria). The Mu-
seum's drawing, the only one of the six in red chalk, is
among the very small group of studies by Poussin en-
tirely in that medium. It is not easy to situate it in relation
to the other studies in terms of the development of Pous-
sin s design for the painting. Blunt (1979) tended to see it
as relatively late in the evolution of the project, based on
the similarity between the background group of Moses
and his companions emerging from the sea and an anal-
ogous detail in the painting that is absent from the other
drawings. On the other hand Wild (1980) put it at the be-
ginning of the group of studies. Although the matter is
difficult to resolve, it seems likely that the three drawings
for this project in the Hermitage came first (in the pro-
gression inv. 14542, 14540, 14541), followed by the Mu-
seum's drawing and then by the double-sided sheet in the
Louvre (in the progression inv. 842V, 842R).168 FRENCH SCHOOL • POUSSIN