Poussin, Corelli, Cézanne: Influencing musicians and artists from 1600 to 2023.

A few months ago, I was contacted by Baroque Music Montana’s Artistic Director and violinist Carrie Krause to see if I was interested in a performance in my atelier on July 16th:

“BaMM will embark upon a rural tour presenting Corelli’s Opus 5 Sonatas (1700) which changed the course of western music. The performances will pair this exploration of Corelli — Rome’s greatest violinist who amassed an incredible art collection — with rural art galleries, art studios, and museums in eight performances with baroque violin, cello, and harpsichord. These concerts will illuminate artists, rural artistic spaces, and Montana’s historic value of visual and aural art.”

Well, of course, my answer was a resounding YES!

In a subsequent email, Carrie asked if might be inspired to create some works to accompany this concert. This led me down the rabbit hole to research Corelli’s impressive art collection, which I discovered included landscape paintings by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665).

At the end of his life, Poussin created a series of paintings called The Four Seasons for the Duc de Richelieu. They are now held in the Louvre.

https://www.nicolas-poussin.com/en/works/the-four-seasons/

Les Quatre Saisons constitutes a synthesis of Poussin’s late style: in a setting emphasizing the beauty of nature, the theme of the succession of the seasons merges with that of hours, periods of human life; the biblical narrative combines with classical mythology in a synthesis between Christianity and paganism.

Poussin’s work went on to influence a multitude of landscape painters, most notably Paul Cézanne, who wished to “re-do Poussin over again, according to nature.”  In 1990, there was a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland that explored the relationship between the two artists’ landscapes with works borrowed from collections across the globe.

I had just finished my series of paintings, The Four Seasons of Montana, when I was contacted by Carrie. And after researching Poussin’s paintings, I thought, what better way to accompany the concert with a series of new paintings based on Poussin’s Four Seasons, adapting his composition and themes to the landscape, flora and fauna of Montana. Time to get to work!

Nicolas Poussin - Spring