Gaspard Dughet: Some Problems in the Connoisseurship of Chalk Drawings

Abstract

Little scholarship has been devoted to the graphic oeuvre of Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675), a prominent landscape painter of the seventeenth century. A number of drawings in red and black chalk have been attributed to Dughet based on their connection to documented paintings. Stylistic comparisons with other examples of Dughet's work as a draughtsman and technical evidence including medium and watermarks, however, reveal that a group of drawings given to the artist are, in fact, copies done in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Although Dughet's contributions are under appreciated today, his work influenced the next generation of landscape artists in Italy and abroad, including the British and many Dutch and Flemish artists who traveled to Italy. This thesis examines not only Dughet's chalk drawings, but the graphic work of his most well-known Northern followers to determine which artist may have executed these copies.