Gaspard Dughet, Landscape with a Storm

Dughet’s storm paintings were among his most admired works during his lifetime and in the eighteenth century. Two shepherds tending their flock struggle against the wind, their arms raised in alarm as they encourage their sheep to move down the path.

Tree branches bend and twist with the force of the storm. In the centre, a substantial tree trunk has almost broken into two pieces, showing the effect of strong winds and perhaps lightning. The curved country lane leads our eye back and forth across the scene until we notice another shepherd and sheep fleeing towards Roman buildings. Dughet spent most of his career in Rome and often visited the surrounding countryside to make sketches, which may have inspired the landscape we see here.

The canvas is extremely dirty and the varnish has yellowed, which makes dating this work and appreciating the artist’s use of colour quite tricky. This painting most likely dates from around the 1660s, during Dughet’s later career.

It remains uncertain whether Dughet or his brother-in-law Nicolas Poussin was responsible for introducing this kind of stormy landscape. The composition in Dughet’s painting is very similar to Poussin’s Storm (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen) painted in 1651. However, where Poussin emphasises the responses of the people, who cover their heads from falling debris and whose cattle-driven cart has come to a standstill, Dughet is more interested in showing the effect of the storm on the landscape: the unpredictable side of nature is conveyed by the broken tree stump right in front of us and the darkened, rain-filled clouds.

This painting was among the first works purchased by the National Gallery from the renowned collector John Julius Angerstein in 1824. The nineteenth-century critic John Ruskin, who did not like Dughet’s paintings, was particularly critical of the tree on the right, calling it a ‘violation of truth’.