Dughet was born in Rome, the son of a French pastry-cook
[1] and his Italian wife.[2] He has always generally been considered as a French painter, although in fact he never visited France.[1] Between around 1631 and 1635 he became a pupil of Nicolas Poussin, who had married his sister Anne five years earlier.[1] Because of this connection he was widely known as "Gaspard Poussin."[2] After leaving Poussin's studio his works developed a more fluid style and developed his pictures of storms which account for 30 out of his 400 known works. [3]
He specialised in painting landscapes of the Roman Campagna[4] becoming, along with his exact contemporary Salvator Rosa, one of the two leading landscape painters of his time.[1] He painted several cycles of frescoes, including one, showing various sites around Rome, at the Colonna Palace.[1] He worked with Pier Francesco Mola, Cozza, and Mattia Preti at the Palazzo PamphiljinValmontone.[4] He often collaborated with Guillaume Courtois who painted the staffage in his landscapes. This was the case, for instance, in the works for the Palazzo Pamphilj.[5] There is another fresco cycle by Dughet, though in a bad state of preservation, in San Martino ai Monti.[4]
During the 18th century Dughet's work became especially popular amongst British collectors,[2] to such an extent that his name became attached to almost any classical landscape,[1] and his style proved influential on British landscape painting and garden design.[2] His Sacrifice of Abraham, once the property of the Colonna, is now, with other of his works, in the National Gallery, London.[4]Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable were inspired by Dughet and recommended him as a model. [3]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Poussin, Nicolas s.v. Gaspar Poussin". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 222.
