Nymphs Feeding the Child Jupiter

c. 1650

Two men, four women, and a baby gather on and in front of a platform-like rock formation in a landscape in this horizontal painting. The people all have pale skin and delicate features. The women’s blond hair is pulled up and back over a headband, and the men have short, curly brown hair. The two men are in the lower left corner of the composition. One sits holding a staff and leaning back on the other hand. He is clean-shaven and nude except for an azure-blue cloth wrapping around one elbow and across his lap. The other man kneels on one knee and milks a goat. That man is bearded, wears a loose, golden-yellow toga, and reaches his other hand toward our right. There, one woman wearing lapis blue and butter yellow holds the pudgy, nude baby. Her legs are crossed to our left, but she turns her torso to our right to help the baby at her left hip drink something, presumably goat’s milk, from a horn. A second woman stands over this pair wearing pale peach and laurel green. This second woman hunches over and holds a honeycomb on a leaf, which catches the honey. The other two women are nude and recline on the rocky platform. The woman closer to us leans against a slender, overturned slate-blue urn with water trickling from its narrow opening. The first woman here drapes and arm across the shoulders of the second, who reclines next to her legs. An urn with a round belly and tall neck sits upright next to this second woman. Scrubby plants, willowy grasses, and two stubby trees grow from the rocky formation. Trees and hills in the background lead back to blue-shaded mountain on the horizon, which comes halfway up this composition. White and muted light brown clouds skirt across the blue sky above.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 117.4 x 155.3 cm (46 1/4 x 61 1/8 in.)
    framed: 148 x 184.2 x 12.1 cm (58 1/4 x 72 1/2 x 4 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1952.2.21

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Sir Robert Walpole, 1st earl of Orford [1676- 1745], Dressing Room of 10 Downing Street, London, by 1736;[1] by inheritance to his son, Horace Walpole, 4th earl of Oxford and 2nd baron Walpole [1717-1797], Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, Middlesex;[2] by inheritance to the daughter of his cousin Henry Seymour Conway, Mrs. Anne Seymour Damer [d. 1828], Strawberry Hill, who in 1811, as directed by terms of the 4th Earl's will, turned the estate over to his niece, Maria, Dowager Countess of Waldegrave [d. 1835], Strawberry Hill; by inheritance to her grandson, John James Waldegrave, 6th earl of Waldegrave [1785-1835], Strawberry Hill; by inheritance to his son, George Edward Waldegrave, 7th earl of Waldegrave [1816-1846], Strawberry Hill; (Strawberry Hill sale, at the residence by George Robins, Twickenham, 25 April - 24 May 1842, 21st day [18 May 1842], no. 46, as The Education of Jupiter); Sir John Easthope, bt. [1784-1865], London.[3] Mrs. Doyle. Major Cecil Uvedale Corbett [1880-1944], Stableford Hall, Stableford, near Bridgnorth, Shropshire; presumably by inheritance to his son, Lt.-Col. Uvedale Corbett [1909-2005], Shobdon, near Leominster, Herefordshire;[4] (C. Marshall Spink, London);[5] sold 1947 to (Wildenstein and Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London); sold 1947 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[6] gift 1952 to NGA.
[1] "A Catalogue of the Right Hon.ble Sir Robert Walpole's Collection of Pictures, 1736" in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MSS. PML 7586. According to Horace Walpole, his father paid 114 Pounds -- a large sum, but not as much as the 320 Pounds he paid for his other accepted Poussin, The Holy Family with Sts. John and Elizabeth. This, of course, cannot be used as a reliable determinant of a painting's attribution.
[2] A Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, 1764: 75. The Education of Jupiter appears in the Round Drawing Room.
[3] Aedes Strawberrianae. Names of Purchasers and the Prices to the Sale Catalogue of the Choice Collections of Art and Virtù, at Strawberry-Hill Villa, formed by Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, London, 1842: 50.
[4] The three preceding names were provided by C. Marshall Spink. Martha Hepworth of the Getty Provenance Index further identified the Corbett family and thus reversed the names from the order in which they were given in Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian, Oxford, 1977: 281; see her letter of 17 March 1986 to Suzannah Fabing, in NGA curatorial files, and Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, London, 1965: 164-165. A draft of Cecil Uvedale Corbett's will (photocopy received from Shropshire Archives, NGA curatorial files) does not itemize any paintings, although they were likely included in either the "Ashfield heirlooms" or the "one half of other pictures at Stableford to be selected as is herinafter provided" that were bequeathed to his first son, Uvedale Corbett.
[5] According to Georges Wildenstein (letter to Fern Rusk Shapley, 5 January 1961, NGA curatorial files), Spink bought the painting "at a sale in an English country house, probably a sale which took place at Stableford Hall." Attempts to find a record of this sale have proved unsuccessful.
[6] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/749.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1982

  • France in the Golden Age: Seventeenth-Century French Paintings in American Collections, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, 1982, no. 92, repro., as The Nurture of Jupiter.

2009

  • Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2009-2010, no. 150, fig. 75, as The Feeding of the Child Jupiter.

2014

  • Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, 2014-2015, not in catalogue.

Bibliography

1951

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 216, no. 96, repro.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 337, repro.

1960

  • The National Gallery of Art and Its Collections. Foreword by Perry B. Cott and notes by Otto Stelzer. National Gallery of Art, Washington (undated, 1960s): 24, repro. 25.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 105.

1966

  • Blunt, Anthony. The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin. A Critical Catalogue. 2 vols. London, 1966: R. 80.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 92, repro.

1974

  • Thuillier, Jacques. L’opera completa di Poussin. Milan, 1974. French ed., Tout l’oeuvre peint de Poussin. Paris, 1974: R. 71.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 274, repro.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 280-282, fig. 252, as The Nurture of Jupiter.

  • Pope-Hennessy, John. "Completing the Account." Review of Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, London 1977. Times Literary Supplement no. 3927 (17 June 1977).

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 317, no. 416, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 318, repro.

1994

  • Rosenberg, Pierre, and Antoine Prat. Nicolas Poussin, 1594–1665: catalogue raisonné des dessins. 2 vols. Milan, 1994: 1:144, no. 81.

  • Thuillier, Jacques. Nicolas Poussin. Paris, 1994: R. 67.

2005

  • Baillio, Joseph, et al. The Arts of France from François Ier to Napoléon Ier. A Centennial Celebration of Wildenstein's Presence in New York. Exh. cat. Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 2005: 78 (not in the exhibition).

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 85, 396-402, color repro.

Inscriptions

On stretcher: in red chalk, "1440"; stenciled in black, "754L"; in pencil, "841 9E X".

Wikidata ID

Q20177331

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