_Gaspard Poussin_ (French: 1613-1675). _See_ 31.
Gaspard travelled largely in Italy in search of the picturesque, and
this striking landscape may be a recollection of the mountain scenery
in the North--possibly near Bergamo. The spray of foliage prominent on
the left is characteristic of Gaspard's method:--
"One of the most remarkable characters of natural leafage is
the constancy with which, while the leaves are arranged on the
spray with exquisite regularity, that regularity is modified in
their actual effect. For as in every group of leaves some are
seen sideways, forming merely long lines, some foreshortened,
some crossing each other, every one differently turned and
placed from all the others, the forms of the leaves, though
in themselves similar, give rise to a thousand strange and
differing forms in the group.... Now go to Gaspard Poussin and
take one of his sprays, where they come against the sky; you
may count it all round: one, two, three, four, one bunch; five,
six, seven, eight, two bunches; nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
three bunches; with four leaves each; and such leaves! every
one precisely the same as its neighbour, blunt and round at
the end (where every forest leaf is sharp, except that of the
fig-tree), tied together by the stalks, and so fastened on to
the demoniacal claws above described (see under 68), one bunch
to each claw" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch.
i. §§ 16, 17).