Oil painting, 'Diogenes Throwing Away His Bowl', George Lambert (after Nicolas Poussin), 1745

Purchased, 1870
Purchased from Mr.R Smith, Romsey, Hants, for £30

Historical significance: This is a copy, reduced in size, of the painting by Nicholas Poussin of 1648 now in the Louvre (see A. Blunt "Nicolas Poussin : A Critical Catalogue" (1966), no.150, pp.108-9). The original had been in the Louvre since 1665. But as there is no evidence that Lambert ever visited Paris, he presumably either copied this from the engraving by Etienne Baudet, or from another oil copy in an English collection (see Blunt p.108 for known copies, although none seem likely candidates). It is worth noting that a sale at Cock's of paintings "brought from abroad" by the dealer Andrew Hay on 19 February 1725/6 (lot 34), a "Diogenes throwing away his Dish, by Le Mere" (presumably Jean Lemaire) was bought by Lord Burlington, who was Lambert's patron from 1742, commissioning three views of Chiswick Villa. As the copy by Lambert is dated 1745 there is possibly a link.

Poussin's principal theme in his version of Diogenes of the possible contentment and comfort for man in nature would have appled to mid-eighteenth-century English sensibility. Diogenes, a fourth-century BC philosopher, abhorred all worldly goods. Living in a barrel, he was visited by alexander the Great, who offered him any favour, but was simply asked to move aside as he was blocking the sun. This is the usual episode in the philosopher's life depicted in European art. But in this picture, Diogenes has encoutered on his travels a countryman, who teaches him that he can drink from his cupped hands and has no need for a bowl (in the original literary source, Diogenes Laertius's "Lives of the Philosophers" it is a child who teaches him this lesson). This austere lesson takes place in the glorious surroundings of an Arcadian, perfectly compsed world, where labour and anxiety are evidently unknown.

Richard Redgrave, first curator of paintings at this museum, who was responsible for the purchase of this work, wrote that Lambert "almost always imitated Poussin" (Richard and Samuel Redgrave, "A Century of British Painters", 1866). This is not strictly true and Redgrave probably meant Gaspard Poussin, whom he later cited as Lambert's inspiration (Richard Redgrave, "Dictionary of Artists", 1874). Only eight of the fifty works by Lambert in his posthumous auction sale were described in the catalogue as "After Poussin".

1431-1870