Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/674

Rh 650 P O U P O Z by the intrigues of Simon Vouet, Feuquieres, and the architect Lemercier, Poussin withdrew to Rome. There, in 1648, he finished for De Chanteloup the second series of the Seven Sacraments (Bridgewater Gallery), and also his noble landscape with Diogenes throwing away his Scoop (Louvre); in 1649 he painted the Vision of St Paul (Louvre) for the comic poet Scarron, and in 1651 the Holy Family (Louvre) for the duke of Crequi. Year by year he continued to produce an enormous variety of works, many of which are included in the list given by Felibien, in which we find the names of Pointel the banker, Cardinal Manimo, Madame Mauroi, and others. He is said to have settled in a house on the Pincio, but in 1656, the year of the plague, he is entered in the census as living with his wife in the Via Paolina. He died in November 1665 and was buried in the church of St Lawrence in Lucina, his wife having predeceased him. The finest collection of Poussin s paintings as well as of his drawings is possessed by the Louvre ; but, besides the pictures in the National Gallery and at Duhvieh, England possesses several of his most considerable works : the Triumph of Pan is at Basildon ( Berkshire), and his great allegorical painting of the Arts at Knowsley. At Rome, in the Colonna and Valentin! Palaces, are notable works by him, and one of the private apartments of Prince Doria is decorated by a great series of landscapes in distemper, which are little known. Throughout his life he stood aloof from the popular movement of his native school. French art in his day was purely decorative, but in Poussin we find a survival of the impulses of the Renaissance coupled with conscious reference to classic work as the standard of excellence. In general we see his paintings at a great disadvantage, for the colour, even of the best ] (reserved, has changed in parts, so that the keeping is disturbed ; and the noble construction of his designs can be better seen in engravings than in the original. Amongst the many who have reproduced his works the two Audran, Claudine Stella, Picart, and Pesne are the most successful. Ponssin left no children, but he adopted as his son Caspar Dughet, his wife s brother, who took the name of Poussin. CASPAR POUSSIN (1613-1675) devoted himself to landscape painting and rendered admirably the severer beauties of the Roman Campagna ; a note worthy series of works in tempera representing various sites near Rome is to be seen in the Colonna Palace, but one of his finest easel-pictures, the Sacrifice of Abraham, formerly the property of the Colonna, is now, with other works by the same painter, in the English National Gallery. The frescos executed by Caspar Poussin in S. Martino di Monti are in a bad state of preservation. The Louvre does not possess a single work by his hand. Caspar died at Rome in 1675. i

Al Pattison, &quot;Documents iuedits, Le Poussin,&quot; in L Art (18S2). POUT, also WHITING-POUT or BIB (Gadm luscm), a small species of cod-fish locally abundant on the coasts of northern and western Europe, but less so in the Mediterranean. It is distinguished from other species of the genus Gadus by having a deep short body ; a short and obtuse snout, not longer than the eye ; the upper jaw the longer ; and a long barbel at the chin. The three dorsal fins are com posed of respectively twelve, twenty or twenty-two, and nineteen or twenty rays, the two anal fins of from twenty- nine to thirty-two and nineteen or twenty. A black spot occupies the upper part of the base of the pectoral fin. Pout affect certain localities of limited extent, where a number may be caught with hook and line. They are excellent food, but must be eaten soon after capture, and do not bear carriage. A pout of 5 Ib is considered a very large specimen. POWAN, or POWEN (Coregonus dupeoides), a species of the Salmonoid genus C oregomis, which seems to be peculiar to Loch Lomond in Scotland, the great lakes of Cumber land, where it is called &quot; schelly,&quot; and Lake Bala in Wales, the Welsh name of the fish being &quot;gwyniad.&quot; It is not found in other European waters; but of the numerous Continental species of this genus the lavaret of the Swiss lakes resembles it most. Powan, or, as they are sometimes called, freshwater herrings, live in the deepest parts of the lakes mentioned and come to the surface only occasionally, either in the winter time in order to spawn, or at certain times of the day during summer, approaching, it is said, the shores in search of food. Large numbers may then be taken with nets, and are mostly consumed on the spot. The powan rarely exceeds a length of 1 4 inches ; it has been fully described and figured by Parnell (Annals of Natural History, 1838, vol. i. p. 162) under the names of Coregonus lacepedei and Coregonus microcephalus ; the specimens to which the latter name was given are, however, not specifically different from the typical powan. POWERS, HIRAM (1807-1873), American sculptor, was the son of a farmer, and was born at Woodstock, Vermont, on 29th June 1807. In 1819 his father removed to a farm in Ohio, about six miles from Cincinnati, where the son attended school for about a year, staying meanwhile with his brother, a lawyer in Cincinnati. After leaving school he found employment in superintending a reading-room in connexion with the chief hotel of the town, but, being, in his own words;, &quot;forced at last to leave that place as his clothes and shoes were fast leaving him,&quot; he became a clerk in a general store. His second employer in this line of business having invested his capital in a clock and organ factory, Powers set himself to master the construction of the instruments, displaying an aptitude which in a short time enabled him to become the first mechanic in the fac tory. In 1826 he began to frequent the studio of Mr Eckstein, and at once conceived a strong passion for the art of sculpture. His proficiency in modelling secured him the situation of general assistant and artist of the Western Museum, kept by a Frenchman, M. Dorfeuille, where his ingenious representation of the infernal regions to illustrate the more striking scenes in the poem of Dante met with extraordinary success. After studying thoroughly the art of modelling and casting, he in the end of 1834 went to Washington, and a friend having secured for him as sitters the president and some of the leading statesmen his remarkable gifts soon awakened general attention. In 1837 he settled in Florence, where he remained till his death. While from pecuniary considerations he found it necessary to devote the greater part of his time to busts, his best efforts were bestowed on ideal work. In 1838 his statue of Eve excited the warm admiration of Thor- waldsen, and in 1839 he produced his celebrated Greek Slave, which at once gave him a place among the greatest sculptors of his time. Among the best known of his other ideal statues are the Fisher Boy, II Penseroso, Proserpine, California, America (modelled for the Crystal Palace, Sydenham), and the Last of his Tribe. Among the eminent men whose busts he modelled are many of the leading con temporary statesmen of America. His genius was strik ingly realistic and unconventional, a quality doubtless in some degree attributable to the nature of his early training, but it was the close and thorough study of the works of the great masters which finally disciplined his powers to their highest perfection of purity and refinement. He died on 27th June 1873. Among various obituary notices of Powers one of the most inter esting is that by his intimate friend T. A. Trollope in Lij/pincott s Magazine for February 1875. POZZO DI BORGO, CARLO ANDREA (1764-1842), Russian diplomatist, was descended from an old Corsican family, and was born at Alata near Ajaccio on 8th March 1764. After completing his legal studies at Pisa he became advocate at Ajaccio, where in 1790 he joined the party of Paoli, to whom the Buonaparte family was strongly opposed. In his early years he had been on terms of the closest intimacy with Napoleon, but from this time a feel ing of enmity sprang up between them, which on the part of Pozzo di Borgo increased as the career of Napoleon