Poussinist

Poussinist, any of the supporters of the supremacy of disegno (“drawing”) over colour in the “quarrel” of colour versus drawing that erupted in the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris in 1671. The quarrel was over the preeminent importance of drawing (i.e., the use of line to depict form) or colour in the art of painting. The Poussinists (followers of Nicolas Poussin) supported the Platonic concept of the existence in the mind of ideal objects that could be reconstructed in concrete form by a reasoned selection of beautiful parts from nature. Colour to the Poussinists was temporary, inessential, and only a decorative accessory to form. The Poussinists extolled the virtues of antiquity and Raphael, the Carracci, and the severe art of Poussin and were opposed by the party of the Rubenists, who had as their ideal masters Titian, Correggio, and Peter Paul Rubens.

As Poussin was a Frenchman, sometimes referred to as the “French Raphael,” and Rubens was a Fleming who had been expelled from France when it was suspected that he was spying for the Spanish Netherlands, there was a strong nationalistic stake in the Poussinists’ motivation. In 1672 the debate between colour and drawing was temporarily halted by the chancellor of the Academy, Charles Le Brun, who stated officially that “the function of colour is to satisfy the eyes, whereas drawing satisfies the mind.” Compare Rubenist.