Name coined by Anthony Blunt (1950) for the artist he thought responsible for a group of small landscape paintings that show rocky, Italianate scenes in which trees with silvery bark and feathery foliage create decorative patterns against the sky. The group was then attributed to Gaspard Dughet by Shearman (1963), who argued that it represented the earliest phase of Dughet’s development. Subsequently, Whitfield (1979) attributed all these paintings to Nicolas Poussin, arguing that Poussin began to paint landscapes earlier than had hitherto been believed and that these works might represent his first works in this genre. The problem was discussed by French (1980), when a work from this group, the Landscape with Birch Trees and a Goatherd (London, Colnaghi’s; see 1980 exh. cat., fig. 1), was exhibited with early works by Dughet, the Hagar and Ishmael (Wilton House, Wilts) and the Landscape with Hunters (Keele U.). Other works from Blunt’s Silver Birch group are the Italian Landscape with a Cowherd (London, N.G.) and the Landscape with a Goatherd (priv. col. see Whitfield, fig. 9), both of which are close to Poussin’s Landscape with St Jerome (Madrid, Prado), which Blunt accepted as by Poussin in 1959. The question of the attribution of the group of pictures thus remains open. Despite this artist’s name, the silver birch is hardly found in Italy (where both Dughet and Poussin were active).

Part of the Masters, anonymous, and monogrammists family

• Silver Birch Master
  • Dughet, Gaspard, §1(i): Training and early works, to c 1635