Possessing an intensely inquisitive nature, Leon Kossoff maintained a compelling artistic dialogue with many Old Masters throughout his career, which manifested in a ritual of drawing directly from some of his favourite paintings, which included the work of the seventeenth-century French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665).

In the present work, believed to be one of only a small number of hand-coloured prints by Kossoff, we can see the artist’s interpretation of Poussin’s second version of The Rape of the Sabine Women (L'enlèvement des Sabines), which is dated from 1637/1638 and currently housed in the Louvre, Paris. Kossoff’s portrayal of this event in early Roman history belongs to a larger cycle of prints by the artist, referred to as The Poussin Project. This series of works reveals an intense scrutiny of his predecessor’s oeuvre, while also presenting a stylistically dramatic departure from Poussin’s controlled and refined classicism, translated into Kossoff’s graphic style through his highly expressive and propulsive mark-making.

Following the artist’s initial encounter with Poussin’s Cephalus and Aurora (circa 1630) at the National Gallery in London in the 1960s, Kossoff developed a renewed interest in the French artist in 1995, due to the arrival of a major Poussin retrospective held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, which, notably, featured the very painting by Poussin which forms the compositional basis of the present work. Kossoff took full advantage of this retrospective, drawing directly and incisively from the paintings before him, and even working directly onto etching plates. The immediacy in which Kossoff renders Poussin’s original tableau using the etching and drypoint technique is highly effective in conveying the chaos and the panic caused from the violence committed against the Sabines women in this chapter from the early history of Ancient Rome. Kossoff’s addition of watercolour to this rare proof, aside from the edition of twenty, further imbues the scene with a sense of movement and dynamism, particularly through the interaction of the multidirectional brushstrokes and etched lines.

Although there is an undeniable paradox between the two artists, Poussin was an enduring inspiration for the British artist, particularly evidenced in the present work by Kossoff’s focus on the depiction of gesture and bodily forms. Indeed, the strokes of colour animate the scene before us, indicating contorted bodies beneath swirling garments or the disturbed terrain beneath the feet of the riotous crowd, amplifying the sense of movement and emotional intensity within this incredibly dynamic image.

We are very grateful to Andrea Rose for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.

This print will be included in the forthcoming publication, Leon Kossoff: The Complete Prints, published by Modern Art Press.