The drawings, and especially the sketches and studies of the younger Van de Velde are very numerous, and prove the indefatigable pains he took in designing his vessels, their appurtenances, and the ordonnance of his compositions.  His sketches are executed in black lead only; his more finished drawings with the pencil or pen, and shaded with India ink.  He executed these with wonderful facility; it is recorded that he was so rapid in his sketching, that he frequently filled a quire of paper in an evening.  Stanley says that during the years 1778 and 1780, about 8,000 of his drawings were sold in London at public auction.  Some of his choicest drawings in India ink brought, at the sale of M. Goll de Frankenstein at Amsterdam, in 1833, and at that of the late Baron Verstolk de Soelen, in the same city in 1847, prices varying from L27 up to L144 each.  He inherited his father’s drawings, and all these seem now to be attributed to him.

NICHOLAS POUSSIN.

This distinguished French painter was born at Andely, in Normandy, in 1594.  He was descended from a noble family, originally of Soissons, whose fortunes had been ruined in the disastrous civil wars in the time of Charles IX. and Henry III.  His father, Jean Poussin, after serving in the army of Henry IV., settled on a small paternal inheritance at Andely, where he cultivated a taste for literature and the sciences, and instructed his son in the same.  Young Poussin had already distinguished himself for the solidity of his judgment, and his progress in letters, when a natural fondness for drawing, developed by an acquaintance he had formed with Quintin Varin, an artist of some eminence, induced him to solict the permission of his father to adopt painting as a profession.

POUSSIN’S FIRST CELEBRITY.

In 1612, at the age of eighteen, Poussin went to Paris in search of improvement, where he devoted himself to studying the best works to which he could gain access (for the fine arts were then at a low ebb in France) with the greatest assiduity.  In 1620, according to Felibien, the Jesuits celebrated the canonization of the founder of their order, Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier, on which occasion they determined to display a series of pictures by the first artists in Paris, representing the miracles performed by their patron saints.  Of these, Poussin painted six in distemper, in an incredibly short space of time, and when the exhibition came off, although he had been obliged to neglect detail, his pictures excited the greatest admiration on account of the grandeur of conception, and the elegance of design displayed in them.  They obtained the preference over all the others, and brought Poussin immediately into notice.

POUSSIN’S FIRST VISIT TO ROME.