Stephen Ongpin Fine Art
Front cover:
Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968)
Ohne Titel (Untitled), 1963 (detail) No.39
Philips Koninck (1618-1688)
Panoramic Landscape with a Watermill No.15
Stephen Ongpin Fine Art MASTER DRAWINGS 2025
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am, as ever, grateful to my wife Laura for her counsel, encouragement and patience during the period that I was working on this catalogue. I am also greatly indebted to the indefatigable members of Team SOFA – Alesa Boyle, Megan Corcoran Locke, Emma Ricci and Antonia Rosso – for their invaluable assistance in almost every aspect of preparing this catalogue and the accompanying exhibition. Andrew Smith has photographed all of the drawings to very high standards, and he and Alesa have been stalwart in the fundamental task of colour-proofing the catalogue images against the original artworks to ensure that they are as accurate as possible. In addition, I would like to thank the following people for their help and advice in the preparation of this catalogue and the drawings included in it: Deborah Bates, Babette Bohn, Marco Simone Bolzoni, Angus Broadbent, Julian Brooks, Jane Carter, Isabella Lodi-Fè Chapman, Cheryl and Gino Franchi, Alastair Frazer, Bert Meijer, Jean-Pierre Michel, Sebastien Paraskevas, Miriam di Penta, Sarah Bowler, Andrew Robison, Michel Shulman, Jennifer Tonkovich and Jack Wakefield.
Stephen Ongpin
Dimensions are given in millimetres and inches, with height before width. Unless otherwise noted, paper is white or whitish.
High-resolution digital images of the drawings, as well as framed images, are available on request, and are also visible on our website.
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MASTER DRAWINGS 2025
PRESENTED BY
STEPHEN ONGPIN
THE DUNOIS MASTER (JEAN HAINCELIN?)
French, active between c.1430 and c.1466
Sir Gawain and his Nine Companions in Search of Lancelot
Illuminated manuscript on vellum, with framing lines in brown ink. The verso with fifteen lines of French text in Gothic script in brown ink, from Le livre du Lancelot du Lac1 87 x 92 mm. (3 3/8 x 3 5/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Part of an illuminated manuscript of the Livre du Lancelot du Lac commissioned from Jean Haincelin in 1444 by Prigent VII de Coëtivy, Château de Taillebourg and Champtocé-sur-Loire; Probably by descent to his widow, Marie de Laval, Baronne de Retz; The manuscript subsequently broken up, probably in the 16th century, and the miniatures dispersed; The present sheet part of a group of thirty-four miniatures from the Livre du Lancelot du Lac bound into a red Morocco album, by the middle of the 19th century; Joachim Napoléon Murat, 5th Prince Murat, Paris and the Château de Chambly, Oise; By descent to his widow, Marie Cécile Ney d’Elchingen, Paris; The album purchased from her estate by Wynne R. H. Jeudwine, London, and the contents offered for sale individually in 1962; Christopher Pease, 2nd Baron Wardington, Wardington Manor, Oxfordshire; Anonymous sale (‘The Property of a Gentleman’), London, Sotheby’s, 13 December 1965, part of lot 171 (fourteen miniatures from the Livre du Lancelot du Lac, the present sheet as No.2, bt. Maggs); Maggs Bros. Ltd., London; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 8 July 1970, lot 22 (bt. T. R. Lacey); Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 21 June 1978, lot 260 (bt. De Kesel); Private collection, Belgium; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 8 July 2014, lot 17; Les Enluminures, Paris, Chicago and New York, in 2016; Ernst Boehlen, Bern.
EXHIBITED: London, W. R. Jeudwine at the Alpine Club Gallery, Early Fifteenth Century Miniatures, 1962, no.21.
Formerly known as the Chief Associate of the Bedford Master, the Dunois Master was a Parisian illuminator active in the middle of the 15th century, whose name derives from a book of hours made for Jean d’Orléans, Count of Dunois, which is now in the British Library in London. The Dunois Master is regarded as the finest pupil and assistant of the Bedford Master – named for his illumination of two manuscripts commissioned by John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford – and succeeded him as the leading manuscript illuminator in Paris after the departure of the English from the city in 1436. Like the Bedford Master, the Dunois Master was familiar with the work of such Flemish artists as Jan Van Eyck and Robert Campin, whose influence can be seen in his illuminations. He was employed at the court of King Charles VII, for such important patrons as the aforementioned Jean de Dunois, Jouvenel des Ursins and Etienne Chevalier, and is thought to have also painted a large altarpiece for Notre-Dame. Regarded as one of the leading figures in the field of 15th century French courtly manuscript illumination, the Dunois Master enjoyed a relatively long career until the 1460s. Recent scholarship has posited that the Dunois Master was one Jean Haincelin, who is recorded as an ‘enlumineur’ in Paris in 1438 and 1448. Haincelin may have been the son of the early 15th century Alsatian illuminator Haincelin von Hagenau, who has in turn been tentatively identified as the Bedford Master.
This beautifully preserved cutting is thought to have come from an illuminated manuscript once owned by the Breton nobleman and soldier Prigent VII de Coëtivy (1399-1450), who served Charles VII as Admiral of France from 1439 to 1450. In 1444 Prigent de Coëtivy paid ‘Hancelin’ – assumed to be Jean Haincelin – the large sum of ninety livres, seventeen sous and six deniers tournois for three illuminated manuscripts; a Roman de Tristan, a Roman de Guiron le Courtois and a Livre du Lancelot du Lac. The present sheet comes from the last of these, which is part of an early 13th century French literary cycle of Arthurian chivalric episodes of unknown authorship, which is known in modern terms as the Vulgate Cycle or the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. Although the manuscript of the Livre du Lancelot du Lac commissioned by Prigent de Coëtivy contained over 150 miniatures, it seems to have been broken up as early as the
recto (actual size)
16th century, and only thirty-four of the miniatures are known today. The extant miniatures from the Livre du Lancelot du Lac are very similar in style, technique and appearance to those which decorate the companion volume of the Roman de Guiron le Courtois, also commissioned by Prigent de Coëtivy from Haincelin, which remains intact and is in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris2.
The scene from the Livre du Lancelot du Lac depicted here shows the Arthurian knight Sir Gawain and his companions, who, having met a weeping damsel on a horse, are led by her to a nearby valley where a brave knight is fighting against ten soldiers. The knight has collapsed onto the ground, and Gawain’s companions take on the attackers, who eventually run away.
By the middle of the 19th century, thirty-four miniatures from the Livre du Lancelot du Lac, including the present sheet, had been bound into an album, with an unidentified coat of arms on the cover, which later belonged to Joachim Napoléon Murat, 5th Prince Murat (1856-1932). The album remained with his widow, Marie Cécile Ney d’Elchingen (1867-1960) until her death, and was purchased from her estate by Wynne Jeudwine (1920-1984), a London dealer in drawings, prints and books who exhibited all thirty-four miniatures in a selling exhibition of Early Fifteenth Century Miniatures at the Alpine Club Gallery in London in 1962. The present sheet was probably acquired at that time by the noted collector of maps and atlases Christopher Henry Beaumont Pease, 2nd Baron Wardington (1924-2005), who purchased fourteen of the Livre du Lancelot du Lac miniatures.
Less than a quarter of the miniatures by the Dunois Master from the manuscript of Lancelot du Lac have survived to this day. One of the miniatures is now in the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College3, while three others are in the collection of the Museo Civico Amedeo Lia in La Spezia4 and a further three are in the Beinecke Library at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut5. Other examples are today in the Liberna (Draiflessen) Collection in Mettingen and in a number of private collections. Four miniatures on vellum from the same manuscript were offered for sale by Maggs Bros. in 19666, while several others have appeared at auction in recent years7
2
Circle of ANTONIO DI PUCCIO PISANO, called PISANELLO
Verona or Pisa 1394-1455 Rome or Naples
Study of the Head of a Greyhound
Black and red chalk. Laid down. 245 x 363 mm. (9 5/8 x 14 1/4 in.)
Watermark: A face in the form of a sun with eight rays (close to Briquet 13941; probably Italian [Cibinio(?)], 1554).
PROVENANCE: Charles Molinier, Toulouse (Lugt 2917)1; Acquired from him or his heirs by Lucien Guiraud, Paris2; By descent to his widow; Her posthumous sale (‘Collection Lucien Guiraud’), Paris, Hôtel Drouot [Ader], 14-15 June 1956, lot 61 (as Pisanello); Anonymous sale, Paris, Christie’s, 1 April 2016, lot 4 (as follower of Pisanello); Peter Silverman and Kathleen Onorato, Paris.
LITERATURE: Maria Fossi Todorow, I disegni del Pisanello e della sua cerchia, Florence, 1966, p.176, no.357, illustrated pl.CXXIX, fig.357 (as not by Pisanello); Vittorio Sgarbi, ed., Rinascimento segreto, exhibition catalogue, Urbino, Pesaro and Fano, 2017, pp.104-105, no.39 (entry by Franco Moro).
EXHIBITED: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Exposition de l’oeuvre de Pisanello: Médailles – dessins –peintures, 1932, p.57, no.146 (as Pisanello); Urbino, Palazzo Ducale, Sala del Castellare, Rinascimento segreto, 2017, no.39 (as Follower of Pisanello).
A painter, draughtsman and medallist, Antonio di Puccio, known as Pisanello, enjoyed a long and highly successful career. He was probably born and grew up in Verona, but nothing is known of his training or early life before 1424, when he appears in a document already described as a ‘distinguished painter’ (‘pictor egregius’). Pisanello worked in Verona, Pavia, Rome, Ferrara, Milan, Mantua and Naples and enjoyed the patronage of some of the most powerful and sophisticated courts in Italy, receiving important commissions from the Gonzaga in Mantua, the d’Este in Ferrara and Alfonso V of Aragon, King of Naples, as well as Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and Popes Martin V, Eugenius IV and Nicholas V. Despite his fame, however, very few of his paintings have survived to this day. Indeed, only four or five panel paintings and three frescoed mural compositions – two in churches in Verona and the other in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, all in poor condition – exist today from his oeuvre as a painter.
As a draughtsman, however, Pisanello is better known. Around four hundred drawings by Pisanello and his workshop are known today, of which by far the largest group is now in the Louvre. (Almost all of the Louvre drawings come from an album acquired by the museum in 1856 from the Milanese print publisher and dealer Giuseppe Vallardi.) The range and variety of extant drawings by Pisanello and artists of his circle allow for a closer understanding of the master’s working methods. When planning a composition, Pisanello ‘would employ his own ‘pattern’ drawings from stock, often very finished and beautiful – drawings above all of birds and animals – and also make new sketches for specific elements for the project in hand…Pisanello would also execute a series of finished studies on a particular theme. These would provide him with a corpus from which he could select one or more drawings to be used in the final painting, and which he could use again as workshop patterns in the future. Such drawings usually represent animals, drawn from life – for example hounds…and, above all, horses.’3
As has recently been noted, Pisanello ‘can be considered the most imaginative and versatile artist of the early Quattrocento, as his drawings show an unparalleled range of subjects and inventions. Around 400 sheets from his workshop have survived, and at least 100 of these are by Pisanello himself. Through his elegant and distinctive individual style, the figure of a master, separate from the members of the workshop, emerges for the first time.’4 However, there has long been scholarly debate around the extent of Pisanello’s drawn oeuvre5. The artist ‘had a large workshop, and he needed to be able to rely on its
members to be able to reproduce his motifs and his techniques. To this end they were trained, partly in the traditional way, by copying drawings. But Pisanello also appears to have taught his pupils to draw from life.’6
Pisanello was ‘one of the keenest observers and finest delineators of men’s features and animals’ forms that the art of the Western world has produced.’7 Many of his surviving drawings, and those of his school, are of animals that appear in larger works. This fine drawing of a greyhound, of exceptional quality, was long attributed to Pisanello himself. Greyhounds and other hunting dogs are found in a number of the artist’s paintings and drawings8, and a very similar head of a hound appears, albeit in reverse, in the foreground of Pisanello’s small panel painting of The Vision of Saint Eustace (fig.1), where it is depicted coursing a hare. Probably painted between 1438 and 1442, the painting is today in the National Gallery in London9. The position of the head of the hound in the present sheet is nearly identical to that of the dog in the painting, and both animals wear very similar collars.
Among the large corpus of surviving drawings by Pisanello and his circle are several studies of greyhounds and other dogs, some seemingly drawn from life and others taken from model books or copied from the work of earlier artists. These include a number of autograph drawings of greyhounds from the Vallardi album in the Louvre10, which also contains drawings of several other breeds by Pisanello11. An interesting comparison may also be made with a similar dog that appears in a drawing of three hounds chasing and devouring rabbits from the Vallardi album12. Drawn in pen and brown ink with watercolour on vellum, although in a manner somewhat more naïve and much less refined than the present sheet, the Louvre drawing was formerly attributed to Pisanello but is now given to the earlier Lombard painter and illuminator Michelino da Besozzo (c.1370-c.1455).
Given its undeniable quality, it is unsurprising that this 15th century drawing has long held an attribution to Pisanello, under whose name it was exhibited in Paris in 1932. The naturalistic representation of the muzzle of the greyhound, beautifully drawn in a subtle combination of black and red chalks, has something of the characteristics of a formal profile portrait, characterized by an innate nobility and dignity. The close study of the creature’s nose and ear and intensely focused sharp eye, as well as the finely drawn smooth coat and studded leather collar with a buckle, all point to an artist of considerable skill.
SPANISH SCHOOL
Circa 1550
A Decorated Initial V from an Antiphonary
Manuscript in red, blue and grey ink on vellum. Inscribed with part of a rubric [As]censione dni in red ink on the verso.
288 x 285 mm. (11 3/8 x 11 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Maggs Bros. Ltd., London, in 1967; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 24 June 1980, part of lot 16 (‘Two Very Large Decorated Initials, “V” and “S”, in elaborately ornamented red and blue with very detailed infilling and surround in both colours, cut from vellum leaves of an Antiphoner, portions of text and music on the verso (each approx. 295 mm. by 290 mm.) [Spain, c.1550]’ bt. Maggs); Maggs Bros. Ltd., London; Stuart Cary Welch, Jr., New Hampshire.
LITERATURE: London, Maggs Bros. Ltd., European Miniatures and Illumination: Bulletin No.5, April 1967, pp.51-53, no.37 (as ‘Spanish Illuminator, c.1550’).
The present sheet is one of a group of four matching ornamental initials from a large 16th century Spanish antiphonal manuscript that were offered for sale by Maggs Bros. in London in 19671. This cutting of an initial V, with traces of text and ruling for music, incorporates a foliate pattern in red and blue outlined with white, surrounded by a repeated pattern of circles with flower heads inside them. While the ornament of the present sheet and another from the group, with the initial A, is based entirely on circles, the other two cuttings, with the initials C and S, also incorporated lozenges. Indeed, the initial S adds squares to the design, creating a pattern quite reminiscent of Islamic ornament, which in turn would suggest a possible origin in southern Spain for the parent manuscript.
The reverse of this decorated initial V includes the rubric ‘[As]censione d[omi]ni’ (‘Ascension of the Lord’), so it is likely that this initial was meant to begin the introit lines ‘Videntibus illis elevatus est’ (‘When they saw him, he was lifted up’) or ‘Viri Galilaei, quid aspicitis in caelum’ (‘Men of Galilee, why are you looking up to heaven?’) in the text of the antiphonary. The very large scale and repeated ornament of the present sheet, as well as the three related initials, is typical of late medieval and 16th century Spanish liturgical choirbooks. They may be likened in particular to the ‘letras de compas para illuminadores’ (or ‘casos quadrados’) (fig.1) illustrated by Juan de Yciar in his famous writing book Arte Subtilissima, published in Spain in 15502, and may thus be tentatively dated to around the same time.
This cutting was once part of the collection of Stuart Cary Welch (1928-2008), a noted scholar and curator of Islamic and Indian art who had a long professional relationship with both the Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge (MA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
TADDEO ZUCCARO
Sant’Angelo in Vado 1529-1566 Rome
Design for a Pendentive with Saint Luke
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, with touches of white heightening, and squared in red chalk, within brown ink framing lines, on blue paper. The verso with figure studies in brown ink. 147 x 142 mm. (5 3/4 x 5 5/8 in.) at greatest dimensions.
PROVENANCE: Purchased in Florence around 1830 by the Rev. John Sanford, London and Florence1; By descent to his daughter Anna Horatia Caroline and her husband Frederick Henry Paul Methuen, 2nd Baron Methuen, Corsham Court, Wiltshire; By descent to Paul Ayshford Methuen, 4th Baron Methuen, Corsham Court, Wiltshire; Thence by family descent until 1996; Sale (‘Drawings from the Collection at Corsham Court’), London, Sotheby’s, 3 July 1996, lot 17; Private collection, Europe.
LITERATURE: John Gere, Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development Studied in his Drawings, London, 1969, p.65, p.129, no.25, pl.60; John Gere, Dessins de Taddeo et Federico Zuccaro, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1969, p.26, under no.13; Cristina Acidini Luchinat, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari: fratelli pittori del Cinquecento, Milan and Rome, 1998-1999, Vol.I, p.50, fig.14, p.57, note 22; Zdeněk Kazlepka and Martin Zlatohlávek, Magie kresby / The Magic of Drawing Italska Kresba Vrcholné Renesance a Manýrismu v Ceských a Moravských Verejných Sbírkách / Italian Drawings of the High Renaissance and Mannerism from Bohemian and Moravian Public Collections, exhibition catalogue, Olomouc and Kroměříž, 2023, pp.162-165, pp.303-304, under no.87.
Among the most gifted Mannerist artists working in Rome, Taddeo Zuccaro had a relatively brief career, lasting less than twenty years. He was a superb draughtsman, whose drawings reveal a highly original and inventive artist. His figure studies, in particular, are drawn with a vitality and exuberance that ranks them among the most remarkable graphic statements of Roman Mannerism. The present sheet is a study for what is arguably Zuccaro’s most important surviving work, the fresco decoration of the Mattei Chapel in the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Rome, painted between 1553 and 1556. The decoration of the small chapel was the result of a commission from the nobleman Jacopo Mattei, who several years earlier had engaged the young Zuccaro to paint the façade of the Palazzo Mattei in Rome. As Giorgio Vasari records, ‘M. Jacopo Mattei, having caused a chapel to be built in the Church of the Consolazione below the Campidoglio, allotted it to Taddeo to paint, knowing already how able he was; and he willingly undertook to do it, and for a small price, in order to show certain persons, who went about saying that he could do nothing save façades and other works in chiaroscuro, that he could also paint in colour. Having then set his hand to that work, Taddeo would only touch it when he was in the mood and vein to do well, spending the rest of his time on works that did not weigh upon him so much in the matter of honour; and so he executed it at his leisure in four years…The whole work, which was uncovered in the year 1556, when Taddeo was not more than twenty-six years of age, as held, as it still is, to be extraordinary, and he was judged by the craftsmen at that time to be an excellent painter.’2 Zuccaro must have produced a large number of preparatory drawings for this important commission, but only a few are known today.
This fine drawing is an early preparatory study for one of the four Evangelists (fig.1) painted by Taddeo Zuccaro on the pendentives of the vault of the Mattei Chapel3. The pendentives are very damaged today, and only three of them are still reasonably legible4. Since the frescoed Evangelists are halflength figures, this squared drawing of a full-length seated figure of Saint Luke, as Gere has noted, ‘can reasonably be identified as a discarded design for one of the pendentives on the entrance-wall’5 of the chapel. Another preparatory drawing for the same pendentive figure of Saint Luke, which also shows the figure full-length and is very similar in stylistic terms to the present sheet (fig.2), is in the collection of the Archdiocesan Museum in Kroměříž in the Czech Republic6
Four other preparatory drawings by Taddeo related to the Evangelists in the Mattei Chapel are known. A drawing for the full-length pendentive figure of Saint John is in the Louvre7, while a pen and wash
recto (actual size)
study of a half-length figure of Saint Matthew with an Angel appears on the verso of a drawing in the Uffizi8. What seems to be another early study for the Saint Matthew pendentive is in the collection of the Kunsthaus in Zurich9. A sheet of red chalk figure studies of full-length Evangelists, on the verso of a drawing of a sibyl in a private collection10, may also be related to the Mattei Chapel pendentives. As Julian Brooks has pointed out, based on the surviving drawings for the pendentives, ‘it is obvious that Taddeo initially wished to portray the evangelists full-length, although in the end he decided to show only their upper bodies and heads. Taddeo’s struggles to overcome the problem of showing the full body from below – while keeping the head visible and including an attribute… – are evident.’11 Certainly, the visually striking pose of the Evangelist in the present sheet, like those of the saints in the related drawings in the Louvre and in Kroměříž, is quite different from the much more restrained half-length figures that were eventually frescoed in the chapel.
Among stylistically comparable drawings by Taddeo Zuccaro is a study of an angel seated on a cloud, likewise drawn in pen and brown ink and wash on blue paper, in the collection of the Raclin Murphy (formerly Snite) Museum at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana12, and a drawing of Saint Paul Restoring Eutychus to Life in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York13. Also similar in medium and technique is a drawing of Two Youths Asleep in a Landscape in the Kunsthaus in Zurich14, which is a study for another fresco in the Mattei Chapel, as well as a Seated Sibyl in the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg15 and a drawing of a Roman soldier in the Biblioteca National in Rio de Janeiro16, both of which can also be related to the same commission.
The studies of arms and torsos drawn in brown ink on the verso of the present sheet may likewise be tentatively related to the Mattei Chapel decorations, and in particular the vault fresco of The Arrest of Christ (fig.3)17. When the sheet is turned 180 degrees, the study of a bent arm near the top edge of the verso can perhaps be regarded as a first idea for the arm of Saint Peter, holding a knife and attacking the fallen Roman soldier Malchus, near the centre of the painted composition. This figure also appears in Taddeo’s more elaborate compositional drawing for The Arrest of Christ, in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin18
verso (actual size)
FEDERICO ZUCCARO
Sant’Angelo in Vado c.1540/41-1609 Ancona
The Submission of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa before Pope Alexander III in Venice
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk, on varnished (or oiled?) paper. Numerous additions and corrections inserted by the artist into the composition on separate pieces of paper.
528 x 458 mm. (20 3/4 x 18 in.)
PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 8 December 1972, lot 28; Ian Woodner, New York; Thence by descent; The posthumous Woodner sale, London, Christie’s, 7 July 1992, lot 18; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 22 April 1998, lot 27; James Fenton, New York.
LITERATURE: George R. Goldner, Master Drawings from the Woodner Collection, exhibition catalogue, Malibu and elsewhere, Fort Worth and Washington, D.C., 1983-1984, pp.68-69, no.25; Roger Ward, ‘Washington D.C., Master Drawings from the Woodner Collection’ [exhibition review], The Burlington Magazine, April 1984, pp.251-252, fig.105; George R. Goldner, European Drawings 1: Catalogue of the Collections. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1988, p.132, under no.55; E. James Mundy, Renaissance into Baroque: Italian Master Drawings by the Zuccari 1550-1600, exhibition catalogue, Milwaukee and New York, 1989-1990, pp.260-263, no.88; William M. Griswold and Linda Wolk-Simon, SixteenthCentury Italian Drawings in New York Collections, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1994, p.95, under no.85; Cristina Acidini Luchinat, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari: fratelli pittori del Cinquecento, Milan and Rome, 1998-1999, Vol.II, p.150, note 80; Dominique Cordellier et al, De la Renaissance à l’Age baroque: Une collection de dessins italiens pour les musées de France, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2005, p.96, under no.60; Ursula Verena Fischer Pace, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings, Statens Museum for Kunst: Roman Drawings before 1800, Copenhagen, 2014, p.53, under no.25; Rhoda Eitel-Porter and John Marciari, Italian Renaissance Drawings at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, 2019, p.382, under no.123.
EXHIBITED: Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, and Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Master Drawings from the Woodner Collection, 1983-1984, no.25.
This very large and complex drawing – drawn on several sheets of paper, and with numerous pentimenti and corrections inserted by the artist on separate pieces of paper – is a working compositional study for Federico Zuccaro’s monumental painting of The Submission of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa before Pope Alexander III (fig.1) in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice1. Begun around 1582, the painting, over six metres in height, was not completed until the artist made a return visit to Venice more than twenty years later, in 1603.
The event depicted in this drawing took place in front of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice in July 1177 and marked the reconciliation of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope after a long period of conflict between the two men, arising from the Pope’s excommunication of Frederick in 1160. Following the capture of the Emperor’s son Otto by the Venetian fleet, Doge Sebastiano Ziani was able to bring Pope Alexander III and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa together in Venice to establish peace. Zuccaro’s canvas depicts the Pope standing beneath a baldacchino or canopy in front of San Marco, his foot on the neck of the prostrate Emperor, who kisses the Pope’s other foot, and shows the Piazzetta beyond and the island and church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the distance.
The present sheet is quite close to the composition of the final canvas, although it displays numerous pentiments and, in particular, alters the length of the façade of the Palazzo Ducale. As the scholar Roger Ward has noted, this large drawing is ‘of great historical importance [and] technical complexity…It is vital to an understanding of the function of this drawing to realise that it was not made on a single sheet, but on
several smaller pieces of paper that have been joined. Furthermore, some figures or whole groups of figures were drawn on separate fragments and then, like giant pentimenti, stuck down onto the principal sheet (perhaps most easily discernible in reproduction is the soldier seated in the bottom left corner). Also the Doge’s Palace was significantly altered by bleeding out most of its visible extension beyond the façade of San Marco. In other words, this drawing, though made well beyond the invenzione stage, is nevertheless a record of work still in progress.’2 Indeed, the present sheet allows for a fascinating insight into Zuccaro’s artistic process as he developed the composition of this significant public commission.
Several other preparatory drawings by Zuccaro for The Submission of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa before Pope Alexander III have survived. Perhaps the earliest drawing related to the project is a large horizontal composition that appeared at auction in 20103, which depicts the scene within an elaborate architectural setting, viewed from the Piazzetta with the Torre dell’Orologio in the background and San Marco at the right of the scene. However, the drawing’s horizontal orientation would have been unsuitable for the narrower vertical space intended for the painting. It has been suggested, therefore, that the drawing may represent a first idea by Federico for the composition, drawn either before he knew precisely the dimensions of the space to be painted, or perhaps as an attempt to persuade the Senate to allow him to decorate a much larger, horizontal space in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio. The next drawing in the sequence is a compositional study in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York4, which likewise differs from the final painting in showing the scene from the other side, looking towards the Torre dell’Orologio with the façade of San Marco at the right.
Each of the other known compositional drawings for The Submission of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa before Pope Alexander III depict the scene as it was actually painted; that is, looking towards the lagoon with the façade of San Marco at the left edge of the composition5. A compositional study in pen and ink for The Submission of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa before Pope Alexander III is recorded in a private English collection in 19706, while another compositional drawing is today in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille7. A third, highly finished drawing, very close to the present sheet in composition and slightly larger (fig.2), is in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles8. A study for the group of spectators at the left edge of the composition is in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen9, while a handful of chalk studies for individual figures in the painting are also known10
A studio copy of either the present sheet or the closely related Getty drawing is at Christ Church in Oxford11
Attributed to ANNIBALE CARRACCI
Bologna 1560-1609 Rome
The Head of a Young Child
Red chalk. A small made-up area on the upper forehead of the child and another above the child’s proper right eyebrow and the upper left side of his head. Laid down on an 18th century English (Richardson) mount, inscribed Annibale. in brown ink in the lower margin. The reverse of the mount inscribed with Richardson’s shelfmarks B.10. / AA.60. / 61. / A.22. / f in brown ink, and, in a different hand, the Saint-Morys sale code 41 and 1D. L. 64 (Lugt 3510) in brown ink.
137 x 118 mm. (5 3/8 x 4 5/8 in.) [sheet]
PROVENANCE: Jonathan Richardson, Senior, London (Lugt 2184 and on his mount); Probably his posthumous sale, London, Covent Garden, Christopher Cock, 22 January to 8 February 1747; Charles Paul Jean-Baptiste de Bourgevin Vialart de Moligny, Comte de Saint-Morys, Paris and Hondainville (with his collector’s mark [Lugt 474] stamped three times); By descent to his son, Charles Étienne Bourgevin Vialart, Comte de Carrière, London (with the related collector’s mark C.D.C. [Lugt 525]); His sale (‘The Collection of Drawings, The Property of Count de Carriere’), London, Henry Phillips, 10-14 June 1797, part of lot 64 (‘Fifteen, A. Sacchi &c.’, bt. Legoux for 7s.); Art market, France, in c.2006; Private collection, France.
LITERATURE: Julian Brooks and Casey Lee, ‘The Identification of the “Pseudo-Crozat” Mark (Lugt 474)’, Master Drawings, Autumn 2021, pp.404-405, figs.20-21 (as Italian School Seventeenth-Century, location unknown); Transcription of Auctioneer Henry Phillips’s Annotated Catalogues of the 1797 and 1799 Sales of the Drawings of the Comte de Carrière [https://masterdrawings.org/content/digitalresources/], p.7, fig.11.
As Daniele Benati has pointed out, although he never married or had children of his own, ‘Annibale [Carracci] was the author of several enchanting and extraordinarily tender images of children.’1 The present sheet would appear to be a study for the head of the Christ Child in Annibale’s devotional canvas of The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, a youthful work painted in c.1585-1587 and today in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples2. Commissioned by Duke Ranuccio Farnese in Parma and then sent by him to Rome for his younger brother Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, the painting was for many years kept in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome but by 1680 is recorded in the Palazzo del Giardino in Parma. However, it had lost its attribution to Annibale Carracci by the time it entered the collections at Capodimonte at the beginning of the 19th century, and was only identified as an early work by him, by the art historian Ferdinando Bologna, in 1956. The painting reveals the particular influence of Correggio on Annibale; as has been noted, ‘At this age the young artist admired Correggio’s work over anything else, even Raphael’s, and his drawings and paintings of the mid-1580s attest to this devotion.’3 As Donald Posner has described the Capodimonte Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, ‘[it] is perhaps Annibale’s purest re-creation of Correggio’s visual poetry. The intimacy and melodious flow of the forms, the touchingly sweet, gentle types, and the sfumato, creating a unifying, all-enveloping, warm and golden atmosphere, amount to a kind of Correggesque tour de force ’4
A very similar head is also found in the Christ Child in another early painting by Annibale Carracci; a Holy Family in the collection of the National Trust at Tatton Park in Cheshire5 that is likewise datable to c.1585. Among stylistically and thematically comparable drawings by Annibale is a small red chalk study of A Child Held in the Arms of its Mother in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford6
The earliest known owner of this drawing was the English portrait painter, author and connoisseur Jonathan Richardson the Elder (1667-1745), whose mark is found at the lower left corner of the sheet. The drawing is also laid down on a typical Richardson mount, with the collector’s handwritten attribution ‘Annibale’ at the bottom7. Richardson’s remarkable collection of nearly five thousand drawings, mostly Italian works of the 16th and 17th centuries, was assembled over a period of some fifty years, and
actual size
included around four dozen drawings by or attributed to the Carracci. The scholar Catherine Loisel, who has accepted the attribution of this drawing to Annibale Carracci, has suggested that the two small made up and restored areas on the present sheet were done by Richardson when the drawing was mounted for him.
This drawing also bears the distinctive collector’s mark (Lugt 474) that has been recently identified as that of Charles Paul Jean-Baptiste de Bourgevin Vialart, Comte de Saint-Morys (1743-1795), and which was applied on drawings acquired by him after he went into exile in England in September 1790, during the French Revolution, and until his death five years later8. After Saint-Morys’s death, the collection of drawings, numbering over three thousand sheets, was inherited by his only son, Charles Étienne Bourgevin Vialart de Saint-Morys, Comte de Carrière and later Comte de Saint-Morys (1772-1817)9, who sold them at auction in two sales held in London in 1797 and 1799. It is thought that the Lugt 474 stamp was applied to the drawings in the Saint-Morys collection before the 1797 sale, at which time a code written in ink was also added to the versos of the drawings or their mounts. On the present sheet, the code ‘1D. L. 64’ indicates that this drawing was sold on the first day of the auction (10 June 1797), as part of lot 64, which contained fifteen drawings by different artists10.
The unidentified collector’s mark C.D.C. (Lugt 525) stamped on the present sheet is also found on a very small number of Italian and Netherlandish drawings, all of which also bear the Lugt 474 mark. Interestingly, each of the nine known drawings that have both the Lugt 474 (floral ‘C’) and Lugt 525 (‘C.D.C.’) marks were sold as part of lots 63 (containing twelve drawings) and 64 (fifteen drawings, including the present sheet) on the first day of the 1797 sale of the Comte de Carrière’s collection in London. It has been suggested that the C.D.C. stamp may have been a proposed collector’s mark applied to some of the drawings at the time of the sale. As Julian Brooks and Casey Lee have pointed out, in the present sheet ‘the floral “C” mark was stamped haphazardly no fewer than three times, twice without ink. What could be the purpose of this, and what could be the intention of the “C.D.C” mark?... Is it possible that these lots [ie. lots 63 and 64 of the 1797 sale] were “guinea pigs” for testing how the mark would look, both as a dry stamp and an inked stamp, and that the “C.D.C” mark was presented as an alternative, subsequently rejected option? It seems unlikely that a French aristocrat would propose a “C.D.C” mark for the Comte de Carrière, but might an English auction house employee have done so? At least part of the mystery continues.’11
AGOSTINO CARRACCI
Bologna 1557-1602 Parma
Recto: A Wooded Landscape with a Man Resting by a Path Verso: Nine Studies of Pendants and a Sketch of a Spider
Pen and brown ink and brown wash. Inscribed Titiaen in brown ink on the verso. 213 x 287 mm. (8 3/8 x 11 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 12 January 1990, lot 21 (as Annibale Carracci); Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 2 July 1991, lot 264 (as Agostino Carracci); Pierre de Charmant, Geneva; His sale, Paris, Christie’s, 21 March 2002, lot 46 (as Attributed to Agostino Carracci); Anthony Powell, London1
Perhaps the least well known of the three Carracci, Agostino Carracci has long been overshadowed by his more famous younger brother Annibale, who was three years his junior, and his cousin Ludovico, who was two years older. He is best known today as one of the finest Italian engravers of the 16th century, with an oeuvre of over two hundred prints, many of which were after the work of other artists. As a painter, Agostino studied with Prospero Fontana and Bartolomeo Passarotti, and was also trained as an engraver in the studio of Domenico Tibaldi, producing his first engravings in the early 1580s. Agostino worked alongside Annibale and Ludovico on the frescoed friezes of the Palazzo Fava in Bologna, completed in 1584. By now firmly established as a successful printmaker, Agostino also received a handful of commissions for altarpieces, such as a Virgin and Child with Saints painted in 1586 for a church in Parma. Following a stay to Venice, he again collaborated with his brother and cousin on the decoration of the Palazzo Magnani in Bologna around 1590. A few years later he completed an altarpiece of The Last Communion of Saint Jerome for the Bolognese church of San Girolamo alla Certosa, a painting described by the 17th century biographer Giovan Pietro Bellori as the artist’s masterpiece.
In the middle of the 1590s Agostino joined his brother Annibale in Rome, where the latter was engaged on the decoration of the galleria of the Palazzo Farnese. While the bulk of the decorative scheme of the Farnese Gallery was the work of Annibale, Agostino was responsible for the design and execution of two prominent frescoes on the long walls of the room; the Cephalus and Aurora and the so-called Galatea. After an argument with his brother, however, Agostino left Rome in 1599 for Parma, where he was commissioned by Duke Ranuccio Farnese to paint frescoes for the Palazzo del Giardino, but he died before the project was completed.
A prolific draughtsman, Agostino Carracci worked mainly in pen and ink. As Rudolf Wittkower has noted, ‘This is not astonishing, since he was first and foremost an engraver, and the careful engraver’s technique, characterized by the ample use of parallel and cross-hatching, remains apparent in his drawings throughout his whole life…[The 17th century Bolognese biographer Carlo Cesare] Malvasia, no doubt on good authority, tells us of his tireless and penetrating work as a draughtsman: how he cleared up step by step every detail of his compositions, how he made an over life-size model of an ear or clay models of arms and legs from corpses he had himself dissected to serve as reference when needed.’2 Nevertheless, Agostino does not seem to have valued his drawings particularly highly, to judge from Malvasia’s comment that he once saw one of the artist’s drawings in the possession of another Bolognese painter which the latter had saved from Agostino, who was about to use it to wipe clean a cooking pan.
According to early sources, both Annibale and Agostino Carracci drew landscapes outdoors, although very few drawings can be specifically related to landscape paintings by either artist. The practice of landscape painting and drawing was a significant part of the work of the Carracci studio and was carried through to the teachings of the Accademia degli Incamminati, the academy that the three Carracci established in Bologna in the early 1580s. As Clare Robertson has written of the Carracci, ‘They seemed
recto
to have made numerous drawings for landscapes from the very beginning of their careers. This activity must be seen in the wider context of their general interest in drawing from nature, and their interest in Venetian forms of art…part of the curriculum of the Carracci Academy was to go out into the country and make landscapes.’3 Landscape paintings and drawings by Agostino are mentioned in many Seicento inventories, and a volume of landscape studies by both Agostino and Annibale was part of a very large group of some six hundred drawings by the Carracci assembled by the 17th century Roman antiquarian Francesco Angeloni. While numerous landscape studies have been attributed to each artist, it seems that, of the two brothers, Agostino was in his day regarded as more dedicated to the practice of landscape drawing. In a 1603 funeral oration for Agostino, Luca Faberio noted of the artist and fellow members of the Carracci academy that ‘they drew hills, fields, lakes, rivers, and anything else that was beautiful or arresting in sight.’4
As Clovis Whitfield has observed, ‘In contrast with Annibale, Agostino in his landscape drawings reveals a concern with a careful definition of space and perspective; in many ways his brother’s manner was more direct, looking at individual planes and single motifs.’5 Agostino’s landscape studies owe much to the example of drawings and prints by such 16th century Venetian artists as Titian and Domenico Campagnola, and several of his drawings of this type have long been attributed to the latter in particular. The present sheet, which bears an old attribution to Titian, exemplifies the influence of the Venetian landscape tradition on Agostino, whose drawings were in turn influential on the succeeding generation of painters such as Domenichino and Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi. Among stylistically comparable pen drawings by Agostino Carracci is a Landscape with the Flight into Egypt(?) in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris6 and a Rocky Landscape with Figures in the collection of the Dukes of Devonshire at Chatsworth7, as well as a Landscape with Saint Francis in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt8
A number of Agostino’s prints from the early 1580s are of decorative designs for friezes or coats of arms, and several of his drawings include quick sketches of decorative ornaments akin to the studies of what appears to be jewellery on the verso of the present sheet. The schematic study of a spider on the verso is also echoed in a handful of drawings by the artist, such as a sheet of studies in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, which includes a quick sketch of a crab9.
FRANCESCO BRIZIO
Bologna c.1574-1623 Bologna
A Vision of the Virgin and Child with Angels Appearing to Saint Jerome Pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white, on buff paper, laid down on an 18th century English mount. Inscribed St Mathew, Julio Cesari(?) and Cosways stamp in pencil on the mount. Further inscribed Lady Sidmouth / Presented to Eliza Hobhouse 1842 in brown ink formerly at the top of the mount and now cut out and attached to the reverse of the mount. 344 x 235 mm. (13 1/2 x 9 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Richard Cosway, Stratford Place, London (Lugt 628 and probably on his mount); Probably his posthumous sale (‘The Cosway Collection’), London, George Stanley, 14-22 February 1822 [lot unidentified]; Possibly Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, London and Richmond Park; His second wife, Marianne Townsend, Lady Sidmouth; Given by her to her goddaughter Eliza Hobhouse in 1842 (according to the inscription on the old mount); Possibly her brother, Henry Hobhouse, Hadspen House, Castle Cary, Somerset, and thence by descent in the Hobhouse family; Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 1 July 1997, lot 44; Private collection.
Francesco Brizio was a pupil of Bartolomeo Passarotti in Bologna before transferring at the age of eighteen to the Accademia degli Incamminati, the Carracci academy in Bologna. He learned the art of engraving from Agostino Carracci and developed into a talented printmaker, producing a number of engravings after works by Ludovico and Agostino Carracci, Parmigianino and Correggio. Following Agostino’s departure for Rome in 1597, Brizio seems to have taken over his printmaking business in Bologna. At the same time he began to work closely with Ludovico Carracci, whom he assisted on some major public commissions, notably the decoration of the Palazzo Fava in Bologna between 1598 and 1600 and the cloister of the monastery of San Michele in Bosco, completed in 1605. Brizio was given charge of the Carracci studio when Ludovico went to Rome in 1602, and among his earliest significant independent commissions was the fresco decoration of the Negri-Formagliari chapel in the Bolognese church of San Giacomo Maggiore, completed in 1602. Together with Leonello Spada and Lucio Massari, Brizio worked on the fresco decoration of the Palazzo Bonfioli Rossi in Bologna and the Oratorio della Santissima Trinità at Pieve di Cento. Other churches in Bologna decorated with frescoes, paintings or altarpieces by the artist include San Colombano, San Domenico, San Martino Maggiore, San Michele in Bosco, San Petronio and San Salvatore. Brizio painted decorative frescoes for other villas and palaces in Bologna and the surrounding area, and also worked in Modena and Cento. Towards the end of his life he worked on an extensive cycle of fresco decorations in the Palazzo Orlandini-Marescalchi.
In his brief account of Brizio’s career, the 17th century Bolognese biographer Cesare Malvasia noted the artist’s small-scale works in particular, which he praised for their ‘delicacy and grace’ (‘delicatezza e leggiadria’). By the end of the 18th century, however, Brizio had been almost forgotten as a painter, and when he was occasionally noted in documents it was mainly for his work as an engraver. It is only in the last two or three decades that Brizio’s work as a painter and draughtsman has been the subject of renewed scholarly attention.
Brizio’s drawings are, like his paintings, particularly indebted to the example of Ludovico Carracci. He had a distinctive manner of drawing, with an emphasis on the depiction of form through brown wash and white heightening to achieve a painterly effect, and the present sheet may be compared stylistically with such drawings by the artist as a Virgin and Child with Saints Francis of Assisi and Carlo Borromeo (fig.1) in the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg1, a Saint Benedict in Ecstasy in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm2 and a Saint James the Greater and a Hermit Saint Kneeling Before a Statue of the Virgin and Child (fig.2) in the Albertina in Vienna3
The largest extant group of drawings by Francesco Brizio, amounting to around nine or ten sheets, is today in the Koenig-Fachsenfeld collection at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. Other drawings by the artist are in the collections of the Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge (MA), the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Uffizi in Florence, the British Museum, the Courtauld Galleries and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, Christ Church in Oxford, the Louvre in Paris, the Biblioteca Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice and the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.
This drawing bears the distinctive collector’s mark of the English portrait painter and miniaturist Richard Cosway RA (1742-1821), a leading artistic figure of the Georgian era. A noted connoisseur, collector and marchand-amateur, Cosway assembled fine collections of Old Master paintings, decorative arts, books, furniture, armour, sculpture and objects, as well as around 8,000 prints and some 2,700 drawings. Most of his drawings were acquired at auctions in London, and he had a particular penchant for Italian works of the 16th and 17th centuries and Flemish drawings of the 17th century. Cosway’s collection of drawings – which included groups of works by Correggio, Giulio Romano, Jordaens, Parmigianino, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian and Van Dyck, among others – was much admired by such fellow collectors and connoisseurs as Sir Thomas Lawrence. (Despite himself assembling arguably the finest collection of Old Master drawings ever formed in England, Lawrence appears to have been quite envious of Cosway’s collection, to judge from his comments in a letter to Joseph Farington of 1811: ‘I have been out…to see Cosway’s Drawings, and I am returned most heavily depressed in spirit from the strong impression of the past dreadful waste of time and improvidence of my Life and Talent…’4) Stored in portfolios and albums, Cosway’s collection of prints and drawings were dispersed at auction over a period of eight days in February 1822, a few months after his death. Only a small percentage of Old Master drawings from Cosway’s collection have been identified today, however.
The present sheet may have been acquired at the Cosway sale in 1822 by Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth (1757-1844). It is certainly known to have been in the possession of his second wife, the Hon. Marianne Townsend (d.1842), whom he married in 1823, the year after the Cosway sale. According to the inscription on the old mount, Lady Sidmouth in turn presented this drawing to her goddaughter Eliza Hobhouse in 1842, the year of the former’s death5
DANIEL DUMONSTIER
Paris 1574-1646 Paris
Portrait of Cardinal Jacques Davy du Perron
Red and black chalk. Inscribed LE CARDINAL DU PERRON and dated 1613 in brown ink at the top of the sheet. Traces of an erased inscription and date in black chalk near the centre right edge. Further inscribed J. Niel (Lugt 1944) in brown ink on the verso. 441 x 343 mm. (17 3/8 x 13 1/2 in.)
PROVENANCE: Philippe de Béthune, Paris and Selles-sur-Cher, and by descent to his son, Hippolyte de Béthune, Comte de Selles; Paul-Gabriel-Jules Niel, Paris (Lugt 1944, with his signature on the verso); Comte Alfred-Louis Lebeuf de Montgermont, Paris; His posthumous sale (‘Collection L. de M...’), Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 16-19 June 1919, lot 230 (‘Dumonstier (Daniel). Le Cardinal du Perron. En buste, grandeur nature, de trois-quarts à gauche; il porte la barbe, est coiffé de la barrette et vêtu d’un costume orné de fourrure à col de lingerie. Dessin au crayon noir, sanguine et lavis. En haut, l’inscription, en lettres capitals: LE CARDINAL DU PERRON, 1613. Haut., 44 cent.; larg., 34 cent.’, bt. Lang for 7,000 francs); Private collection; Anonymous sale, (‘Provenant de la Collection de Madame B…’), Paris, Galerie Charpentier [Ader], 12 June 1959, lot 95; Private collection.
LITERATURE: Daniel Lecoeur, Daniel Dumonstier 1574-1646, Paris, 2006, p.96, no.27 (as location unknown).
The son of the portraitist Cosme Dumonstier and nephew of the artists Pierre and Etienne Dumonstier, Daniel Dumonstier worked mainly in Paris and enjoyed a long and successful career as a court painter and valet de chambre to King Henri IV and his successor, Louis XIII. Given lodgings in the Louvre, he made portrait drawings of both male and female members of the French royal family, the aristocracy and nobility, as well as prominent civil servants and many members of the upper classes. Dumonstier was friendly with such writers as François de Malherbe, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux who described the artist as well-read and noted that he wrote poetry, spoke Italian and Spanish as well as French, and had a wicked sense of humour. Tallemant des Réaux added that, ‘When he painted people, he let them do whatever they wanted; sometimes he would just say to them, “Turn around”. He made them more beautiful than they were, and for this reason he said: “They are so foolish that they think they are like I make them, and pay me better for it.”’1 In 1626 Dumonstier was named peintre et valet de chambre to Gaston d’Orléans, the King’s younger brother. He assembled a fine library of books and manuscripts, part of which was acquired after his death by Cardinal Mazarin.
The present sheet can be situated within a long artistic tradition of portrait drawings executed in black, red and white chalks by French artists extending from Jean Clouet around 1500 to Daniel Dumonstier and Nicolas Lagneau in the first half of the 17th century. Dumonstier’s portrait drawings were generally larger in scale than those of earlier artists, at about half life-size and usually in three-quarter profile, and display a more pronounced interest in physiognomy and somewhat less of a focus on costume. The artist often dated his drawings; the earliest was done in 1600 and the latest are dated 1642 and 1644. The most important groups of drawings by Dumonstier are today in the Louvre and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Musée Condé in Chantilly, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor in Aylesbury, Berkshire.
The sitter of this portrait drawing, the French politician and Catholic cardinal Jacques Davy du Perron (1556-1618), was born to a noble family in Saint-Lô in Normandy. The son of a Protestant minister, he was raised and educated in Bern in Switzerland, where his family had fled to escape religious persecution. By 1578, however, du Perron seems to have renounced his Protestant upbringing and had
entered royal service at the court of King Henri III, by whom he was appointed lecteur de la chambre du Roy, and also served as a royal scholar of languages, philosophy and mathematics. He took religious orders in the late 1580s, and in 1591 was appointed Bishop of Évreux by the new King Henri IV, whom he instructed in the Catholic faith. In 1604 du Perron was created a cardinal by Pope Clement VIII, and served in Rome between 1605 and 1607, participating in two papal conclaves in quick succession and serving as cardinal priest of the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone. Du Perron sent many letters to Henri IV reporting on events at the papal court, and acted for the King as a mediator between the Republic of Venice and Pope Paul V. In 1606 the King named him Archbishop of Sens, although he did not take up the position until October 1608, a year after he had left Rome and returned to France. Du Perron died in 1618, at the age of sixty-three.
The present sheet was part of a large group of portrait drawings by Daniel Dumonstier assembled by the diplomat and ambassador Philippe de Béthune (1561-1649), the younger brother of the Duc de Sully, minister to King Henry IV. Béthune was a noted collector, and during the period of his appointment as the French ambassador in Rome between 1601 and 1605 he acquired a number of important Italian paintings. He is thought to have purchased several hundred drawings by Dumonstier from his family, shortly after the death of the artist, and at his own death in 1649 these passed to his son, Comte Hippolyte de Béthune (1603-1665), along with a library of manuscripts, letters and documents assembled in some 1,500 volumes. (As Daniel Lecouer has pointed out, the signatures and dates on many of the drawings by Dumonstier that he owned were scraped off by Hippolyte de Béthune in the middle of the 17th century, as is evident in the present sheet.) Having turned down an offer of 300,000 livres from Queen Christina of Sweden in 1652, Hippolyte de Béthune bequeathed the entire collection to King Louis XIV for the Bibliothèque du Roi. However, the drawings by Dumonstier were soon dispersed, and only fourteen portrait drawings by the artist from the Béthune collection are still today in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Other Dumonstier drawings with the same provenance are in the Louvre, the Musée Condé at Chantilly, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and at Waddesdon Manor in Berkshire.
The present sheet was among a group of very fine portrait drawings belonging to Jules Niel (18001872), the librarian at the Ministry of the Interior and a collector of prints and drawings. As Frits Lugt has noted, ‘at a time when they were still little appreciated, [Niel] was one of the first to collect excellent portraits drawn by the schools of Clouet and Dumonstier. Several were later bought from him by the Louvre, others are now in Bonnat’s collection.’2 In 1849 Niel sold three drawings by Dumonstier to the Louvre, while in 1848 and 1856 he published two volumes entitled Portraits de personnages français les plus illustrées, containing facsimile reproductions of some of the finest 16th century portrait drawings in French public collections. This portrait of Cardinal du Perron does not appear in the posthumous sale of Niel’s collection in Paris in March 1873, and is likely to have been acquired directly from Niel or his heirs by the French diplomat Comte Alfred-Louis Lebeuf de Montgermont (1841-1918), from whose estate it was sold at auction in 1919.
A copy of this drawing is at Waddesdon Manor3, while a related engraving by Michel Lasne4, shows the sitter in reverse, wearing different vestments and with the order of Saint-Esprit.
SIGISMONDO COCCAPANI
Florence 1583-1643 Florence
The Holy Family in the Carpenter’s Shop, with an Angel Pen and brown ink and blue wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk. Squared for transfer in black chalk, and with double framing lines in brown ink. Inscribed b[racci]a. 2 2/3 in brown ink at the lower left and b[racci]a. 3 1/3 in brown ink at the lower right. Further inscribed IvB (in ligature) I:o LXXV in brown ink in the bottom margin of the sheet. Inscribed by the artist ‘levar via quel cappanello di legnietto e in quell’ca[m]bio farvi che il cristo abbia cavato da u[n] / paniere de ferri il martello, le tanaglie, e de chiodi’ in brown ink on the verso.
213 x 171 mm. (8 3/8 6 3/4 in.) [image]
264 x 214 mm. (10 3/8 x 8 3/8 in.) [sheet]
PROVENANCE: Sigismondo (and Giovanni?) Coccapani, Florence (Lugt 2729), the mark embossed twice at the upper centre and lower centre of the sheet; By descent to Giovanni Coccapani’s son, Regolo Silverio Coccapani, Florence; Probably dispersed with the rest of the Coccapani collection in the third quarter of the 17th century; Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 7 July 1998, lot 79 (as Attributed to Sigismondo Coccapani); Anonymous sale, London, Phillips, 9 July 2001, lot 153 (as Attributed to Jacopo da Empoli, later changed to Coccapani); Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd./Colnaghi, London, in 2001; Alan Lam, Ipswich; Thence by descent.
LITERATURE: Miles Chappell, ‘The Assumption of the Virgin and the Holy Family in Joseph’s Workshop by Sigismondo Coccapani’, Notes in the History of Art, Summer 2004, pp.22-23, fig.3; Elisa Acanfora, Sigismondo Coccapani. Ricomposizione del catalogo, Florence, 2017, p.212, no.D144, p.193, under no.D75, p.209, under no.D131, illustrated p.76, fig.131 and p.234, fig.156.
EXHIBITED: London, Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd./Colnaghi, Old Master and Nineteenth Century Drawings, 2001, no.14.
The son of a goldsmith, Sigismondo Coccapani studied with the architect Bernardo Buontalenti and the painter Ludovico Cardi, known as Cigoli. He was one of Cigoli’s last pupils, and the only Florentine apprentice working closely with the master on his late Roman commissions; as Miles Chappell has noted, Coccapani ‘could be described as the most dedicated and also the most dependent of Cigoli’s disciples.’1 Between 1610 and 1612 he assisted Cigoli on the fresco decoration of the dome of the Cappella Paolina in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, and also in the villa of Cardinal Scipione Borghese on the Quirinal hill. On his return to Florence Coccapani began his independent practice, and he seems to have worked almost exclusively in and around the city for the remainder of his career. Among Coccapani’s earliest known independent commissions were an altarpiece for the church of San Ponziano in Lucca, now lost, and a lunette fresco in the cloister of San Marco in Florence, painted in 1613. Four years later he completed a painting of Michelangelo Crowned by the Arts for the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, which was soon followed by an Adoration of the Magi for the church of Santa Maria in Castello in Signa, just outside the city. Between 1622 and 1623 he also painted a lunette fresco for the Casino Medico di San Marco. However, many of Coccapani’s documented works are no longer extant, such as the decoration of two chapels for the cathedral in Siena, commissioned by the Piccolomini family in 1638. The artist’s last known work is the decoration of the Cappella Martelli in the Florentine church of Santi Michele e Gaetano, begun in 1635 and completed in 1642.
Coccapani’s paintings show his debt to the manner of his master Cigoli, an influence that may also be seen in the relatively few surviving drawings by the younger artist that are known. Nevertheless, the fact that many more drawings by Coccapani must once have existed is shown by the comments of the Florentine collector and biographer Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri, who knew of an album of drawings by the artist that had been sold abroad; ‘un grosso libro, nel quale disegnò ogni sorta di animali, che riuscì cosa di gran pregio, il quale poi fù mandato oltre ai monti.’ The use of blue wash in many of
his drawings is a characteristic feature of Coccapani’s draughtsmanship which he adopted from the late compositional studies of Cigoli. Indeed, many of his drawings were once attributed to the elder artist, and many of the most Cigolesque drawings by Coccapani date from the early part of his career, when he was working with his master in Rome, and again at the start of his independent career in Florence.
This fine drawing by Sigismondo Coccapani is closely related to a less-finished version of a nearly identical composition by the artist, drawn in pen and brown ink (fig.1), in the collection of the Uffizi in Florence2. As the scholar Miles Chappell has noted of these two drawings, ‘The [Uffizi] sketch depicts Mary, Joseph, a youthful assistant, and the Christ Child in a somewhat open composition. Joseph and the youth concentrate on their work while Mary looks with dismay as the young Christ, seated on the ground, forms a cross with some sticks…This composition in brown pen is a preparatory study for the more finished drawing in pen and brown and blue washes over black chalk of Mary, Joseph, the Christ child, and an angel in the workshop…The composition is now more compact and centralized. While the figures of Mary and Joseph retain their poses, the youth has been transformed into an angel…This definitive composition drawing seems to have had some importance for Coccapani, and he preserved it in his collection and identified it with his mark. The degree of finish, the size…the squaring in black chalk, and the inscriptions giving the projected measurements of 3 1/3 x 2 2/3 braccia…suggest that the drawing had a specific purpose, perhaps as a presentation drawing or model, and is documentation for a hitherto unknown painting.’3 Given the dimensions in braccia noted on the present sheet, the lost painting for which both this and the Uffizi drawing must have been preparatory would have had dimensions of approximately 195 x 155 cm.
The present sheet may also be compared stylistically with such drawings by Coccapani as a Rest on the Flight into Egypt in the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome4 and a Susanna and the Elders in the collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York5
This drawing twice bears a drystamp (Lugt 2729), which denotes it as being part of a collection of 17th century Florentine drawings assembled by Sigismondo Coccapani, possibly with the aid of his younger brother and fellow painter Giovanni Coccapani. (It has been suggested that some of the drawings bearing the stamp may have been acquired earlier by Sigismondo and Giovanni’s father, Regolo Coccapani.) The stamp, which reproduces the coat of arms of the Coccapani family, is found on over a hundred extant drawings, most of which are by Cigoli, with the bulk of the remainder by the Coccapani brothers and their contemporaries within Cigoli’s studio and circle6.
DANIELE CRESPI
Busto Arsizio c.1598-1630 Milan
Recto: Study of a Right Arm Verso: Studies of Shoulders and Arms
Black chalk on faded blue paper. The verso in brown ink. Inscribed Daniel in brown ink at the lower left. 426 x 274 mm. (16 3/4 x 10 6/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: A release stamp of the Austrian Central Commission for the Protection of Historical Monuments [Bundesdenkmalamt] (not in Lugt) on the verso; Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 27 March 1974, lot 253 (as Giacomo Cavedone); Mathias Polakovits, Paris (Lugt 3561); Rosella Gilli, Milan; Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 7 July 1992, lot 168; P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 1993; Private collection.
LITERATURE: Nancy Ward Nielson, Daniele Crespi, Soncino, 1996, p.85 no.D36, p.66, under no.84, verso only illustrated p.203, fig.61A; Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Musée du Louvre: Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins italiens IV: Dessins toscans, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles, pt.2: 16201800, Paris, 2005, p.416, under no.617.
EXHIBITED: Milan, Galleria Rosella Gilli, Disegni Lombardi dal XV al XVIII secolo, n.d. (1985?), no.49; New York, Paris and London, Colnaghi, Master Drawings, 1993 no.23.
Although he had a relatively brief career of ten or eleven years, Daniele Crespi may be counted among the most significant painters working in Milan in the first quarter of the 17th century. While nothing is known of his early training, he was certainly a precocious artist, for by 1619 he was assisting the painter Guglielmo Caccia, known as Moncalvo, on the frescoes of the dome and pendentives of the church of San Vittore al Corpo in Milan. Among Crespi’s earliest documented independent works is the fresco decoration of a chapel in the Milanese church of Sant’Eustorgio, completed in 1621, and an Adoration of the Magi of around the same date in Sant’Alessandro. This was followed a few years later by work in the church of San Protaso ad Monachos in Milan, while between 1623 and 1627 he painted several works for Santa Maria di Campagna in Piacenza and also decorated the organ shutters in the Milanese church of Santa Maria della Passione. An altarpiece of The Martyrdom of Saint Mark for San Marco in Novara was completed in 1626.
There followed commissions from two of the most important Carthusian monasteries in Lombardy, which represent the culmination of Crespi’s activity as a fresco painter. An extensive series of frescoes
for the nave, entrance hall and ceiling of the Certosa of Garegnano, in the outskirts of Milan, depicting scenes from the early history of the Carthusian order and its founder Saint Bruno of Cologne, was completed in 1629 and is regarded as probably the artist’s finest work. A larger and equally impressive cycle of frescoes for the Certosa in Pavia, begun in 1629, was left unfinished at Crespi’s death from the plague the following year, at the age of about thirty-two.
As a painter and draughtsman, Crespi’s work combines both Lombard and Emilian influences. As Rudolf Wittkower has written of the artist, ‘In his best works Daniele combined severe realism and parsimonious handling of pictorial means with a sincerity of expression fully in sympathy with the religious climate at Milan.’1 Similarly, another scholar has noted that ‘Crespi was a true artist: learned, original, richly diverse and devoted to his art, well able to establish his artistic standpoint amid the cultural and religious preoccupations of his time. He was also a perfectionist in technique and execution…the young Crespi early distanced himself from the Milanese academy in order to seek out new directions: mastering the rules of composition and accuracy of drawing and the absorption of ‘academic tradition’ were only foundations, to which he added a marvellous attention to form and a sincere and versatile pursuit of the ‘natural’.’2
Although Daniele Crespi was among the most gifted draughtsmen working in Milan in the 1620s, only about seventy drawings by him are known. Unusually for a Lombard artist of his generation, almost all of his extant drawings appear to be preparatory studies for paintings or frescoes. No independent, finished drawings by the artist seem to have survived, however.
The recto of this large drawing is a study for the arm of Saint John the Baptist in Crespi’s lunette fresco of Saint Hugh of Grenoble Blessing the First Carthusian Monastery in the Valley of Chartreuse (fig.1) in the Certosa di Garegnano, outside Milan3. Painted near the end of the artist’s brief career, the fresco is one of a series of six lunette scenes from the life of Saint Bruno that were part of the extensive decoration executed by Crespi between 1627 and 1629 on the nave and vault of the monastery church at Garegnano. Two further preparatory studies by the artist for the fresco of Saint Hugh of Grenoble Blessing the Monastery are known. A study in pen and ink for the entire lunette composition is in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan4, while a drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York5 depicts the figures of John the Baptist, King David and other heavenly witnesses seated in clouds above the main scene6. A closely comparable drawing of the Risen Christ, likewise drawn in black chalk on blue paper, is in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice7, and is a preparatory study for another fresco at Garegnano.
The studies of arms and shoulders drawn in pen and ink on the verso of the present sheet have been tentatively related to a painting of Salome Receiving the Head of John the Baptist (fig.2), thought to be one of Crespi’s earliest known works, which appeared at auction in New York in 19938. A similar sheet of Studies of Arms is on the verso of a drawing by Crespi in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana9
CLAUDE
GELLÉE, called CLAUDE LORRAIN
Chamagne c.1600/04-1682 Rome
The Garden Wall of the Villa Medici in Rome, with Part of the Aurelian Wall
Pen and brown ink and brown wash. Inscribed claudio lorenese in brown ink at the lower left. 101 x 157 mm. (4 x 6 1/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: The Rev. Dr. Henry Wellesley, Oxford; His posthumous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 25 June 1866 onwards, lot 1023 (Claude: ‘AN ITALIAN VILLAGE. Houses running from the right to the centre; a stone wall to the left, with trees, pen and sepia, 6 in. by 4.’, bt. Robinson for 16s); Sir John Charles Robinson, London and Swanage; His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 7-8 May 1868, lot 115 (‘Claude Lorrain, Paysage. Les dehors des murailles d’une ville italienne, effet de soleil de midi. Haut., 10 cent.; larg. 15 cent. ½. Collection Wellesley.’, unsold at 180 francs); Acquired from Robinson by John Malcolm of Poltalloch, Argyll and London; Given before 1876 to his daughter Isabella Louisa Malcolm and son-in-law The Hon. Alfred Erskine Gathorne-Hardy, London; By descent to his son, Geoffrey Malcolm GathorneHardy; Thence by descent to The Hon. Robert Gathorne-Hardy, Stanford Dingley, Berkshire; His sale, London, Sotheby’s, 24 November 1976, lot 27; Alain Delon, Chêne-Bougeries, Switzerland.
LITERATURE: J. C. Robinson, Descriptive Catalogue of the Drawings by the Old Masters, forming the Collection of John Malcolm of Poltalloch, Esq., London, 1869, p.168, no.475 (‘Landscape View outside the Walls of an Italian Town, probably a study from nature. Brilliant effect of midday sun. Pen drawing washed with bistre. Signed in the left, “Claudio Lorenese”.’); A. E. Gathorne-Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings by the Old Masters in the Possession of the Hon. A. E. Gathorne-Hardy, 77 Cadogan Square, London, 1902, p.31, no.58; Marcel Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain: The Drawings, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968, Vol.I, p.122, no.143, Vol.II, fig.143; Elizabeth A. Pergam, ‘John Charles Robinson in 1868: a Victorian curator’s collection on the block’, Journal of Art Historiography, June 2018, p.30.
‘The first and greatest French artist to specialize in landscape painting’1, Claude Gellée, more commonly known as Claude Lorrain, was born around 1600 in the village of Chamagne, south of Nancy in the Duchy of Lorraine in northeastern France. He is thought to have arrived in Rome around 1617, and trained there with the artist Agostino Tassi. Between 1618 and 1620 Claude completed his training in Naples with the German landscape painter Goffredo Wals. After a brief period in Nancy, where he worked on the fresco decoration of the Carmelite church, he was back in Rome by the end of 1626, and there spent the remainder of his career. Claude became known as a landscape painter and draughtsman, working extensively en plein-air in Rome and on sketching expeditions to the surrounding Campagna, notably at Tivoli and Subiaco. As the painter and art historian Joachim von Sandrart, who met and befriended the artist early in his career and often accompanied him on such tours, recalled of Claude, ‘He tried by every means to penetrate nature by all the means at his disposal, stretched out in the fields from dawn to dusk, so as to learn how to represent accurately daybreak, sunrise, sunset and the eventide.’2 At the height of his career, Claude enjoyed a reputation as perhaps the most successful landscape painter in Europe. He counted numerous important patrons and collectors – including Popes Urban VIII and Clement IX, King Phillip IV of Spain, and Princes Camillo Pamphili and Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna – among his clients, and his paintings fetched high prices.
Throughout his long career, the practice of drawing was of great importance to Claude, occupying a central role in his artistic process. Almost five times as many drawings as paintings by him are known, amounting to some 1,200 sheets, ranging from nature studies and compositional drawings to figure and animal studies and independent landscapes, as well as records of finished paintings. He was, as the Claude scholar Marcel Roethlisberger has written, ‘a born draftsman who, during his whole life, took an evident pleasure in producing his drawings...But all his drawings are at the same time much more than mere working stages for the paintings…They are works of art in their own right. Unlike the majority of the drawings by Carracci and even Poussin, there are hardly any sketchy or unfinished-looking drawings
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by Claude…A conscientious perfectionist in the design and execution of his paintings, he deployed the same effort and attention to the last of his sketches…The autonomy of Claude’s drawings derives from his profoundly pictorial vision, thanks to which every sketch became a little picture of its own.’3
Claude valued his drawings highly, rarely parting with them. He seems to have kept almost all of his drawings in his studio until his death, and, despite the interest of contemporary collectors, apparently never sold them. The artist or his heirs seem to have assembled many of his drawings into albums, and the inventory of the contents of his studio after his death lists, alongside bundles of loose sheets, twelve ‘books of sketches’. Much of this material has since been dispersed, however, and only a handful of albums or sketchbooks remain intact today. Nevertheless, his drawings became well known for some time after his death, since several hundred of them were reproduced in the form of mezzotint prints in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
The present sheet may be included among a large group of drawings by Claude produced simply as exercises in the study of nature, for the most part done in a twenty-year period between 1630 and 1650. As Richard Rand has noted, ‘These are studies presumably made in the open air in front of the motif, created as part of Claude’s process of observing and recording natural phenomena that he would then use when painting his canvases back in the studio…by the 1650s he had assembled a large cache of nature studies that he could return to as inspiration or aide-mémoire when painting. By drawing in the open air Claude was continuing a longstanding tradition of artists in Italy – particularly those who had traveled from the north – for landscape sketching was seen as an important component of one’s education and training. Claude pursued the practice with particular dedication and enthusiasm, and his studies of nature remain his most innovative and appealing drawings.’4
In his magisterial catalogue raisonné of the artist’s drawings, Roethlisberger dated the present sheet to between 1635 and 1650, adding that ‘The houses look as if they were built on an ancient town wall and its towers, perhaps in Rome…Claude’s drawing appears very simple, consisting of only a few strokes of the pen and plain surfaces of wash. The handling seems to confirm the attribution to Claude.’5 The present sheet is indeed a Roman view, and depicts the road on the Pincio hill running between the walls of the garden of the Villa Medici on the left and part of the 3rd century Aurelian walls bordering the grounds of the Villa Borghese on the right. (The modern paved road is today known as the Viale del Muro Torto.) Roethlisberger has also suggested that this landscape study may be grouped with around a dozen drawings of identical size and style, mostly datable to the later 1630s and 1640s, that are on the same type of paper and may once have formed part of a small sketchbook. Other drawings from this putative sketchbook – which must have been broken up by the beginning of the 18th century, given the early provenance of several of the sheets – are in the Teyler Museum in Haarlem, the Uffizi in Florence, the British Museum in London and the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, as well as in several private collections6 Among other thematically and stylistically comparable early drawings by Claude is a view of the Ponte Sisto in Rome of c.1630-1635, in the Musée Condé in Chantilly7
The first known owner of this drawing was the scholar and antiquary Reverend Dr. Henry Wellesley (1794-1866), the Principal of New Inn Hall in Oxford who also served as a curator at the Bodleian Library, the Taylor Institution and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Wellesley owned a very large number of drawings by Claude, amounting to more than two hundred sheets8. This drawing was acquired at the 1866 sale of Wellesley’s collection by Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913), a leading figure in the Victorian art world who was the chief curator at the South Kensington Museum in London. Robinson selected it as one of seventy-one drawings from his collection – together with six other sheets by Claude – to be offered for sale at auction in Paris in 1868. The present drawing remained unsold, however, and was later acquired from Robinson by the Scottish collector John Malcolm, 14th Laird of Poltalloch (1805-1893), who assembled a very fine collection of Old Master drawings and prints. While the majority of Malcolm’s collection was sold by his son en bloc to the British Museum in 1895, the present sheet was one of six drawings by Claude earlier given by Malcolm to his daughter Isabella Louisa Malcolm (1842-1924) and son-in-law Alfred Erskine Gathorne-Hardy (1845-1918). The drawing thence passed by descent within the Gathorne-Hardy family until it was sold at auction in London in 1976, after which it passed into the collection of the actor Alain Delon.
GIOVANNA GARZONI
Ascoli Piceno 1600-1670 Rome
Saint Catherine of Alexandria
Gouache, heightened with gold, over traces of a pencil underdrawing, on parchment stretched around a metal plate.
142 x 109 mm. (5 5/8 x 4 1/4 in.) [sheet]
PROVENANCE: Private collection, Switzerland.
Giovanna Garzoni was probably trained by her father Giacomo in her native town of Ascoli Piceno in the Marche before moving to Venice in her early teens to study with the calligrapher Giacomo Rogni. Not only a gifted artist, Garzoni was, by a young age, also a fine musician and singer, as well as a calligrapher; she produced a manuscript of calligraphy samples decorated with miniatures of plants, flowers, birds and animals that she retained in her possession all her life. At the age of about fifteen or sixteen she was presented to Maria Maddalena of Austria, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, to whom she offered a miniature painting of Saint Mary Magdalene, now lost. It was on this initial visit to the Medici court in Florence that she probably first met and befriended the young painter Artemisia Gentileschi, who was a few years older. In 1622 Garzoni married the Venetian painter Tiberio Tinelli, but two years later the marriage was annulled, apparently unconsummated. She is documented in Venice in 1625, the date of a Portrait of a Young Man that is one of her earliest known miniatures. From the start of her career Garzoni was interested in the study of botany, and she developed a particular skill in the depiction of plants and flowers. In the early 1630s she produced a botanical manuscript entitled Piante varie, containing fifty watercolour studies of various plants, each drawn on a large scale with scientific accuracy. Among her earliest patrons and admirers in Rome were the scholar Cassiano dal Pozzo and Anna Colonna Barberini, wife of the nobleman Taddeo Barberini, Prince of Palestrina.
Garzoni was a gifted and versatile artist. As the scholar Sheila Barker has noted, ‘She worked in such varied media as large-scale oil painting, tempera-on-parchment miniatures, pen-and-ink drawings, pietre dure design, textile appliqué and painted fans, whereas her range of genres embraced devotional imagery, portraiture, still-lifes, miniature copies (which comprised some male and female nudes as well as landscapes), botanical illustrations, and even mythology.’1 Garzoni led something of a peripatetic life, travelling and working throughout Italy; in Venice, Rome, Naples, Turin and Florence. (She may even have travelled with Artemisia Gentileschi to England in 1638.) Between 1630 and 1631 she worked in Naples, alongside Gentileschi, for the Spanish Duque de Alcalá, after which she spent five years in Turin at the court of Vittorio Amedeo I, Duke of Savoy, and his wife, Marie Christine of France. A period of over a year in Paris at the court of Christine’s brother King Louis XIII resulted in a number of fine works, notably a miniature portrait on parchment of Cardinal Richelieu.
Back in Florence in 1642, Garzoni spent nearly a decade at the Medici court, enjoying unfettered access to the treasures of the Medici collections of natural history and botanical specimens, and producing some of her finest works. She continued to receive commissions from Florence even after 1651, when she settled permanently in Rome, where she became an active and loyal participant in the activities of the Accademia di San Luca. Among the best-known of Garzoni’s later Medici commissions are a series of twenty remarkable still life compositions of fruit on a plate or bowl, painted on parchment, executed between 1655 and 1662 for the Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici between 1655 and 1662 and subsequently displayed at the Medici villa at Poggio Imperiale. At her death in 1670 the artist left her estate to the Accademia di San Luca, on the condition that a monument in her honour be erected in the neighbouring Roman church of Santi Luca et Martina.
Garzoni’s highly original miniature paintings were generally executed in gouache or watercolour, often using a delicate stipple technique, on parchment or vellum, a prized and considerably more expensive medium than paper. The vast majority of her extant works are of still life compositions, especially of fruit and flowers, while she also produced a number of portraits and a handful of devotional religious
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subjects. With the exception of portraits, however, relatively few figural subjects are known. According to contemporary documents, Garzoni is known to have also made miniature copies on parchment after paintings by Andrea del Sarto, Guido Reni, Raphael, Annibale Carracci and Sassoferrato, among other artists. A large number of works by Garzoni were in Florentine collections in the 17th and 18th centuries, and many examples remain in the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti today.
Of superb quality and in excellent condition, this Saint Catherine of Alexandria is a new and fascinating addition to the corpus of miniature paintings by Giovanna Garzoni. It is executed in the artist’s distinctive stippling technique, described by the 18th century art critic and historian Pietro Zani as ‘miniature granita’, of using the tip of the brush to create a myriad number of tiny dots in order to build up the composition. The skin is depicted with hundreds of dots while the hair is painted with a combination of dots and linear strokes, and areas of shadow are created by pale washes of blue or red beneath the dots. It is a painstaking process which imbues the work with a remarkable luminosity, enhanced by the brightness of the parchment support.
In stylistic and technical terms, the present sheet may be compared with a signed miniature Portrait of Leopoldo de’ Medici by Garzoni in the Uffizi, datable to c.1646-16482, whose pointillist technique shares with this Saint Catherine of Alexandria what has been aptly described as ‘an almost palpable vibration of the form.’3 Also comparable, particularly in the delicate treatment of the face, is a reproductive miniature by Garzoni after a painting by Orazio Gentileschi of Mary Magdalene in the Desert. Commissioned by Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Garzoni’s copy can be dated between 1642 and 1650 and is today in a private collection4. A Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, in a private collection5, may also be likened to the present sheet.
The attribution of this Saint Catherine of Alexandria to Giovanna Garzoni has been confirmed by Sheila Barker, who dates the work to the artist’s brief time in Rome between 1641 and 1642, following her return from France and shortly before she moved to Florence to work for the Medici. Barker further notes that the head of the saint in this miniature is very close to that of the Virgin in Correggio’s painting of The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria (fig.1) of c.1527, now in the Louvre6. It may be noted that, in the late 1630s and early 1640s, Correggio’s painting belonged to Cardinal Antonio Barberini in Rome, and Garzoni may have had access to the painting through her patron Anna Colonna Barberini, the Cardinal’s sister-in-law. Cardinal Barberini took The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria with him when he went into exile in Paris in 1645 and there presented it to Cardinal Mazarin, so it is likely that the present sheet, if indeed based on the head of the Virgin in Correggio’s painting, was executed sometime before that date.
GIOVANNI FRANCESCO GRIMALDI
Bologna c.1605/06-1680 Rome
An Extensive River Landscape
Pen and brown ink, with traces of a framing line in brown ink at the bottom, on two joined sheets of paper, backed.
258 x 599 mm. (10 1/8 x 23 5/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, Paris, Artcurial, 9 June 2021, lot 32; Private collection, London.
Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, known as ‘Il Bolognese’, received his artistic training in his native city of Bologna, adopting the local interest in landscape drawing fostered by the Carracci and their Accademia degli Incamminati. By 1627 he was working in Rome, where he benefited from his study of the works of the Carracci and their followers there, and in particular their approach to landscape. Grimaldi earned commissions from several noble Roman families, including the Barberini, Borghese, Chigi, Pamphili, Peretti and Santacroce, and was admitted into the Accademia di San Luca in 1635, eventually rising to become principe of the institution in 1666. (In 1643 he was also named to the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon, the exclusive Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters.) As Isabella Lodi-Fè Chapman has noted, ‘The key to Grimaldi’s success was his brilliant ability to assimilate and produce variations of the landscape prototypes that were so popular in Rome. He was therefore often asked to provide the landscape elements of important projects supervised by major artists such as Alessandro Algardi or [Pietro da] Cortona, and also managed entire projects by himself.’1
Grimaldi collaborated with Algardi on the decoration of the Villa Doria-Pamphili for Cardinal Camillo Pamphili in 1646. He enjoyed a highly successful career as a painter of fresco decorations, working at the Palazzo Nuñez, the Vatican and the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome, as well as the Villa Falconieri at Frascati. His reputation as a frescante spread as far as France, where in 1648 he was summoned by Cardinal Mazarin to work with Giovanni Francesco Romanelli on the fresco decoration of the Galerie Mazarin, part of a new wing of his Parisian palace commissioned from the architect François Mansart in 1644. Grimaldi served as painter to the Duc d’Orléans and decorated the apartments of Anne of Austria in the Louvre before returning to Italy in 1651. For much of the 1670s Grimaldi worked at the Palazzo Borghese in Rome, supervising the interior decoration of the building. A versatile artist, he was also active as a printmaker, architect, scenographer and a designer of book illustrations.
A prolific draughtsman, Grimaldi is best known for his pure landscape studies in pen and ink. Only a very few of these, however, are signed or dated, and since his style as a draughtsman remained fairly consistent during his career such drawings can be difficult to date with any accuracy. While some of his landscape drawings were used to prepare the decorative murals that the artist painted for Roman palaces, others may well have been intended for sale as works of art in their own right. An album of some 130 landscape drawings and decorative designs by Grimaldi, assembled in Rome by the Spanish painter Vincenzo Vittoria before 1701, is today in the British Museum, while a smaller number of drawings with the same provenance is in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Other significant groups of drawings by the artist are in the collections of the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, the Teyler Museum in Haarlem, the Louvre in Paris, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and the University Library in Warsaw. Grimaldi also produced more than sixty landscape etchings, which, like his drawings, reveal the influence of the Carraccesque tradition in which he was trained and, by extension, the work of Domenichino in Rome.
This exceptionally large and finished landscape by Grimaldi, drawn on two joined sheets of paper, is likely to have been intended as a finished work of art for sale.
PHILIPS KONINCK
Amsterdam 1618-1688 Amsterdam
Panoramic Landscape with a Windmill
Pen and brown ink and brown wash and watercolour, with framing lines in brown ink. Inscribed a.m. van den Broeck / TE 17/13 and 477070 in pencil on the verso.
117 x 239 mm. (4 5/8 x 9 3/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 1 December 1986, lot 64; William Gwynn Fine Arts, Amsterdam; Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 14 November 1988, lot 121 (bt. van den Broek; A. M. ‘Ton’ van den Broek, Haarlem1 (his collector’s mark, not in Lugt, stamped in black ink on the verso).
LITERATURE: Cara Dufour Denison et al, The Thaw Collection: Master Drawings and Oil Sketches. Acquisitions Since 1994, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2002-2003, p.16, under no.17 (entry by Jane Shoaf Turner); Rhoda Eitel-Porter et al, From Leonardo to Pollock: Master Drawings from the Morgan Library, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2006, p.100, under no.46 (entry by Kathleen Stuart and Jane Shoaf Turner); Jane Shoaf Turner, Dutch Drawings in The Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, Vol.I, p.93, under no.119.
LITERATURE: To be included in the forthcoming posthumous supplement to Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School
Philips Koninck was the most significant member of a family of artists that included his older brother Jacob, to whom he was apprenticed, and cousin Salomon, while his brother-in-law was the artist Abraham Furnerius. Although Koninck was a member of Rembrandt’s circle in Amsterdam in the 1640s, it remains unclear whether he was actually a formal pupil of the master. His earliest dated painting was executed in 1642, and while he painted various subjects, including genre scenes and portraits, he is best known today for his broad, atmospheric landscapes. As the scholar Werner Sumoswki has noted, ‘Philips Koninck’s landscapes have their origin in Rembrandt’s work of the 1640s. Influenced also by Hercules Seghers, he arrived at his own style shortly after 1650. His panoramas are among the most significant creations of Dutch seventeenth-century art.’2
In his magisterial catalogue of the drawings of the Rembrandt school, Werner Sumowski lists a total of sixty-two landscape drawings by Koninck, to which may now be added the present sheet, which was unknown to him at the time of the publication of his volume on Koninck’s drawings in 1982. Sumowski confirmed the attribution of this drawing when it appeared at auction in Amsterdam in 1988, and further noted that it is an autograph version of a signed and dated drawing of 1671, of identical dimensions (fig.1), which was formerly in the Dimsdale, Liechtenstein, Heinemann and Thaw collections and is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York3. In an unpublished commentary on the present sheet, Sumowski noted some minor differences between the two watercolours, particularly in the foreground, which appears to be sketchier and less detailed in the Morgan drawing.
Koninck is one of a handful of artists in Rembrandt’s circle who drew landscapes in watercolour4, and his panoramic drawings are often similar to his painted views in their high vantage point and wide format. Peter Schatborn has suggested of such coloured landscape drawings that their ‘fine, controlled pen technique could be attributed to a desire on Koninck’s part to create a landscape that was more like a painting than a drawing, aiming for a kind of miniature painting in which pen and line…are subordinate to the colour.’5 Watercolour landscapes are uncommon in Dutch art of the 17th century, and works such as this must have been done as independent, finished works of art for sale to collectors, a practice that Koninck seems to have taken up late in his career, beginning in the 1660s.
The landscape composition of both the present sheet and its counterpart in the Pierpont Morgan Library is probably imaginary, rather than a topographically accurate view. As Kathleen Stuart and Jane Turner have written of the latter drawing, in terms equally applicable to the present sheet: ‘The [Morgan] sheet depicts a panoramic view of the Dutch lowlands executed in delicate watercolor washes. Koninck initially employed this medium in the 1640s and returned to it during the last decades of his life. In these late works, dark brown washes nearly obscure the underlying pen lines, resulting in views that are more pictorial than his earlier, more graphic subjects. With this drawing Koninck followed a compositional formula developed and perfected early in his career. Cut midway by the horizon line, the composition divides into halves, with the sky above and a broad, flat landscape below. The countryside, which is depicted from a slightly elevated viewpoint, is structured by contrasting areas of darks and lights as well as by an alternating pattern of horizontals and diagonals (usually a river or canal winding toward the distant horizon), often with one central structure, like the windmill here, piercing the horizon line. Although Koninck’s panoramas, both painted and drawn, are assumed to be imaginary, many are reminiscent of the rolling farm- and pastureland of Gelderland, one of the eastern provinces of the Netherlands. This view has not been identified and may be imaginary since the viewpoint is higher than is possible in the landscape it represents.’6 Indeed, as Turner has pointed out elsewhere, ‘despite the convincing sense of light, air, space, and landscape detail of such vistas, they were often drawn from the artist’s imagination...Koninck could never had a vantage that allowed him to look simultaneously down upon and across such a flat landscape – even from atop the highest windmill.’7
Sumowski pointed out that stylistically comparable landscape drawings by Koninck of the 1670s are in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin8, the Musée Condé in Chantilly9, the Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig10 and the British Museum in London11. He further noted that Koninck is known to have occasionally produced two autograph versions of the same landscape composition, such as in a watercolour Panorama with a Landing and Sailboat Under a Low Sky, of which one variant is in the Teyler Museum in Haarlem12 and the other, showing much less of the sky, is in the Fondation Custodia in Paris13.
Landscape watercolours by Koninck are very rare, and apart from the Morgan Library drawing, which was sold at auction in 1997, only two other examples, both datable to the 1670s, have appeared at auction in the past four decades14. As Nicholas Turner has noted, ‘In his panoramic landscape paintings Koninck achieved spectacular effects of light and space. A feeling of openness, as well as a sense of weather in the ambient air, is also conveyed in the painter’s few colored drawings…which seem to have been made as finished works in their own right. They are among the rarest and most prized of seventeenth-century Dutch drawings.’15
SIGISMONDO CAULA
Modena 1637-1724 Modena
Saint John the Baptist in the Desert Brush, red chalk and red wash, over traces of an underdrawing in black chalk, extensively heightened with white on buff paper, within a drawn fictive mount with framing lines in pencil and brown ink. Inscribed C. in brown ink in the lower left margin. 277 x 191 mm. (10 7/8 x 7 1/2 in.) [sheet]
PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 2 July 1997, lot 121; Fernando Bello, Lisbon (with his collector’s stamp of a ginko biloba leaf with the letters fb, not in Lugt, on the former mount).
LITERATURE: Nicholas Turner, European Master Drawings from Portuguese Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, 2000, pp.134-135, no.58; Nicholas Turner, Dibujos de Maestros Europeos en las Colecciones Portuguesas, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, 2002, pp.94-95, no.37.
EXHIBITED: Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, and elsewhere, European Master Drawings from Portuguese Collections, 2000, no.59; Madrid, Museo del Prado, Dibujos de Maestros Europeos en las Colecciones Portuguesas, 2002, no.37.
Born in Modena and trained there by the French artist Jean Boulanger, with whom he worked on the fresco decoration of the Ducal palace at Sassuolo, Sigismondo Caula spent three years in Venice between 1667 and 1670. There he was influenced by contemporary Venetian painting, and in particular the works of Antonio Molinari and Johann Carl Loth, as well as the earlier works of Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Tintoretto. It may also have been as a result of his exposure to Venetian draughtsmanship of the period that he developed a preference for working on tinted paper in his own drawings. After his return to Modena, Caula earned several important ecclesiastical commissions, painting frescoes for the Duomo in Modena and working in several other churches in the city. Among his most significant paintings was a very large Saint Charles Borromeo Administering the Eucharist to Victims of the Plague, painted in 1685 for the church of San Carlo in Modena and today in the Galleria Estense there. His last known commission was received in 1708, for the ceiling decoration of the church of San Agostino.
Caula’s relatively small corpus of drawings is characterized by a highly pictorial technique and bold contrasts of light and shade. As Nicholas Turner has noted of the artist’s draughtsmanship in general, and of the present sheet in particular, ‘Caula was a master of chiaroscuro, and his drawings are strikingly painterly in handling, with broad, flowing washes, as seen here in the darks in the rock against which St John the Baptist stands. His drawings are sometimes executed on a buff-coloured paper, sometimes on a warm brownish-tinted ground, evenly brushed in like the preparation of a canvas or panel. This particular sheet may well have been made for its own sake, as an object of contemplation, rather than as a study for a painting. Such a conclusion is suggested partly by the finish of the drawing and partly by the ruled border and monogram, evidently applied by the artist, which would seem superfluous in a working study…Another memorable trait of Caula’s work as a draughtsman is his penchant for ample passages of creamy white heightening, usually applied to the paper with the brush in white bodycolour (or gouache)…this heightening is seen in the torso of the Baptist, which seems to glow with divine radiance…The exaggerated drama of the illumination of the figure is echoed in the unusual compositional conception. St John seems to tower over the empty space of the wilderness, a gaunt and lanky figure, his only companion the youth, at bottom left, who sidles up from the murky hillside below to point, perhaps a little ironically, at this bleak, wind-blown figure. This youth is conceivably the young Christ who, by tradition, sometimes accompanies the Baptist in images of the saint in the wilderness. Whatever his identity, the wasted, hollow-cheeked St John seems oblivious to his company and stares upwards into the heavens, mesmerized by divine contemplation.’1 Among stylistically comparable drawings by Caula is a study of a man kneeling before a crucifix, in the British Museum2, and a study of a seated male figure wrapped in a cloak, in the Fondation Custodia in Paris3.
ISAAC DE MOUCHERON
Amsterdam 1667-1744 Amsterdam
Landscape with Hunters Near a Terrace with Dead Game
Gouache. Signed I. Moucheron / Fecit in brown ink at the lower right. 188 x 296 mm. (7 3/8 x 11 5/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Jan Lucas van der Dussen, Amsterdam and Kasteel Groeneveld, Baarn; His posthumous sale (‘Catalogue du Magnifique Cabinet De Feu Monsieur Jan Lucas van der Dussen’), Amsterdam, Pierre Yver, 31 October 1774 onwards, lot 152 (‘Paysage, orné d’un Retour de Chasse; on voit, à droite, sur le devant, du Gibier Mort &, dans le Lointain des Montagnes. Ce Morceau est à gouache, très terminé & imite bien la Nature.’, bt. Oets for 116 fl.); Bernard Houthakker Gallery, Amsterdam, in 1972; P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 1974 (bt. Brody for £2,800); Susan Lasker Brody, New York and East Hampton.
LITERATURE: Nina Wedde, Isaac de Moucheron (1667-1744): His Life and Works with a Catalogue Raisonné of his Drawings, Watercolours, Paintings and Etchings, Frankfurt, 1996, Vol.I, pp.352-353, no.W41, Vol.II., p.140, pl.121; Lukas Nonner, ‘Acquisition: Isaac de Moucheron, Woodland with Resting Roe Deer’, in Paris, Fondation Custodia, E-News, 2014 [https://www.fondationcustodia.fr/IMG/pdf/enews_eng_6.pdf], p.14; Michiel C. Plomp, ‘Robert Fucci, Drawn to Life: Master Drawings from the Age of Rembrandt in the Peck Collection at the Ackland Art Museum’ [book review], Master Drawings, Summer 2024, p.265, illustrated p.267, fig.3.
EXHIBITED: Amsterdam, Bernard Houthakker, Master Drawings presented by Bernard Houthakker, 1972, no.30; London, Colnaghi, Old Master Drawings, 1974, no.17.
A painter, draughtsman and etcher, Isaac de Moucheron was the son and pupil of the landscape painter Frederick de Moucheron. While both father and son depicted much the same type of Italianate views, as the scholar Leo van Puyvelde noted of Isaac, ‘his work may be distinguished from that of his father by its loftier spirit and finer execution.’1 Isaac de Moucheron took over his father’s workshop at the age of eighteen, after Frederick’s death. He was in Italy between 1695 and 1697, visiting Bologna and Rome, where he became a member of the Bentveughels, the association of Netherlandish artists working in the Eternal City. On his return to Holland in August 1697 Moucheron developed a successful career as a painter of large, decorative wall paintings for houses in Amsterdam. He made a particular speciality of Italianate landscapes, classical or Arcadian views and scenes of imaginary parks and formal gardens. In many of these decorative projects for private homes he worked in collaboration with the figure painter Jacob de Wit, while towards the end of the 1730s he began to design the façades of buildings. Moucheron also painted a number of cabinet pictures of views of Roman and Italianate landscapes indebted to the examples of Claude and Gaspard Dughet. His success as an artist, and the popularity of his drawings and mural decorations, earned him an annual income of around 1,500 guilders. A few months after his death, the contents of his studio were dispersed at auction in Amsterdam.
In her catalogue raisonné of Isaac de Moucheron’s oeuvre, published in 1996, Nina Wedde noted of the artist that ‘The personal encounter with the Italian landscape and especially with the art of Gaspard Dughet radically changed his conception. In park landscapes Isaac also begins by discreetly introducing courtly elements in hunt scenes before turning his interest to formal garden layouts of a much more monumental nature, incorporating elements from Antiquity and from contemporary examples of design, people them with figures in tunics.’2 As the same author further noted of Moucheron’s compositions, ‘The setting was further enhanced by the omnipresent tall, decorative trees with their finely detailed leafage ranging in the watercolours from the light ochre of the foreground to the deep green and blue tones of the distance. The backgrounds showed vistas over Southern harbours with shipping on the water and towerlike buildings on the rocky coastlines or of mountainous landscapes rising above undulating hills. The low-set horizon left ample space for a sky dappled with white clouds where birds smoothly sailed. Figures attired in classical dress animated the scenes. They are engaged in leisurely activities...Dogs are ever present companions while peacocks grace a few balustrades.’3
As Wedde has also written, ‘The most complete and constant record of Isaac’s activity as an artist is preserved in the works on paper and his stature as a draughtsman of merit has seldom been contested.’4 Moucheron produced finished drawings in both watercolour and pen and ink, which were much in demand by collectors. The subjects he depicted include topographical views, Arcadian landscapes, scenes in the manner of earlier Dutch artists such as Nicolaes Berchem and, in particular, fantasy views of parks and gardens, known as ‘hofgezichten’. At the time of Moucheron’s death some five hundred drawings remained in his studio and a large number of these were dispersed at auction in December 1744, while many more must have been sold to collectors in his lifetime; examples are recorded in the possession of such important 18th century Dutch collectors as Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, Johann Goll van Franckenstein and Valerius Röver. Around four hundred drawings by Moucheron survive today5, although only relatively few of these are signed or dated.
The present sheet is a particularly fine example of the type of highly finished watercolour or gouache landscapes by Moucheron that were greatly praised by his contemporaries. As the 18th century biographer Johan van Gool noted of the artist, his ‘absolutely exquisite (‘overheerlyke’) drawings and watercolours are as esteemed and sought after as his paintings and pursued enthusiastically by connoisseurs.’6 A comparable subject is found in a watercolour of The Edge of a Forest with Riders and Dead Game (fig.1), formerly in the Goll von Franckenstein and Klaver collections and sold at auction in Amsterdam in 19947. As Wedde has pointed out, the dead hare at the lower right of the present composition is repeated in the centre foreground of the ex-Klaver watercolour.
The first owner of this drawing was the 18th century country squire Jan Lucas van der Dussen (17241773), who in 1755 bought the Kasteel Groeneveld in Baarn, near Hilversum in the province of Utrecht, later renovating and expanding the property significantly. The posthumous sale of van der Dussen’s famous art collection at auction in 1774 included over 750 drawings, together with thirtyseven paintings and more than 5,600 prints.
GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO
Venice 1696-1770 Madrid
The Crucifixion
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk. Inscribed Tiepolo in black chalk at the lower right.
439 x 312 mm. (17 1/4 x 12 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Private collection, Germany; Anonymous sale, New York, Swann Galleries, 23 January 2003, lot 125 (as Follower of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo); Mia Weiner, Norfolk, CT., in 2004; Private collection.
The leading painter in Venice for much of his career, Giambattista Tiepolo was also one of the finest Italian draughtsmen of the 18th century. That his drawings were greatly admired in his lifetime is confirmed by contemporary accounts; indeed, as early as 1732 the writer and biographer Vincenzo da Canal remarked that ‘His talent is most fecund; that is why engravers and copyists are eager to engrave his works, to glean his inventions and extraordinary ideas; his drawings are already so highly esteemed that books of them are sent to the most distant countries.’1 From the late 1730s until his departure for Spain in 1762, Tiepolo enjoyed his most productive period as a draughtsman, creating a large number of vibrant pen and wash studies that are among the archetypal drawings of the Venetian Settecento.
As one recent scholar has commented, ‘From the start of his career [Tiepolo] had enjoyed drawing as an additional means of expression, with equally original results. He did not draw simply to make an immediate note of his ideas, nor to make an initial sketch for a painting or to study details; he drew to give the freest, most complete expression to his genius. His drawings can be considered as an autonomous artistic genre; they constitute an enormous part of his work, giving expression to a quite extraordinary excursion of the imagination; in this respect, Tiepolo’s graphic work can be compared only with that of Rembrandt.’2 Tiepolo’s drawings include compositional studies for paintings and prints, drawings of heads, figure studies for large-scale decorations, landscapes and caricatures, as well as several series of drawings on such themes as the Holy Family. Many of these drawings were bound into albums by theme or subject and were retained in the Tiepolo family studio.
An important addition to the artist’s corpus of drawings, this large sheet is a rare youthful work by Giambattista Tiepolo, by whom relatively few drawings survive from the beginning of his independent career; that is, between 1715, when he painted his earliest known work, and 1731, when he undertook his first commission outside the Veneto. Furthermore, the fact that this dramatic composition of the Crucifixion was left unfinished provides a fascinating insight into Tiepolo’s working method as a draughtsman.
The artist first drew the outlines of the composition in black chalk before adding layers of brown wash, in both light and dark tones, moving gradually from the top of the sheet towards the bottom, while several areas of the white paper have been left untouched by wash in order to provide highlights.
A closely related drawing of the same composition, with several significant differences (fig.1), is in the collection of the Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts3. Of similar dimensions, the Harvard drawing is quickly sketched and is likely to have preceded the present sheet in the preparatory process. While Terisio Pignatti and a number of other early scholars have regarded the Harvard drawing as a study for Tiepolo’s large horizontal canvas of The Crucifixion in the church of San Martino in Burano4, painted around 1723, the relationship between the two is largely thematic, and any direct connection is difficult to establish. George Knox preferred to date the Harvard drawing somewhat later than the Burano canvas, around 1726, while Bernard Aikema further pointed out of the same drawing that ‘The pronounced chiaroscuro, relatively low viewpoint, and truncation of the figures in the foreground – which accounts for the dramatic close-up effect – are reminiscent of the series of pictures Giambattista painted for the Palazzo Dolfin, Venice5, between 1726 and 1729.’6
Relatively little is still known of Tiepolo’s draughtsmanship between 1715 and 1725, largely due to the paucity of drawings from this important formative period. Indeed, only around two or three dozen early drawings by the artist are known today, of which just a few may be connected with paintings or print designs of the period. The present sheet can be compared in style, technique and scale with a number of similarly highly finished drawings of dramatic religious subjects by Tiepolo dating from the late 1720s and early 1730s, in which chiaroscuro qualities and figural style reveal the particular influence of Giambattista Piazzetta on the young artist. These include a pair of drawings – a Martyrdom of Saints Nazarus and Celsus7 and The Beheading of a Male and Female Saint8 – in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and a Saint Jerome Visited by Angels in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.9 As Andrew Robison has written of the last of these, ‘By the end of the 1720s [Tiepolo] began to elaborate multiple areas of wash in clearly different intensities which make the works read from a distance…These were not just classic chiaroscuro drawings because, within the bounds of Tiepolo’s spontaneity, these are even more deliberate and finished in their multiple tonalities…this is really a complete painting, a brunaille on paper.’10 Another comparable early drawing of this type is a Martyrdom of a Saint that was once part of an album of ninety-six pen and wash drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo belonging to Prince Alexis Orlov (or Orloff) which was broken up and sold at auction in Paris in 192011.
Given their large scale and degree of finish, this homogenous group of drawings from the early part of Tiepolo’s career must have been intended as finished works of art, to be sold to collectors. As the Tiepolo scholar George Knox has noted of one of these drawings, the Martyrdom of a Saint formerly in the Orlov album, in terms equally applicable to the present sheet, ‘[it] is an extremely elaborate drawing that seems intended to show what the young Tiepolo felt himself to be capable of in the way of an ambitious composition with many figures…It is to be expected that this inventiveness should be given full rein in the drawings rather than in the paintings, which at this time tend to a highly restrained and concentrated programme.’12
FRANCESCO GUARDI
Venice 1712-1793 Venice
Perspective Study of a Venetian Colonnade
Pen and brown ink. A sketch of the ceiling of a colonnade in black chalk and brown ink on the verso. 171 x 152 mm. (6 3/4 x 6 in.)
PROVENANCE: Adolphe(?) Verdé-Delisle, Paris(?); Thence by descent in the Verdé-Delisle family to a private collection, Belgium; Anonymous sale, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hôtel de Ventes [Aguttes], 27 March 2012, lot 18 (as Attributed to Francesco Guardi); Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., London, in 2014; Private collection, New York.
A successful painter of Venetian views and imaginary landscapes who enjoyed a healthy market for his pictures, Francesco Guardi was also a prolific and spirited master of the pen. His numerous drawings include sheets of studies of figures and boats, architectural scenes, designs for wall and ceiling decorations and, in particular, capricci and topographical Venetian views. He produced drawn views of the Grand Canal and the principal sights of the city, as well as elaborate depictions of regattas, ceremonial occasions and festivals, and many of his drawings were probably drawn as autonomous works of art for sale to tourists.
The latter part of Guardi’s career found him painting numerous landscape capricci; imaginary views which often combined fantasy elements with recognizable Venetian motifs. Such works were part of a distinctly Venetian tradition; indeed, as Michael Levey has commented, ‘the whole concept of the ‘caprice’ compositions, etched and drawn, in addition to being painted, seems a thoroughly Venetian one in its mixture of the factual and the fanciful, of the serious and the whimsical, asserting the freedom of the imagination.’1 Furthermore, as the same author has pointed out, capricci subjects such as those painted by Guardi were perhaps more suited to Venetian taste: ‘Canaletto might be popular for his view-paintings with visitors and foreigners, the British most famously, but contemporary taste in the city probably tended to judge those works aesthetically inferior to invented, ‘capricious’ compositions.’2
Guardi’s capriccio studies are perhaps the artist’s most individual works as a draughtsman. In his survey of the artist’s drawings, James Byam Shaw reiterated that drawings of architectural capricci, such as the present sheet, were ‘evidently more to the taste of Venetian collectors than of foreign visitors at the time. The Venetian gentleman needed no souvenir: he could admire the gay scene in the Piazza any day of his life, or watch the Regatta, if he chose, from his balcony on the Grand Canal. But a Capriccio was something à la mode, a work of the imagination, a work of art. It is the Veduta ideata (imaginary view), as opposed to the Veduta presa dal Luogo (view taken on the spot)….but this particular category, which is so characteristic of Guardi, consists in the combination of motives taken from Venetian or other architecture, some of which are introduced with variations again and again…the Architectural Capriccio, whether in drawing or painting – and many of the drawings of this kind were adapted eventually on canvas or panel – is clearly distinct from the Venetian View in intention. It is a composition and not a view…even where a motive derives from the realities of the Venetian scene, the spirit is elsewhere, in the region of fancy.’3
Drawn with a summary technique in pen alone, without wash, the present sheet may be likened to a handful of equally freely-drawn perspectival studies by Guardi of his late period. These include, in particular, a drawing of The Rialto Bridge with the Palazzo Manin in the collection of the Museo Correr in Venice4, as well as two pen sketches of the Portico of the Torre dell’Orologio Looking Towards the Piazzetta and The Cortile of the Palazzo Soranzo van Axel, both also in the Museo Correr5. Equally comparable is an architectural sketch of the part of Rialto bridge on the verso of a drawing in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York6 and a Vestibule and Staircase of a Palace in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford7
JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE
Tournus 1725-1805 Paris
The Triumph of Silenus
Pen and brown and black ink and grey wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk, with framing lines in brown ink. Laid down on an 18th century French mount. Inscribed J. B. Greuze in brown ink at the lower right. Further inscribed Marche de Silene and J Bte Greuze in brown ink on a former backing sheet. 538 x 378 mm. (21 1/8 x 14 7/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Vincent Donjeux, Paris; His posthumous sale, Paris, 96 rue de Cléry [Lebrun and Paillet], 29 April 1793 onwards, lot 466 (‘Un dessin croquis, lave à l’encre de la Chine, sur papier blanc, representant Silene ivre sur son âne, accompagné de Satyres et Bacchantes. H. 24 p. larg. 16 p.’ bt. Noudon for 69 livres); Jean Charles Chrysostôme Pacharman, Baron de Vèze, Paris(?); His posthumous sale, Paris, Hôtel des Commissaires-Priseurs [Delbergue Cormont], 5 March 1855, lot 64 (‘GREUZE (JEAN-BAPTISTE). Marche de Silène. Grand in-fol. en larg, à l’encre de Chine. Composition capitale dans laquelle on compte douze personnages.’, sold for 48 francs); François Hippolyte Walferdin, Paris; His (anonymous) sale (‘Cabinet de M. W…’), Paris, Hôtel des Commissaires-Priseurs [DelbergueCormont], 18 May 1860, lot 78 (‘GREUZE. Marche triomphale de Silène, entouré de Satyres, Nymphes, Bacchantes nues, qui dansent à l’entrée d’un fourré d’arbres. Grand et beau dessin lave à l’encre d’un magnifique effet. Greuze parait s’être inspire de Gillot par cette composition.’, sold for 56 francs); Private collection.
LITERATURE: J. Martin and Ch. Masson, ‘Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint et dessiné de JeanBaptiste Greuze’, in Camille Mauclair, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Paris, n.d. [1905], p.6, no.51 (‘Silène sur un âne. H. 0m65. L.0m43. – Croquis à l’encre de Chine sur papier blanc. En 1793, ce dessin passait à la vente Donjeux. C’est, sans doute, la Marche de Silène, qui figurait, en 1855, à la vente du baron Charles de Vèze, et sous le no 78, à la vente Walferdin, en 1860.’).
Following a period of study in Lyon, Jean-Baptiste Greuze arrived in Paris sometime in the early 1750s and began training with Charles-Joseph Natoire and Louis de Sylvestre. Very little is known of the artist’s early Parisian period, however. He was admitted into the Académie Royale as an associate member in 1755, in the category of peintre de genre particulier, and the same year exhibited several works at the Salon, where three of his paintings were acquired by the influential collector Ange Laurent de La Live de Jully. (Greuze did not, however, supply a morceau de recéption to the Académie, which was required in order to gain full membership as an Academician, until 1769.) Greuze’s paintings of moralizing genre subjects, exhibited at the biennial Salons from 1761, earned him the praise of the influential critic Denis Diderot. He also exhibited a number of portraits at the Salon throughout the 1760s to considerable acclaim.
While Greuze enjoyed the patronage of such prominent collectors as La Live de Jully, Madame de Pompadour and her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, Jean de Jullienne, the Duc de Choiseul and the Empress Catherine II of Russia, his difficult temperament often alienated other clients. (Indeed, even the artist’s great champion Diderot described Greuze as ‘an excellent artist but a bad-tempered fellow. One should collect his drawings and his pictures and otherwise leave him alone.’1) Notwithstanding his success as a painter of genre subjects and portraits, Greuze always aspired to be recognized as a history painter. Throughout the 1760s he had considered various themes for his long-overdue morceau de reception for the Académie Royale, which he wanted to be of a mythological, Biblical or historical subject. In 1769, some fourteen years after he was agrée at the Académie, he finally submitted a painting of Septimus Severus Reproaching Caracalla as his reception piece. However, the work was rejected by the Académie, who instead admitted the artist only as a genre painter. Angered and humiliated by this snub, Greuze henceforth refused to exhibit at the Salons, choosing instead to show his paintings in his studio in the Louvre, where they attracted a good deal of public interest. He continued to enjoy
success throughout the 1770s and 1780s, especially among Russian patrons, and also profited from the sale of prints after his works. His reputation began to suffer in the years after the Revolution, with the rise of Neoclassicism. By 1800 he had returned to exhibiting his works at the Salon, after an absence of thirty-one years, and continued to do so until 1804, the year before his death.
A gifted and versatile draughtsman, Greuze was equally adept in chalk, pastel and ink. From 1757 onwards he regularly showed finished drawings as well as oil paintings at the Salons, and one critic, writing of the 1761 exhibition, noted ‘Several drawings by M. Greuze...do him as much honour by their execution as by the choice and genius of their invention.’2 The artist’s drawings were also praised by Diderot, who noted that ‘this man draws like an angel…He is enthusiastic about his art: he makes endless studies; he spares neither care nor expenses in order to have the models that suit him.’3 Greuze produced many preparatory drawings, including compositional studies in pen and ink and head, hand and figure studies in chalk, for each of his painted compositions. A particular interest was the study of physiognomy and facial expression, made manifest through large-scale drawings of têtes d’expression, usually in red chalk. These allowed the artist to refine the facial types and expressions that were such an important part of his paintings, but were also produced as independent works of art, to be sold to collectors. Indeed, Greuze enjoyed a healthy market for his finished drawings4, which found their way into important collections in France, Russia and Germany.
Previously known only through descriptions in 18th and 19th century French auction catalogues, this large and impressive sheet is a recently discovered and highly significant addition to the corpus of drawings by Greuze. Given its large scale and degree of finish, it is very likely to have been made as a finished work of art for sale; indeed, it remains on its original mount. Furthermore, this Triumph of Silenus may be counted among the very few mythological subjects treated by Greuze as a draughtsman. As such, it may have been made sometime in the late 1760s, when the artist was contemplating what the subject of his morceau de reception for the Académie Royale should be. What may be a related composition by Greuze, a drawing also depicting the Bacchic figure of Silenus, appeared at auction in France in 18595. Among stylistically comparable finished pen and wash drawings by Greuze are The Departure of the Young Savoyard in the Amsterdam Museum6, The Return from the Wet Nurse in the British Museum in London7 and A Savoyard with a Dancing Doll in the Albertina in Vienna8
The present sheet has a distinguished provenance that can be traced back to the artist’s lifetime. The first known owner of this drawing was the 18th century French art dealer Vincent Donjeux (d.1793), about whom relatively little is known9. Donjeux’s collection included a small but interesting group of Italian, Netherlandish and French drawings. This Triumph of Silenus is next recorded in the collection of the amateur landscape painter, printmaker and draughtsman Baron Charles de Vèze (1788-1855), who exhibited at the Salons between 1837 and 1839. At de Vèze’s posthumous sale in 1855 this drawing was acquired by the politician, physicist, scientist and writer François Hippolyte Walferdin (1795-1880). Walferdin formed a remarkable collection that was particularly notable for including some eighty paintings and over seven hundred drawings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard10. He also owned at least fifty drawings by Greuze, most of which were dispersed in two auctions after his death in 1880. The present sheet, however, was one of fourteen drawings by Greuze sold by Walferdin at auction in Paris twenty years earlier.
JOHN ROBERT COZENS
London 1752-1797 London
Lake Nemi looking towards Genzano
Watercolour over a pencil underdrawing.
363 x 525 mm. (14 1/4 x 20 5/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 26 November 1998, lot 63; Jacqui (Jacob) Eli Safra, Geneva.
The only son and pupil of the drawing master Alexander Cozens, John Robert Cozens first exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1767, where he continued to show until 1771. Five years later, in 1776, he exhibited a painting of Hannibal Crossing the Alps at the Royal Academy. (The painting, now lost, is in fact the only work in oil that Cozens is known to have done, and the only occasion that he showed at the Royal Academy.) Later that year the younger Cozens made his first trip to Italy. In the company of the scholar, antiquarian and collector Richard Payne Knight, he travelled through Switzerland and the Alps before arriving in Rome in November 1776. Cozens was to remain in Rome for almost two and half years, making sketching tours of the Roman countryside and often working alongside the Welsh artist Thomas Jones. It was also in Rome that Cozens worked up his Swiss alpine sketches into larger, atmospheric watercolours for Payne Knight and other patrons.
A second trip to Italy between 1782 and 1783, in the retinue of the wealthy collector William Beckford, resulted in the artist spending several months in Naples and then in Rome. He produced a series of almost a hundred finished watercolours of Italian views for Beckford that can be counted among his finest works. Cozens’s health deteriorated in the 1790s, however, and in 1794 he suffered a severe nervous breakdown. He was admitted to the Bethlem Royal Hospital asylum and placed under the care of the physician and collector Dr. Thomas Monro, who had many of Cozens’s Continental sketches copied by younger artists such as J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Girtin. Cozens died in London in December 1797, at the age of just forty-five.
For most of his relatively brief career of some twenty years, Cozens worked exclusively as a draughtsman. While his reputation was based on his work as a watercolourist, none of his works were engraved, with the result that there was no wider dissemination of his compositions through the medium of reproductive prints. Nevertheless, his watercolours were to be enormously influential among the succeeding generation of English landscape draughtsmen, notably Girtin and Turner. As Timothy Wilcox has remarked, ‘the near monochrome watercolours of Cozens…opened up unforeseen possibilities – not only to Turner, but to an entire generation of painters exposed to his work at the London house of Dr Thomas Monro. Monro employed Turner, Girtin and other young artists, including John Varley and John Sell Cotman, to make copies of compositions by Cozens. It was less the subjects themselves, scenes in the Roman Campagna or the Bay of Naples, than the subtlety of Cozens’s wash technique which made the greatest impression; through the extreme refinement of his graduated colour, Cozens evoked the fabled clarity of the Italian atmosphere, and an almost infinite spatial recession.’1 The landscape painter John Constable’s comment that ‘Cozens was all poetry…he was the greatest genius that ever touched landscape’ reflects something of the esteem in which his watercolour landscapes continued to be held long after his death.
Cozens worked in a limited palette of light blues, greens and greys, avoiding vivid effects and contrasts in favour of a tonal, atmospheric approach to landscape. As has been noted, ‘John Robert Cozens is perhaps the most sensitive and at the same time the least pretentious British landscapist of the 18th century. In no way flashy or abrupt, his monochrome landscapes are composed of infinitely subtle nuances of tone and poignant and elegant reiterations of luminous rhythms. From his father, he learned to value the unusual points of view and sharp silhouettes. But under Robert’s hand, these devices become subtler, are softened, and often transformed into elongated rhythms, winding through infinite recessions in space. Such devices rely on the tradition of Claude. At other times, he presents monumental visions of mountain
or storm-gathered clouds over lakes in scenes which anticipate Turner. At still other times, his works possess that complete stillness of globed light, crystalline in its clarity, which is so frequent in Italy and has come to be viewed as a dominating quality of Italian light. In all of these moods there is a certain constantly changing and willowy design inevitably faithful to the nuances of the atmosphere. It is this constant attention to the special qualities of the scene and the atmosphere of the moment…that makes Cozens especially important for the art of Constable and Turner.’2
Drawn in subtle washes of pale blue, green and gray, this large sheet is a fine example of Cozens’s watercolour technique, and depicts one of the artist’s favourite subjects. Lake Nemi is a small, almost circular lake set in the crater of an extinct volcano about thirty kilometres southeast of Rome. (In Roman times it was also known in Latin as ‘Speculum Dianae’, or ‘The Mirror of Diana’, since the lake and its surrounding forest were sacred to the goddess Diana.) The small town of Nemi overlooks the northeastern side of the lake, while the town of Genzano (today called Genzano di Roma) is situated on the opposite side. Cozens depicted Lake Nemi, from different viewpoints – and not always entirely accurately in topographical terms – in a number of watercolours and drawings, as well as in several sketchbook pages.
Cozens often repeated his compositions, and this particular view of Lake Nemi seems to have been among his most popular works, to judge by the several autograph versions of it, executed between 1778 and 1790, that are known3. These include examples in the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge4, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London5, the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester6, the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence7 and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto8, and in a number of private collections.
As one modern scholar has noted of this view, ‘Lake Nemi was redolent with classical associations and Cozens has successfully captured the aura of the site by placing the foreground in deep shadow, making the lake dead calm, like a mirror, while the eye is led from the crater’s rim to the vastness of the coastal plain beyond, and on to the distant islands.’9 Kim Sloan has further noted of this particular composition of Lake Nemi by Cozens that ‘The popularity of this watercolour may have been due to its extremely classical composition, as well as its well-known subject. Lake Nemi (‘Speculum Dianae’, the Mirror of Diana), was the centre of the cult of Diana, whose temple was situated out of sight of this view, below the town and castle of Nemi, to which belong the arcades acting as a repoussoir on the right.’10
In his Gentleman’s Guide in his Tour Through Italy, published around the same time that Cozens drew this large watercolour, the late 18th century English botanist and traveller Thomas Martyn wrote that ‘The other beautiful lake of Nemi is also a crater of an extinct volcano. It was anciently called speculum Dianae and lacus Aricinus. Riccia is near this lake; as is also Genzano, called so corruptly from Cynthianum, and placed opposite to the town of Nemi. From the garden of the Capuchins, just above the lake, is the most delicious prospect imaginable. All the eminences about both these lakes are shaded with forest trees: the water and wood set off each other, and combine to form a landscape, which is at the same time delightful, and unusual in Italy.’11
GIOVANNI DOMENICO TIEPOLO
Venice 1727-1804 Venice
Punchinello and his Family Spinning Flax
Pen and brown ink and wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk, with framing lines in brown ink. Signed Domo / Tiepolo f in brown ink at the upper left and numbered 44 in brown ink in the upper left margin.
293 x 413 mm. (11 1/2 x 16 1/4 in.) [image]
345 x 464 mm. (13 1/2 x 18 1/4 in.) [sheet]
Watermark: Three crescent moons (cf. Heawood 867).
PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 6 July 1920, part of lot 41 (‘Domenico Tiepolo. One hundred and two Carnival Scenes, with many figures, drawn with pen and bistre and enriched with washes of bistre and Indian ink, signed. 102. 11 1/2 x 16 ins.’, bt. Colnaghi for £610);
P. & D. Colnaghi, London; The entire group sold en bloc in January 1921 for £800 to Richard Owen, Quai Voltaire, Paris; The group of drawings thence broken up and sold individually; The present sheet with the Matthiessen Gallery, London; Acquired for £70 on 24 March 1937 by Richard Brinsley (later Sir Brinsley) Ford, Wyndham Place, London; Thence by descent until 2023.
LITERATURE: Adelheid Gealt and Marcia E. Vetrocq, Domenico Tiepolo’s Punchinello Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Bloomington, Stanford and New York, 1979-1980, p.140, no.S7, illustrated p.118 (as Punchinello Family in a Farmyard); Adelheid Gealt, Domenico Tiepolo: The Punchinello Drawings, London and New York, 1986, pp.36-37, no.6, pl.6; Adriano Mariuz, ‘I disegni di Pulcinella di Giandomenico Tiepolo’, Arte Veneta, 1986, reprinted in Adriano Mariuz [ed. Giuseppe Pavanello], Tiepolo, Verona, 2008, p.228, fig.289; The Walpole Society: The Ford Collection, 1998, Vol.II, p.172, no.RBF126; Alberto Craievich, ed., Canaletto & Venezia, exhibition catalogue, Venice, 2019, p.376, no.VIII.17.
EXHIBITED: Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 1921 (as part of the entire group of Punchinello drawings); Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Exhibition of Works of Art from the Ford Collection, 1946, no.148; London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, and Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery, Eighteenth Century Venice, 1951, no.138h; Venice, Palazzo Ducale, Canaletto & Venezia, 2019, no.VIII.17.
Domenico Tiepolo’s oeuvre as a draughtsman reached its peak in the celebrated series of 104 drawings entitled the Divertimenti per li regazzi (‘Amusements for the Young’), illustrating scenes from the life of Punchinello, a popular character from the Commedia dell’Arte. The series, which appears to have occupied the artist from the later 1790s through to the first years of the 19th century, have become the most admired and prized of all his drawings. As Catherine Whistler has noted, ‘Domenico’s spirited and inventive independent sheets have long been appreciated, particularly by French and American collectors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; his quirky sense of humor, acutely observant eye, and zestful approach to his subjects lend his drawings a peculiarly modern appeal.’1
The ribald character of Punchinello (known in Italian as Pulcinella) – with his large hooked nose, hunched back and bulging belly, black mask, white suit and conical hat – was popular among artists in Venice in the 18th century, and had been treated in earlier drawings and paintings by both Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo. The drawings of the Divertimenti per li regazzi, however, represent by far the most thorough and varied treatment of the subject by any Italian artist. No literary text is known from which Domenico could have based his drawings, and the narrative of the series appears to have been entirely his own invention. All but ten of these large drawings are signed, and they must have been intended as independent works of art.
One of twelve drawings from the Punchinello series which was until recently in the collection of Sir Brinsley Ford and his descendants, this large sheet may be grouped with a number of drawings from the Divertimenti per li regazzi series that depict the various trades and occupations of Punchinello. As Adelheid Gealt has noted of this scene, ‘we see [an] informal episode of Punchinello rural life, as one Punch helps spin wool with a lady and another looks on. A third Punch has discarded his slippers before he heads indoors. With the grain ripening in the field beyond, a young Punchinello rouses the attention of his playmates and their pet to something beyond the picture frame.’2 Gealt has further noted that the composition of the present sheet is freely adapted from Peasants at Rest3, one of the frescoes painted by Domenico Tiepolo in the Villa Valmarana in Vicenza several decades earlier, in 1757, adding that ‘Although Domenico commonly repeated figures and recast entire compositions with Punchinellos, this is a noteworthy instance of a subtler process of revitalizing old motifs.’4 The same cornfield seen in the distance in the present sheet reappears in the background of two other drawings from the Divertimenti per li regazzi series; Punchinello Retrieves a Dead Fowl from a Well in the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York5 and Punchinello Chopping Wood in the Art Institute of Chicago6
The series of 104 Punchinello drawings of the Divertimenti per li regazzi, which includes a title page, may well have been assembled into an album. When the drawings first appeared on the market, at auction in London in 1920, however, they were not bound into an album but were displayed as loose sheets. The entire group of Punchinello drawings was purchased at the auction by the London gallery Colnaghi, and six months later was sold to the British art dealer Richard Owen (d.1951), who was based in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. After the complete series was exhibited by Owen at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1921, the drawings were sold individually by him and dispersed.
Punchinello and his Family Spinning Flax was part of a group of fourteen Punchinello drawings acquired in 1936 and 1937, when he was in his twenties, by the art historian and collector Brinsley Ford (19081999). As Ford later recalled many years later, writing at the age of eighty-nine, ‘In the latter part of 1936, and early in 1937, I was fortunate to buy fourteen, from the famous set of 104 Punchinello drawings. Four I bought from Count Alessandro Contini in Florence for £400, and ten from the Matthiesen Gallery at £70 each. In 1954 I sold two for £670, and the remaining twelve form the principal feature on the walls of our small library… I cannot leave this major addition to the collection without giving some idea of the delight that these drawings have given me… The most remarkable features of this series are the extraordinary fertility of Domenico’s imagination and invention in scenes which range from riotous gaiety to the squalid and macabre, from the joys of childhood to the sufferings of old age, from realism to flights of fancy…What is also so memorable about the drawings is the brilliance and diversity of the compositions, for which the distorted shapes of the Punchinellos, with their sugar-loaf hats, lend themselves admirably…Domenico’s handling of washes is little short of magical, for he uses it to cast a golden glow across the page.’9
Arguably Domenico Tiepolo’s greatest achievement as a draughtsman, executed when he was in his seventies, the Punchinello series found the artist exploiting his visual vocabulary to its fullest effect. As the scholar James Byam Shaw has observed, ‘the fertility of invention and skill in composition displayed in this long series is wonderful; the unobtrusive satire, the topical anecdote, and the fantastic liveliness of the whole work make a place for Domenico all his own, out of the shadow of his great father, in the history of comic drawing.’8 This charming sheet is a fine example from this remarkable series of large drawings, which have been aptly described by Byam Shaw as ‘the most desired and the most highly valued of all Domenico’s works.’9
JEAN-LOUIS PRÉVOST
Nointel 1745-1827 Paris
Two Medlars and Wild Plants by a Stream
Watercolour and gouache, with traces of a framing line in brown ink, on faded blue paper. Signed J. L. Prevost in brown ink at the lower right.
349 x 226 mm. (13 3/4 x 8 7/8 in.)
Relatively little is known of the life of Jean-Louis Prévost the Younger, who was born into an extended family of artists who were particularly known as still life painters, and which included his older brothers Jean-Jacques and Guillaume. Born in Nointel, near Beaumont-sur-Oise in northern France, Jean-Louis Prévost studied with the flower painter Jean-Jacques Bachelier at the Manufacture Royale de Sèvres and exhibited his work for the first time at the Académie Royale at the age of fourteen. Devoting himself mainly to paintings and watercolours of flowers and fruit subjects, Prévost was, together with his brothers, commissioned by the fermier-général Jacques-Jérémie Roussel, one of the directors of the Vincennes porcelain manufactory, to paint the plants and flowers in the gardens of his château at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, near Versailles, which he had acquired from the Marquise de Pompadour in 1750. This project resulted in the twelve-volume compendium of around 1,800 gouache studies known as the Horti Cellensis Plantarum Icones, which was acquired by the Natural History Library in Paris in 1782. A member of the Académie de Saint-Luc, where in 1774 he exhibited some paintings of flowers with bird’s nests, Prévost became known in particular for his botanical watercolours, which were regularly shown at the Paris Salons.
In 1791 Prévost began work on another volume of forty-eight botanical watercolours, which was eventually published, in several portfolios, with the title Collection de fleurs et fruits, peints d’après nature par Jean-Louis Prévost, et tirés de son portefeuille in 1805. Although highly accurate, these works were not overtly scientific in nature and were intended for the use of designers of fabric, embroidery and porcelain. By the middle of the 1790s Prévost had been granted accommodation in the Manufacture des Gobelins on the rue Mouffetard in Paris, where he lived for some thirty years.
Many of Prévost’s watercolours were reproduced, with great sensitivity, as coloured prints by the stipple engraver Louis-Charles Ruotte. Works by Prévost are recorded in several important private collections in France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries – notably those of Louis François de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, Augustin Blondel de Gagny, and Pierre-Louis Eveillard, Marquis de Livois –and a large number of gouaches by the artist are today in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
The present sheet typifies Prévost’s close study of nature. As a modern scholar has noted, ‘With botanical fidelity and conscientiousness Prévost portrays the smallest detail: almost imperceptible drops of dew on leaf and petal, a small beetle hanging on a tendril. He possesses everything – strength and gentleness, passion and tenderness, a sense for grandeur and love for unconsidered trifle. He is neither pretentious, mannered nor sentimental. He approaches his subject with absolute objectivity and honesty. His technique consists in grace of brushwork and elegance of line drawing.’1
PETER DE WINT OWS
Hanley 1784-1849 London
Horses and Figures on a Riverside Path
Watercolour over traces of an underdrawing in pencil, with scratching out, on oatmeal paper.
308 x 469 mm. (12 1/8 x 18 1/2 in.)
PROVENANCE: The Warde and Warde-Aldam family collection, Hooton Pagnell Hall, nr. Doncaster, South Yorkshire; Thence by by descent to Mark and Lucianne Warde-Norbury, Hooton Pagnell Hall; Their sale (‘Hooton Pagnell Hall: 300 Years of Collecting’), London, Bonham’s Knightsbridge, 1 December 2015, lot 191; Martyn Gregory, London.
EXHIBITED: London, Martyn Gregory, An Exhibition of British Watercolours and Drawings 1750 to 1900, 2016, no.26.
‘I do so love painting…I am never so happy as when looking at nature. Mine is a beautiful profession.’1
The son of a Staffordshire physician of Dutch descent, Peter De Wint was trained in the London studio of the portrait draughtsman and engraver John Raphael Smith. There he met the young artist William Hilton from Lincoln, who was to become a lifelong friend, as well as his brother-in-law. After completing his apprenticeship in 1806, De Wint studied briefly with the landscape artist John Varley but in general seems to have begun his independent career without much further training. He exhibited landscape paintings and watercolours at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, the Associated Artists in Water Colours and, in particular, the Old Water-Colour Society, which he joined in 1810 and where he showed almost yearly until his death, exhibiting over four hundred works. De Wint’s work found favour with critics, and he began to establish a particular reputation, with regular sales to a large number of devoted patrons and collectors.
De Wint made a practice of working outdoors, and undertook sketching tours throughout England and Wales, with a particular fondness for his native Lincolnshire, as well as Derbyshire, Yorkshire and the Lake District. (He never seems to have had much desire to travel abroad, however, and his only foreign tour was a brief visit to Normandy in 1828.) Among his favourite subjects were rivers and streams, harvest scenes and pastoral views. As Andrew Wilton has written of De Wint, ‘His chief concern remained the creation of subtle and beautifully articulated compositions based on stretches of open or wooded country, often in the broad Wolds of his own Lincolnshire…his watercolours often display fine atmospheric effects.’2 De Wint also produced a significant number of topographical landscape prints, many of which were published in book form. The artist died in 1849, at the age of sixty-six. Writing some seventy years later, a fellow watercolourist noted that ‘No artist ever came nearer to painting a perfect picture than did Peter DeWint. His sense of colour was more brilliant, his choice of subject matter more apt, and his judgment as to the exact time when a picture should be left, better than any of his contemporaries.’3
In his seminal book Water-colour Painting in Britain, published in 1967, Martin Hardie opined that ‘De Wint is one of the great technicians of water-colour, one of those who can make colour luminous and keep his darks transparent and sparkling. No artist has interpreted the richness of English landscape with a more sympathetic mind and a more responsive hand…No other painter has ever put on paper with more effect that touch of fine colour from a full-flowing brush, which, as it dries out, transparent and rich in bloom, is the essence of the art of water-colour.’4 More recently, the scholar Anne Lyles has written that ‘Together with J. M. W. Turner and David Cox, Peter De Wint is a key figure in British watercolor painting in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. He brought to the medium a new fluidity of handling, a rich warmth of palette, and an instinctive boldness and simplicity of composition.’5
THÉODORE GÉRICAULT
Rouen 1791-1824 Paris
The Plaster-Maker’s Horse (Le cheval du plâtrier)
Pen and brown ink, with grey and brown washes, on buff paper. Signed and dated Gericault 1821. in brown ink at the lower left. 254 x 314 mm. (10 x 12 3/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Possibly among the contents of Gericault’s studio at the time of his death, according to an inventory of his estate dated 23 June 1824 (‘Un dessin representant un cheval attelé à une charrette de plâtre et colorié prisé soixante francs’); Possibly William Beckford, London and Bath; By descent to his daughter, Susanna Euphemia Beckford Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton, Brodick Castle, Isle of Arran; Thence by descent to Lady Jean Graham Sibyl Violet Fforde, Edinburgh; Ewan Phillips Gallery, London, in 1967; Paul Brame, Paris.
LITERATURE: ‘On Exhibition’, Studio International, June 1967, p.323, fig.11; Philippe Grunchec, ‘L’inventaire posthume de Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français, 1976 (1978), p.410, under no.87 and p.420, note 137; Jacques Thuillier and Philippe Grunchec, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Gericault, Paris, 1978, p.124, under no.244; François Bergot, Gericault: Tout l’oeuvre gravé et pièces en rapport, exhibition catalogue, Rouen, 1981-1982, p.92, under no.80; Lorenz E. A. Eitner, Gericault, His Life and Work, London, 1983, p.357, note 76 (as a copy); Germain Bazin, Théodore Géricault: Étude critique, documents et catalogue raisonné. Vol.VII – Regard social et politique: Le séjour anglais et les heures de souffrance, Paris, 1997, pp.37-38 and p.173, no.2414.
EXHIBITED: Possibly Paris, Galerie Lebrun, Exposition des ouvrages de peinture et sculpture exposés au profit de la Caisse ouverte pour l’Extinction de la Mendacité, 1829, no.100 (‘Charette de plâtrier. (Aquarelle)’); London, Ewan Phillips Gallery, Gericault to Ernst, 1967, no.5.
ENGRAVED: In reverse in a lithograph by Joseph Volmar (Delteil 86), for the series Études de chevaux, published in 1823.
Théodore Géricault was, from a very early age, fascinated by horses, and became an accomplished equestrian. As a young student he made drawings of horses at the Imperial stables at Versailles, and many of his most significant works were of equine subjects. This signed and dated drawing was executed during Géricault’s English period; the artist worked in London for a period of several months between April and June of 1820 and again from December 1820 to December 1821. It was during this time that he became particularly interested in scenes of heavy draught horses at work, which he would have seen throughout London. As Philippe Grunchec has written, ‘In England Géricault was fascinated by the tall, mighty horses that always seemed to belong to some ‘shire’ or ‘Irish draught’ breed, a variety then unknown in France.’1 The artist made several drawings and watercolours of draught horses at work in London streets, dockyards and wharves; these were done seemingly for his own pleasure or for sale, although a few were later adapted for a series of lithographs.
This highly finished drawing was later used for the print Le cheval du plâtrier (fig.1)2, one of a suite of twelve lithographs of equine subjects commissioned from Géricault by the Parisian printsellers Gihaut Frères after the artist’s return from England, where lithographs after his work had met with great success. As Charles Clément, the painter’s 19th century biographer, wrote, ‘The French public had at last acquired a taste for the lithographs of Géricault; the Gihaut brothers asked him to repeat his great English suite, but they only wanted horses. Six of the subjects of this nature that had appeared in the English publication were kept, and Géricault produced watercolours to serve as models for the other six. He commissioned Messrs Léon Cogniet and Volmar to carry out all the work, directing, revising and correcting here and there.’3 The series of twelve lithographs, executed in collaboration with the printmakers Joseph Simon Volmar and Léon Cogniet, were published as Études de chevaux par Gericault in April and June 1823.
In his catalogue raisonné of the work of Géricault, Germain Bazin describes the present sheet in some detail: ‘The horse is shown tied by a halter to a ring fixed to the wall. It is harnessed to the shafts of a cart with high sides loaded with bags of plaster. He wears a shoulder collar with wide splints decorated with a tuft of wool and on its head are two pompoms. He is attached to the stretchers by the belly band and a back plate, and has a breeching strap. Its tail is docked. This horse must be of a difficult character, as his eyes are bulging and he paws the ground impatiently; he is a biting horse as he wears a muzzle. His coat is black with four irregular socks. The shadow of the horse and cart falls on the wall, the rubble of which can be seen under the plaster which is peeling and which bears the inscription: PLATRE. Above the wall, we can see a roof forming an awning, supported by a bracket. In the shadow of the warehouse, where the glow of a barred window can be seen in the background, a carter wearing a smock carries a bag on his right shoulder that he is about to load onto the cart.’4
A finished watercolour of this composition, which however excludes the figure carrying sacks of plaster at the left, is today in a private French collection5. Although Lorenz Eitner regarded that watercolour as the model for the related lithograph by Volmar, the fact that it does not show the figure of the plaster-maker, as well as several other differences, such as the lack of stones in the foreground and the grilled window at the rear of the shed, makes this unlikely. Germain Bazin accepts the present sheet as the model for the lithograph, further noting that the bright tonality of the watercolour, which he posits may have preceded the present sheet, would have been unnecessary in the case of a preparatory drawing for a print.
A closely related painting on canvas by Géricault of this composition, of similar dimensions, is in a private collection6. The popularity of the lithograph of Le cheval du plâtrier among artists has led to the existence of several copies of the composition, in oil, watercolour or black chalk, all of which are in the same direction as the print7
The first recorded owner of the present sheet was Susanna, Duchess of Hamilton (1786-1859), who may have inherited it from her father, William Beckford (1760-1844). In his day one of the wealthiest men in England, Beckford was a novelist, art critic, MP and a noted collector of paintings, furniture and decorative arts.
THÉODORE GÉRICAULT
Rouen 1791-1824 Paris
The Plaster-Maker’s Horse (Le cheval du plâtrier)
Watercolour and gouache, pen and brown ink, with brown wash. Rapid sketches of horses, riders and other figures in pencil on the verso. Signed Gericault in brown ink at the lower right. 254 x 314 mm. (10 x 12 3/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Private collection, Italy.
LITERATURE: Gaëlle Rio and Bruno Chenique, Les chevaux de Géricault, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2024, p.165, fig.83; To be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné des dessins inédits et retrouvés de Théodore Géricault, in preparation by Bruno Chenique.
‘Throughout his career, Gericault painted and drew horses, beginning with the period of his apprenticeship to Carle Vernet and continuing up to his last, consummately finished watercolors.’1 A recent addition to the corpus of drawings by Théodore Géricault, this signed watercolour is part of a series of drawings and watercolours devoted to a plaster-maker’s horse that the artist produced both during his stay in London between 1820 and 1821 and after his return to Paris. The same horse appears, albeit in reverse and hitched to a cart, in a related lithograph entitled Le cheval du plâtrier, executed in 1822 and published in Paris the following year2. (Gericault’s preparatory drawing for the lithograph, drawn in London in 1821, is No.25 in this catalogue.) As the scholar Lorenz Eitner has written of the artist’s equine drawings of this period, ‘Géricault painted several finished watercolours of English life, perhaps in connection with his lithographic work of 1821, or possibly for sale. They are divided between scenes of fashionable equitation and scenes of heavy dockside labour. The latter are among the most impressive works of his English stay, and among the most personal: it is difficult to tell how much they owe to direct experience and how much to his knowledge of English art. Parallels to some of these subjects can be found in English painting, but there is nothing in the English genre tradition that quite explains his choice and treatment of them. They are essentially his own discoveries, though they naturally bear the traces of his impressions of English art.’3
As Eitner has further noted of Géricault, ‘Scenes of drayage round London docks, coal waggons toiling up muddy slopes or entering wharves, and waggoners unloading their carts, frequently occur among his English drawings. The colossal forms of draught horses, the athletes and proletarians of their species, had a strong attraction for him. Their constant appearance in his drawings and lithographs of this period can hardly have been a matter of popular appeal; elegant horses would have made more saleable pictures. But these working animals were to him the characteristic embodiments of a form of existence that impressed him in London.’4 The same scholar added that ‘Taking his subjects directly from life, in fact or at least in appearance, he aimed for a sense of spontaneity, often developing his image from sketch to completion in one rapid process and on the same sheet of paper. There is no trace in his English work of the elaborate conceptual planning by which he had earlier built up his compositions step by step.’5
Towards the end of his life Géricault reworked some of his earlier compositions in the form of finished watercolours to be placed with dealers and sold to collectors. The present sheet, of exceptional quality and in superb condition, is a particularly fine example of a signed, independent watercolour of this type. Although based on the lithograph Le cheval du plâtrier and its preparatory drawing (No.25)6, the artist has here chosen to dispense with the cart and the figure of the plaster-maker altogether, in order to focus solely on the powerful, restive horse, freed of its heavy load but still tied, if somewhat tenuously, to the wall. The muscular creature is beautifully and sensitively portrayed, with a confident, masterful watercolour technique that belies the artist’s poor health at this time7
Despite suffering from sciatica, unable to ride and sometimes confined to his bed, Géricault managed to produce a handful of very fine, highly finished drawings and watercolours in the last years of his career.
recto
As Eitner points out of such late works, ‘The drawings were certainly made to be seen rather than laid away in his private portfolios, as had been so many of the drawings of his early and middle years. It is difficult to believe that the more highly finished watercolours, at any rate, could have been meant for anything other than sale…His English watercolours are more luminous and richer in hue than the occasional coloured drawings from his earlier periods.’8 Indeed, Géricault’s late watercolours display a more vibrant quality than the drawings of his Parisian or Italian periods; in them colour becomes as important as line, if not more so.
The small sketches on the verso of the present sheet may be dated, on stylistic grounds, to Géricault’s English period between 1820 and 1821, and seem to be related to the artist’s lithographs of this date. The rapid sketch of a farrier behind a horse, at the right of centre on the verso, may be an early study for the lithograph of The English Farrier, published in London in 18219, while the top-hatted figure seen from behind at the left of centre may be tentatively related to a similar figure, albeit seen from a different angle, in the lithograph Un postillon, ou Les deux chevaux harnachés, published in Paris in c.182310
When Géricault died in January 1824, at the age of thirty-three, he was best known as the painter of The Raft of the Medusa, which had caused a sensation when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1819. The public at large knew little or nothing of his work as a draughtsman, so when the contents of the artist’s studio – containing some 220 paintings and several hundred drawings and sketchbooks – were sold at auction in November 1824, the works on paper were a particular revelation, and were eagerly acquired by collectors. A number of important collections of drawings and watercolours by Géricault were formed in France in the 19th century, and exceptional works by the artist, typified by the present sheet, have remained popular with collectors and connoisseurs ever since.
RODOLPHE BRESDIN
La Fresne 1822-1885 Sèvres
Landscape with a Church in a Medieval Village
Pen and black ink on Bristol board with an embossed border. Signed and dated Rodolphe Bresdin 1865 in black ink at the lower centre, and monogrammed RB in black ink on the roof of the building at the left of the composition.
84 x 129 mm. (3 1/4 x 5 in.) [image]
104 x 149 mm. (4 1/4 x 5 7/8 in.) [sheet, with embossed border]
PROVENANCE: Emile Philippe Magadoux, called Philippe Mohlitz, Bordeaux1; His posthumous sale, Bordeaux, Blanchy-Lacombe, 12 October 2019, lot 415 (as Ville de réve); Talabardon & Gautier, Paris.
One of the most remarkable and visionary graphic artists of the 19th century in France, Rodolphe Bresdin seems to have been entirely self-taught. An eccentric, bohemian figure, he served as the inspiration for the impoverished artist-hero of Jules Champfleury’s novel Chien-caillou, published in 1845. In 1848 Bresdin exhibited six drawings at the Salon, but the following year left Paris and, accompanied by his pet rabbit, journeyed south on foot. He settled in Toulouse in 1852, working there for several years. Despite living in abject poverty, this was a period of considerable productivity; he received several commissions and produced his first mature prints, notably two of his most famous works, The Comedy of Death and The Good Samaritan. For most of the 1860s he lived and worked in Bordeaux, where he taught the young Odilon Redon, on whom he was to be a powerful influence. Although Bresdin’s work continued to be occasionally exhibited at the Salons until 1879, he failed to achieve much recognition or financial success. His work was greatly admired by such writers as Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, Théodore de Banville and Robert de Montesquieu, but he remained little known. In 1880, destitute and in poor health, the artist abandoned his family and the following year moved into a garret in Sèvres, where he was found dead one day in January 1885. Buried in a communal grave, Bresdin ended his life in the same obscurity he had endured throughout much of his career. Indeed, his work remained almost completely unknown to the public at large until a retrospective exhibition, including fifty prints and a dozen drawings, was held at the Salon d’Automne in 1908.
Bresdin’s entire oeuvre consists of drawings, etchings and lithographs. While his graphic work is wellknown today, his activity as a draughtsman has been less studied. Like his prints, Bresdin’s drawings were never on a very large scale, yet were always intricately drawn and minutely detailed2. Many of his drawings were finished works in pen and ink, created as autonomous works of art for exhibition or sale. In his preface to the catalogue of the posthumous exhibition at the Salon d’Automne of 1908, Redon described ‘the small drawings on bristol [board] which he drew with such careful concentration and of which, when they were sold, he always kept a tracing done rapidly, a beautiful tracing, enriched by the addition of new inventions.’3 From a career that spanned some fifty years, only slightly more than four hundred drawings by Bresdin survive today, alongside a graphic oeuvre of around 160 prints.
Among the dominant themes in Bresdin’s work are scenes of figures in fantastical landscapes, peasant interiors, small villages and Biblical subjects, all depicted with an abundance of detail. Such subjects as that of the present sheet – which, like most of the artist’s drawings, is drawn with a very fine pen in a rich black ink, also known as India ink, or encre de Chine – would have been familiar to the artist from his upbringing in a village near Montrelais on the banks of the river Loire. Another version of this composition, of similar dimensions and likewise signed and dated 1865, was sold at auction in Germany in 20014. Of the same date is a closely related drawing of a Medieval Town with Horsemen, of identical dimensions to the present sheet and likewise on an embossed board, which was also formerly in the Mohlitz collection5. An autograph version of the ex-Mohlitz Medieval Town with Horsemen, drawn on papier calque, is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris6. Several similar drawings of townscapes from the 1860s are known, such as The Church and the Port in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York7.
HILAIRE-GERMAIN-EDGAR DEGAS
Paris 1834-1917 Paris
A Jockey Seen from Behind (Étude de jockey, vu de dos)
Pencil. Stamped with the Degas atelier stamp (Lugt 657) in red ink on the former backing sheet. Inscribed with the Durand-Ruel stock number Pb 1303 and numbered 2073 in blue chalk on the former backing sheet. 320 x 235 mm. (12 5/8 x 9 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: The studio of the artist, Paris1; Possibly by descent to his nephew Henri Fèvre; Possibly his (anonymous) sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot [Baudoin], 22 June 1925, lot 17 (‘Jockey, étude. Au verso, l’estampille: <<Atelier Degas>>. Dessin à la mine de plomb. Haut. 0m31. Larg. 0m22.’); Acquired in the 1940s by David Lindsay, 28th Earl of Crawford and 11th Earl of Balcarres, Balcarres House, Colinsburgh, Fife2; By descent in the collection of the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres; Thence by descent to a private collection.
EXHIBITED: London, Browse & Darby, Degas: drawings, bronzes & monotypes, 2004, no.14.
Although Edgar Degas is highly unlikely to have ever ridden a horse himself, his interest in the theme of horses and their riders lasted for almost the whole of his career. Between 1860 and around 1900, he produced around forty-five paintings and twenty pastels of equestrian themes, together with seventeen sculptures and some two hundred and fifty drawings of horses, almost all of which remained in his studio until his death. The artist may have first experienced a horse race when he visited his friend Paul Valpinçon at the château of Ménil-Hubert in Normandy in the autumn of 1861. Ménil-Hubert was close to both a small local racetrack at Argentan and the Haras du Pin, the French National stud, and Degas was to return to the area many times over the course of his life. By the later part of the 1860s Degas was frequenting the races at Longchamp, in the Bois de Boulogne in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. As the scholar Richard Kendall has noted, however, ‘Despite the fame of Degas’s racing pictures and his attachment to the subject for much of his career, almost nothing is known of the circumstances in which he made his equestrian drawings. Apart from some references in his letters and elsewhere to racetrack visits and trips to the country, there is not a single account of him drawing directly from a live horse...Degas apparently created these works from vivid recollections of the turf and the stable and a limited number of on-the-spot sketches, all reinforced by knowledge gleaned from other sources.’3
Ronald Pickvance has written of Degas’s racing scenes that ‘Only rarely does he show horses cantering or galloping. And he never paints a finish. What indeed are we left with? Those moments before a start, when horses and jockeys are in suspended motion, either composed into tidy, processional formations towards the starter’s flag, or more haphazardly disposed with markedly contrasting axes…Element by element, stage by stage, he assembled his material. Separate drawings of the jockeys, some in pencil, some in brush and essence; separate drawings of the horses, sometimes as many as four for a single horse; then a compositional study of horses and riders, on the same size as the chosen panel.’4
Between around 1867 and 1870 Degas produced a number of drawings of jockeys seated on their horses, seen from different angles, that he would use in his racecourse paintings of the next decade. As Pickvance has pointed out, ‘None of Degas’ pictures of the racecourse was painted directly from nature. He carefully built up his compositions from preliminary sketches and studies. This is nowhere more apparent than in his drawings of jockeys. In the latter half of the 1860s, he produced some 50 drawings of jockeys in the saddle, observing them from every conceivable angle and conveying the variety of bodily tension. Some were done in pencil, permitting a more precise contour, a more specific characterization, a more descriptive account of the silks; others were executed in brush and gouache on coloured paper; and yet others in essence on oiled paper, sometimes over a pencil drawing, this giving a more vivid, immediate, painterly effect.’5
The present sheet is a study for the central figure in Degas’s painting of Racehorses at Longchamp (Chevaux de courses à Longchamp) (fig.1), painted between 1871 and 1875 and today in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston6. As has been noted of Racehorses at Longchamp, ‘the painting represents a culminating point in a series of works devoted to the racetrack...The Boston painting is the most serene and poetic of Degas’s earlier evocations of the races. In those compositions, he was apt to stress the atmosphere of nervousness around the track before a race, or the repressed energy at the first sign of a start. In Racehorses at Longchamp, horses are being taken on their round at a leisurely pace, at an unusual hour of the day – dusk. Were it not for the bright colors worn by the jockeys, the hint of fence rails, and the bolting horse at the far left – the one suggestion of animation in an otherwise even-toned cavalcade – this could be a pastoral scene far removed from the world of the racetrack.’7
Degas based the main group of three horses at the right of Racehorses at Longchamp on a pencil drawing today in the Harvard University Art Museums, datable to the late 1860s, in which the same horses are shown in a different order8. However, none of the jockeys in the Harvard drawing were used in the painting, and for these the artist instead employed an oil sketch on paper of Three Jockeys, sold at the third vente Degas in 1919 and later in a private collection in Paris9, in which the same jockey seen in the present sheet reappears.
In keeping with most of his drawings and paintings of racing subjects, which depict the moments before or after a race, Degas has here concentrated on the relaxed pose of the seated jockey and the way in which he sits on the unseen horse beneath him, capturing something of the synergy between horse and rider. Among comparable drawings is a similar pencil study of a seated jockey seen from behind and turning to the left, of identical dimensions and technique, which was sold in the fourth and final vente Degas in July 1919 and was in an American private collection in 197310
This drawing also seems to have been used for one of the jockeys in an earlier and smaller painting, Before the Race of c.1871-1872, which Degas sold to the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in April 1872 and is today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.11 Degas was not averse to reusing motifs, however, and the same jockey appears in a handful of later racing scenes, notably the painting Before the Race of 1884 in the Detroit Institute of Arts12 and a pastel of Racehorses in a Landscape, dated ten years later, in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Madrid13
FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH GUIGUET
Corbelin 1860-1937 Corbelin
Self Portrait
Black and white chalk, with stumping, on brown paper. Inscribed Autoportrait and Page 25 / 17 in pencil on the verso.
328 x 306 mm. (12 7/8 x 12 in.)
PROVENANCE: The estate of the artist, Corbelin, with the estate stamp (‘Collection Maison Natale F. Guiguet 1860-1937 Corbelin’, not in Lugt) at the lower right; Thence by descent in the family of the artist; W. M. Brady & Co., New York; Robert Flynn Johnson, San Francisco.
EXHIBITED: Coral Gables, Lowe Art Museum, and elsewhere, Contemplating Character: Portrait Drawings and Oil Sketches from Jacques-Louis David to Lucian Freud, 2015-2023, no.20.
Born in the small village of Corbelin in the Dauphiné region of France, François-Joseph Guiguet received his initial training from the Lyonnais painter François-Auguste Ravier, who lived in nearby Morestel, before entering the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 1879. He eventually completed his artistic education in Paris, in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he befriended the older and more established painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Guiguet made his debut at the Paris Salon in 1885, and in 1890 moved into a studio at the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, where he was to live for some fourteen years. Apart from Puvis de Chavannes, Guiguet was friendly with Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Maurice Denis and Henri-Joseph Harpignies. In 1894 he participated in the seventh Exposition des Peintres Impressionnistes et Symbolistes at the Parisian gallery Le Barc de Boutteville, alongside Gauguin and the Nabis artists.
Guiguet enjoyed a successful career as a portrait painter and was the subject of a number of admiring articles in the French art press, in 1898, 1904 and 1909. He also became well known for genre subjects of women and children, which he sent to exhibitions in Paris, Grenoble and Lyon, as well as in England, Germany and America. With the outbreak on the First World War, Guiguet left Paris to settle in his native town of Corbelin in southeastern France, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Several years after Guiguet’s death, his nephew bequeathed a collection of paintings, watercolours and over 3,500 drawings by the artist to the municipality of Corbelin, where a museum devoted to his work was established in 1989, although it was closed in 2011.
As one contemporary writer noted of the artist’s drawings, ‘When you look at a pencil drawing by François Guiguet, you immediately sense that you are looking at a French drawing...François Guiguet was always a great draughtsman. He never painted a picture without first making numerous studies. He never drew a portrait without having first tried many times in pencil to find the right attitude, mise en page and expression. In fact, he takes extreme pleasure in this. He loves drawing for its own sake. Any opportunity to have a pencil in his hand is good for him. He has covered thousands of pages with doodles, sketches and highly detailed works. Collectors took away the most decisive ones. So many charming and successful works were scattered to the four corners of France.’1 In the words of another contemporary biographer of Guiguet, ‘He used to say that the drawing is more than half the picture. When he spoke of the primacy of drawing his words came to life...Often, when he spoke of drawing, Guiguet’s hand came to life, making us understand that the line is a movement that we follow, almost involuntarily, by a more or less restrained gesture...You can place the drawings of Guiguet next to those by Ingres, Puvis and Ravier, they are at the same level, and the same is true of his painted works.’2
This large self-portrait drawing has been dated to between 1890 and 1895 by Jean-Pierre Michel, the curator of the former Musée François Guiguet in Corbelin. The museum’s collection included two somewhat later painted self-portraits by the artist3.
ODILON REDON
Bordeaux 1840-1916 Paris
Horned Figure (Figure cornue)
Pastel and charcoal on buff paper. Signed ODILON REDON in pencil at the lower right. 372 x 271 mm. (14 5/8 x 10 5/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Given by the artist to Baron Robert de Denesvre de Domecy, Château de Domecy-sur-le-Vault, Sermizelles, Yonne; Thence by descent in the Denesvre de Domecy collection; Anonymous sale, Cheverny, Philippe Rouillac, 6 June 1999, lot 70; Private collection; Anonymous sale, New York, Christie’s, 7 November 2001, lot 416; Paul Allen, Mercer Island, Seattle.
LITERATURE: To be included in the forthcoming supplement to Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné.
For most of his career Odilon Redon worked in something of an artistic vacuum, aware of the work of his contemporaries but generally preferring to follow his own path, and the most important influence on the young artist was the draughtsman and printmaker Rodolphe Bresdin. Redon’s drawings and prints allowed him to express his lifelong penchant for imaginary subject matter, and were dominated by strange and unsettling images of fantastic creatures, disembodied heads and masks, solitary eyes, menacing spiders and other dreamlike forms. For much of the first thirty years of his career Redon worked almost exclusively in black and white, culminating in his so-called ‘noirs’; large charcoal drawings that he described as ‘mes ombres’, or ‘my shadows’. During the 1870s and 1880s Redon developed a particular reputation for these ‘noirs’, whose subjects were often fantastical or visionary, with dreamlike imagery to the fore.
It was not until 1881, when he was more than forty years old, that Redon first mounted a small exhibition of his work, to almost complete indifference on the part of critics or the public. The following year, however, a second exhibition of drawings and lithographs brought him to the attention of a number of critics. One of these was the novelist J. K. Huysmans, who was to become a friend and champion of the artist, and who wrote that ‘It would be difficult to define the surprising art of M. Redon…we shall find his ancestry only among musicians perhaps, and certainly among poets. It is indeed a genuine transposition of one art into another.’1 Another writer, Emile Hennequin, opined that ‘M. Odilon Redon should be considered one of our masters and…an outstanding master who, Goya excepted, has no ancestors or emulators…his work is bizarre; it touches the grandiose, the delicate, the subtle, the perverse, the seraphic…It contains a treasure of dreams and suggestions which should be used cautiously.’2 Redon’s critical reputation began to grow, and throughout the 1880s he published several albums of lithographs, which were acquired through subscription by a handful of collectors. In 1884 he exhibited at the first Salon des Indépendants, which he had helped to organize, and two years later was invited to show his drawings at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition. Ten years later Redon had his first major exhibition at the Galerie Durand-Ruel, which included over 130 drawings, pastels, paintings, lithographs and etchings. Among the lenders to the show were the writers Huysmans, Stéphane Mallarmé and André Gide, the composer Ernest Chausson, the critic Roger Marx and the art dealer Ambroise Vollard.
Towards the end of the 19th century Redon began to move away from working mainly in charcoal and black chalk in favour of a new emphasis on colour, chiefly using the medium of pastel but also experimenting with oil paint, watercolour and distemper. Redon’s pastels in particular account for some of his finest works3. In a group exhibition at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1899 Redon showed more pastels than ‘noirs’, and within a year or two he seems to have almost completely abandoned
working in black and white. Several pastel drawings were included in further exhibitions at DurandRuel in 1900, 1903 and 1906. As the scholar Roseline Bacou has noted, ‘In but a few years, Redon had completely mastered the technical demands of pastel...Up to the end of his life, the pastel would be a particularly special means of expression for Redon.’4
In the early years of the 20th century Redon began painting large decorative panels and screens for the homes of friends and patrons, and in 1904 sixty-four of his works were shown at the second exhibition of the Salon d’Automne. In 1912 the magazine La Vie published an issue dedicated to Redon, while the following year the seminal Armory Show in New York devoted an entire room to Redon’s work, an honour shared by Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse and Van Gogh. In an autobiographical account written near the end of his life, Redon noted that, ‘I believe I have given in docilely to the secret laws which prompted me to create – as best as I could, and according to my dreams – things into which I put all of myself...My originality consists in bringing to life, in a human way, improbable beings and making them live according to the laws of probability, by putting – as far as possible – the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible.’5
Drawn in a combination of pastel and charcoal, the enigmatic subject of this large sheet is almost unique in Redon’s oeuvre. A similar horned head appears in the artist’s small painting Têtes6, although the figure in this large pastel is very different in character from the somewhat sinister aspect of the head in the painting. The horned man in this pastel also differs in mood and effect from a satyr with small horns and a lascivious expression in a ‘noir’ drawing of 1877 in a private collection7, which, like the present sheet, was once part of the exceptional collection of Redon drawings belonging to the Baron de Domecy. Instead, the large eyes and gentle expression of the horned man in this pastel would appear to characterize the figure as one of wisdom and experience. The glowing orb drawn in shades of green and red pastel at the lower left, just above the figure’s shoulder, seems to anticipate the motif of a brightly coloured aura or nimbus that occurs repeatedly in Redon’s paintings, watercolours and pastels, particularly during the second decade of the 20th century.
The first owner of this large and striking pastel was one of Redon’s foremost patrons and collectors, Baron Robert de Denesvre de Domecy (1862-1946). The Baron had first met the artist in May 1893, when he accompanied André Mellerio on a visit to his studio, and he immediately began to collect his charcoal drawings. He also attended the regular gatherings of writers, composers and collectors that Redon hosted at his home in Paris, and in December 1900 invited the artist to travel with him to Florence and Venice. An avid collector of Redon’s works on paper, Domecy acquired several charcoal drawings and lithographs, including a number of coveted and rare ‘noirs’ of the 1870s from the artist’s own collection. He was also one of the first collectors to acquire Redon’s pastel drawings, and by 1900 owned some ten works in pastel by him. In the same year he commissioned the artist to paint a series of eighteen large decorative panels of landscapes, trees and floral motifs for the dining room of the Château de Domecy, in Sermizelles in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of France, which were completed between 1900 and 19018. This was Redon’s first large decorative cycle, and its success led to further commissions and established the artist as a decorative mural painter. Robert de Domecy also commissioned from Redon portraits of his wife Cécile in both oil and pastel, now in the Musée d’Orsay and the J. Paul Getty Museum, respectively, as well as portrait drawings, in pastel or charcoal, of several of his children.
GIOVANNI BOLDINI
Ferrara 1842-1931 Paris
Portrait of a Man Seated in a Church
Watercolour. Stamped with the vente stamp Boldini (Lugt 272b or 272c) at the lower left. Inscribed 12 - uomo in chiesa in brown ink and further inscribed (by Emilia Cardona Boldini) no121 atelier Boldini. / Emilia Boldini. - Cardona / 1921 in black ink on the verso. 449 x 450 mm. (17 5/8 x 17 3/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: By descent to the artist’s widow, Emilia Cardona Boldini, Ferrara; The atelier Boldini sale, Paris, Galerie Jean Charpentier, 30 June 1936, lot 39 (bt. Wildenstein for 2,000 francs); Wildenstein and Co., Paris; Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Paris and Switzerland; Thence by descent until 1995; The posthumous Maurice de Rothschild sale (‘Fifteen paintings by Giovanni Boldini collected by the late Baron Maurice de Rothschild’), New York, Christie’s, 1 November 1995, lot 1; P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 1996; Private collection, London; Anonymous sale, New York, Christie’s, 24 January 2017, lot 124; Private collection, New York.
LITERATURE: Emilia Cardona [Boldini], Lo studio di Giovanni Boldini, Milan, 1937, pl.LXXXV; Carlo Ragghianti and Ettore Camesasca, L’opera completa di Boldini, Milan, 1970, pp.114-115, no.317 (incorrectly as in the Museo Boldini in Ferrara); Piero Dini and Francesca Dini, Giovanni Boldini 18421931: Catalogo ragionato. Vol.III: Catalogo ragionato della pittura a olio con un’ampia selezione di pastelli e acquerelli, pt.2, Turin, 2002, pp.406-407, no.754; Tiziano Panconi, Giovanni Boldini: L’opera completa, Florence, 2002, p.401; Bianca Doria, Acquerelli e Pastelli di Giovanni Boldini dagli Archivi Boldini: Catalogo generale, Milan, 2022, p.393, no.103, also illustrated p.136 (where dated between 1900 and 1909).
EXHIBITED: New York and London, Colnaghi, Master Drawings, 1996, no.48.
Giovanni Boldini was a gifted and somewhat compulsive draughtsman, and filled many sketchbooks. His drawings, characterized by a restless energy and a spirited technique wholly in keeping with the bravura brushwork of his oil paintings, range from quick sketches of figures, landscapes, buildings and objects to more elaborate studies of these same motifs. As one scholar has noted, ‘Evident in almost all of [Boldini’s drawings] is a vivid engagement with the pleasures of looking and with the nervous exuberance of the drawing process, irrespective of the chosen subject…Some of these drawings would have taken only minutes or even seconds to complete, while others are the work of hours of concentrated labor…This engagement was vividly physical and sensuous, as his hand erupted in wild flourishes of pencil, pen and ink, crayon, and charcoal, or opted for extreme delicacy as the situation demanded.’1 Boldini also produced a number of large-scale watercolours such as the present sheet, which form a relatively small but choice part of his oeuvre as a draughtsman.
This large, vigorous watercolour, datable to the early years of the 20th century, was among the contents of Boldini’s Parisian studio on the Boulevard Berthier at the time of his death, and is listed in an inventory of the artist’s atelier compiled in 1931. It has been suggested that the present sheet may be a portrait of Boldini’s close friend, the caricaturist Georges Gourçat, known as Sem (1863-1934). The artist used the motif of a sitter holding a hand to his or her cheek in a few other works, notably a portrait of Degas now in the Museo Boldini in Ferrara2 and in a watercolour of a Woman in Front of a Mirror in a private collection in Paris3
The present sheet was acquired from Wildenstein by Baron Maurice de Rothschild (1881-1957), a collector and connoisseur who was a friend of Boldini and came to own several significant works by him.
GIOVANNI BOLDINI
Ferrara 1842-1931 Paris
The Interior of the Cathedral of Amiens
Watercolour. A study of horses and a carriage(?) in front of a church in black chalk on the verso. 354 x 254 mm. (13 7/8 x 10 in.)
PROVENANCE: Talabardon & Gautier, Paris.
Around the turn of the 20th century, and for the next few years, Giovanni Boldini began to produce a handful of striking watercolours of Gothic and Romanesque churches in France, including views of the interior of the cathedral of Saint-André at Bordeaux and the porch of the abbey at Moissac. The present sheet is one of a number of drawings and watercolours by Boldini of the 13th century cathedral of Notre-Dame at Amiens.
Two further watercolour views of the interior and stained glass of the cathedral of Amiens are in private collections1, while a large black chalk drawing of the side aisle of the cathedral nave was exhibited at a gallery in Bologna in 19992. Boldini also drew a large watercolour of the porch of the 15th century church of Saint-Germain-l’Écossais at Amiens3. Among other stylistically comparable watercolours is a large study of a stained glass window in the collection of the Museo Boldini in Ferrara4 and a similar work, signed and dated 1905, in a private collection5
The chalk study of horses on the verso of the present sheet appears to show the portico of a church, quite possiby also at Amiens, in the background.
PAUL KLEE
Münchenbuchsee 1879-1940 Muralto
Nacht-Eindruck einer südlichen Stadt (Night Impression of a Southern Town)
Pen, brush and black (India) ink and black and grey wash, on paper laid down onto the artist’s mount. Signed Klee in black ink at the lower left. Dated and numbered 1925 n.3 and titled Nacht-Eindruck einer südlichen Stadt by the artist in black ink in the lower margin.
301 x 226 mm. (11 7/8 x 8 7/8 in.) [image]
411 x 326 mm. (16 1/8 x 12 7/8 in.) [mount]
PROVENANCE: Private collection, Bern, in 1948; Anonymous sale, Bern, Kornfeld und Klipstein, 9-10 June 1976, lot 506 (sold for 58,000 Swiss francs to Berggruen); Berggruen & Cie, Paris, until 1981; Fuji Television Gallery Co. Ltd., Tokyo; Gallery Kasahara, Osaka; Acquavella Galleries, New York, in 1982; Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich; Acquired from him in 1983 by a private collector, Austria; Anonymous sale (‘The Property of a Private European Collector’), London, Christie’s, 24 June 2004, lot 337 (bt. Krugier); Jan Krugier and Marie-Anne Poniatowski, Geneva; Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London, in 2015; Private collection, California.
LITERATURE: Paul Klee, Oeuvre-Katalog, MS., 1925, no.43 (N3); Du, October 1948, illustrated p.24; Bern, Paul Klee Foundation, Paul Klee. Catalogue Raisonné, Vol.IV 1923-1926, 2000, p.300, no.3724 (1925.43); Christiane Lange and Roger Diederen, ed., Das ewige Auge – Von Rembrandt bis Picasso: Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, exhibition catalogue, Munich, 2007, pp.342-343, no.163 (entry by Ulrike Nürnberger); Paris, Société du Salon du dessin, 25e Anniversaire du Salon du Dessin 1991-2016, 2016, illustrated p.218.
EXHIBITED: Munich, Galerie Neue Kunst – Hans Goltz, Paul Klee, Zweite Gesamtausstellung 19201925, May-June 1925, no. 202; Tokyo, Fuji Television Gallery and Osaka, Gallery Kasahara, Paul Klee, 1981; New York, Acquavella Galleries, XIX & XX Century Drawings, Watercolors, Pastels, Gouaches, Collages, October-November, 1982, no.16; Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Das ewige Auge – Von Rembrandt bis Picasso: Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne KrugierPoniatowski, 2007, no.163.
Paul Klee was born near Bern in Switzerland and studied under Franz von Stuck in Munich. His first independent works date from around 1903, and three years later he settled in Munich, where he met Wassily Kandinsky and became a member of the Neue Künstlervereinigung (New Artist’s Association) and the Blauer Reiter (Blue Rider) group. He had his first one-man exhibitions at Herwarth Walden’s Berlin gallery Der Sturm in March 1916 and February 1917, the success of which established his reputation. Shortly after leaving military service in 1919, Klee signed an exclusive sales contract with the Munich dealer Hans Goltz. The following year Goltz mounted the first substantial exhibition of Klee’s work in his Galerie Neue Kunst in Munich, including oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints and six plaster sculptures. This was followed in 1923 by another major exhibition of Klee’s work, numbering 270 works, at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Appointed to a teaching post at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1920, Klee continued to work there after the school moved to Dessau in 1925.
An exhibition of Klee’s work at the newly opened Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1930 cemented the artist’s reputation outside Germany. In 1931 Klee resigned from the Bauhaus to take up a position as professor of painting at the Düsseldorf Akademie, a post he only held for two years before being banned from teaching – as a ‘degenerate artist’ – by the Nazis in 1933. That year he entered into a contract with the dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and by the end of 1933 had moved to Bern. Although Klee produced relatively little work between 1934 and 1936, another large exhibition was mounted at the Kunsthalle in Bern in 1935. The same year he began showing signs of scleroderma,
the disease that would eventually kill him five years later. Klee died in June 1940 at the age of sixty-one, three months after the closing of a final exhibition, devoted to his work of the previous five years, at the Kunsthaus in Zürich.
Of the roughly nine thousand works produced by Klee – paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints and sculptures – nearly five thousand are drawings. The artist parted with only a very few of his drawings in his lifetime, and kept them in his studio, housed in portfolios arranged by year. As his son Felix Klee recalled: ‘Klee did not like to sell drawings…drawing was the backbone of his art. Very few of his works are purely painterly, without any trace of something graphic...he hated to part with his drawings.’1 The Klee scholar Will Grohmann has further noted that, ‘Klee’s drawing technique is extraordinarily varied. Each time he felt the urge to draw, Klee knew very well whether to choose the pencil, the pen, charcoal, the brush, or more complicated processes.’2
Nacht-Eindruck einer südlichen Stadt (Night Impression of a Southern Town) reflects Paul Klee’s experiences of the landscape of the island of Sicily. The artist had made his first visit to Italy in April 1914, on his way back from a trip to Tunisia. His steamship sailed along the coast of Sicily, and he spent a day in Palermo, noting in his diary the facades of the buildings and the striking appearance of the hillside towns of the area. Memories of this brief visit inspired him to return to Sicily ten years later, in the summer of 1924. Klee and his wife took lodgings at Mazzarò, a town on the sea below Taormina, for two weeks. The trip resulted in more than two dozen watercolours of Sicilian subjects, mostly of landscapes, which are characterized by intense and vibrant colours.
Klee remained under the spell of Sicily – which he described as ‘pure landscape in the abstract’ – for much of the next year. In a letter to his wife Lily in November 1924, written from Weimar a few days before the enforced closing of the Bauhaus there, Klee noted that ‘Here everyone is in feverish activity in anticipation of the great crisis about to happen in eight days. I am still so filled with Sicily that it hardly touches me.’3 A few days later he wrote again, ‘I experience nothing, don’t even want to. I carry the mountains and the sun of Sicily within me. Everything else is boring.’4
This drawing is dated early in 1925 and must reflect Klee’s memories of his trip to Sicily the previous summer. Colour is extraneous in this nocturnal view of a southern town, which depicts the anonymous village in rich detail, with an arrangement of delicately washed grisaille tones applied in small, tesseraelike blocks that verge on pointillism. Although drawn in the artist’s Weimar studio rather than on the spot, the use of a mosaic-like technique in this drawing could reflect Klee’s close study of the rich mosaics of the churches of Palermo and nearby Monreale.
The monochrome grisaille technique of Nacht-Eindruck einer südlichen Stadt (Night Impression of a Southern Town) is found in only one other major work on paper of 1925; a pen and ink wash drawing entitled Kind im Asterngarten (Child in the Aster Garden), formerly in a Swiss private collection, which appeared at auction in Switzerland in 20055. In the same year of 1925, Klee used a similar mosaic technique in a handful of colour works executed in watercolours and oils6, as well as in some mosaiclike paintings in which the colour squares are larger and more prominent7
The present sheet, although not a watercolour per se, was regarded by Klee as finished and complete work of art, rather than a drawing or study, and as such was released to his dealer Hans Goltz for sale. Shortly after it was drawn, Nacht-Eindruck einer südlichen Stadt (Night Impression of a Southern Town) was exhibited at Goltz’s gallery in Munich in May and June of 1925, as part of an exhibition of some 214 works by Klee.
JACQUES MAJORELLE
Nancy 1886-1962 Paris
Seated Female Nude
Gouache, pastel and metallic powders on paper. Signed and inscribed J. Majorelle / Marrakech in black ink at the lower right. Inscribed No.17. 28 Flasque et degouttée. in black ink on the verso. Further inscribed No 28 / Flasque et degouttée in brown ink on a label pasted onto the verso. 634 x 535 mm. (25 x 21 1/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Acquired from the artist in the early 1930s by Paul-Eugène Sombsthay, Marrakesh; Thence by descent.
LITERATURE: La Vigie Marocaine, 4 April 1934, illustrated p.1; Félix Marcilhac and Amélie Marcilhac, Jacques Majorelle (1886-1962): Catalogue of work, Paris, 2023, p.144, p.289, no.55 (as location unknown, and dated c.1933-1934).
EXHIBITED: Casablanca, Galerie Derche, Jacques Majorelle, April 1934.
The son of the Art Nouveau cabinetmaker, designer and decorator Louis Majorelle, Jacques Majorelle trained at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts Appliqués in his native Nancy, initially studying architecture before turning to painting and studying with the gifted artist and draughtsman Emile Friant. In 1906 Majorelle enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris, a private art school where he remained for about a year, while continuing his occasional studies with Friant. In 1908 he travelled to the Pyrenees and Spain, apparently for the sake of his poor health, as he had been diagnosed with early signs of tuberculosis. This was to be the first of the artist’s many journeys outside France. It was also in 1908 that Majorelle first exhibited his work in public, at the Société des Artistes Français in Paris, where he continued to show until 1913. A trip to Venice in the summer of 1909 resulted in a number of paintings that were exhibited in Nancy the following year. Majorelle was to make three long trips to Egypt between 1910 and 1914, each stay lasting several months. He often based himself in the small village of Marg, on the Nile near Cairo, and travelled down the river as far as Karnak and Luxor, setting up his easel on the boat.
The next three decades of Majorelle’s life were spent largely in Morocco, and were the most productive of his career. He first arrived in the country in the autumn of 1917, at the age of thirty-one. After brief stays in the coastal cities of Tangier, Rabat and Casablanca, where he found the damp Atlantic climate difficult for his weak lungs, he eventually settled further inland, in Marrakesh, which was to be his home for much of his career. As one writer noted in 1930, ‘All the ragged, intense life of the great city that was both Saharan and Moroccan became familiar to him. Better still, it became his life, the life of his eyes and his artist’s hands.’1 Majorelle began to send his Moroccan paintings back to France to be exhibited at galleries in Nancy and Paris. A show of nearly a hundred paintings of views of Marrakesh and the Atlas mountains was mounted at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in January 1922, achieving much critical and commercial success, while another exhibition of over sixty Moroccan paintings took place in Nancy in 1924. Majorelle became a member of La Kasbah, an association of artists working in Morocco who mounted regular exhibitions in France, and between 1923 and 1929 also designed a handful of striking travel posters of Moroccan subjects, for such clients as the Syndicats d’Initiative et de Tourisme du Maroc.
In 1923 the artist acquired a house in Marrakesh, just outside the walls of the city, which he named the Villa Bou Saf Saf, after the Arab word for the poplar trees surrounding the property. A few years later he purchased two adjoining plots of land and created a magnificent walled garden, filled with exotic plants2. Between 1923 and 1928 he provided interior decorations for the grand, newly built Hotel La
Mamounia in Marrakesh. Majorelle travelled extensively throughout Morocco, painting views of the inland towns and villages and undertaking several expeditions into the mountain areas of the Middle and High Atlas. He established a significant reputation in France as a painter of Orientalist and Near Eastern subjects, and in 1930 published a portfolio reproducing several of his paintings of views in the Atlas mountains, issued in a lavish album entitled Les Kasbahs de l’Atlas and accompanied by an exhibition at the Galerie de La Renaissance in Paris. In 1931 several works by Majorelle decorated the Moroccan pavilion at the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris. Within a few years, the artist began to explore a new theme, producing large, sensual paintings of black female nudes. The first public exhibitions of these works, at the Pavilion de la Mamounia in Rabat in March 1934 and the Galerie Derche in Casablanca the following month, was followed later that year by a large exhibition at the Galerie Jean Charpentier in Paris. The vast majority of the 112 works shown were depictions of female nudes, their ebony skin touched with highlights of metallic powders, and the exhibition attracted considerable acclaim. In 1937 Majorelle painted a pair of very large mural-like canvases of crowded festival scenes for the new Hôtel de Ville in Casablanca, and the following year sent twenty-four paintings to a London gallery. Between 1945 and 1952 Majorelle made several visits to West Africa in search of new subjects to paint, travelling and working in French Sudan (modern day Mali), Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Niger and Senegal. He continued to live and work in Marrakesh until a few months before his death from leukaemia in 1962.
In the early 1930s Majorelle began to produce paintings and drawings of African female nudes, sometimes posed amid the luxuriant vegetation of the artist’s garden and at other times in a new studio that the artist had built adjoining the garden. As the Majorelle scholars Félix and Amélie Marcilhac have written, ‘Splendid greenery now surrounded the studio. Shielded from the social events and obligations that his wife always took on, the artist could at last withdraw and work at his painting without hindrance. It had become an entirely separate home, and was a place of personal retreat in which the artist could shut himself away for several days with his models, without going out, to paint them nude away from prying eyes and have them adopt languid, if not suggestive, poses.’3
Previously only known from a black and white photograph published on the front page of a Casablanca newspaper in April 1934, the present sheet is a superb example of Majorelle’s nude studies. As Marcilhac has noted of drawings such as this, ‘Technically, in this new series of nudes, his material was reduced. He quite readily used large sheets of paper, sometimes tinted, that he covered in watered-down colours. He then added bright colours that he applied with a brush, mixing them with metallic powders or applying them tentatively on top with his fingers, to give them a more casual design. If the backgrounds were not often sketched out, the human figures, on the other hand, appeared extremely well done and realistic. In the foreground, lying down, sitting, dancing, working or sleeping, whether moving or still, these young girls always expressed an intense, natural joie de vivre that was almost savage…Splendidly rendering their gleaming skin using golden or violet pigments, gold or silver metallic powders mixed with other colours, the painter reproduced all the beauty of their bodies, and gave his compositions a startling impression of life.’4
A closely related work on paper, of slightly larger dimensions and horizontal format and showing the same model in a very similar pose, is in a private collection5.
The first owner of the present sheet was the French banker Paul-Eugène Sombsthay (1894-1964), a native of Alsace who had settled in Marrakesh not long after Morocco became a French protectorate in 1912. Serving as the director of the Crédit foncier d’Algérie et de Tunisie, Sombsthay befriended his fellow expatriate Majorelle and may have acquired this large work on paper directly from the artist in the 1930s. Included in an exhibition of Majorelle’s work held in April 1934 at the Galerie Derche in Casablanca, this superb drawing has not been exhibited in public since. As a contemporary newspaper account of the Galerie Derche exhibition, which was accompanied by an image of the present sheet, noted, ‘Majorelle has but one landscape painting. All the rest are unique pages of nudes showing African beauty and signifying its simple, childlike soul, with no distraction or over-thinking, this nude soul in full sunlight, with the gaiety and human sweetness of innocence.’6
SAM FRANCIS
San Mateo 1923-1994 Santa Monica
Untitled, 1956
Gouache and watercolour on paper; a page from a large sketchbook. Signed and dated Sam Francis / 1956 in pencil on the verso. 360 x 514 mm. (14 1/8 x 20 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Acquired directly from the artist by a private collection, Tokyo; Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York, in 2005; Acquired from them in 2006 by a private collector; Anonymous sale, New York, Christie’s, 16 November 2018, lot 686; Private collection.
EXHIBITED: New York, Shepherd and Derom Galleries, Abstractions: American and European Art from the 1930s to the 1970s, 2011.
An Abstract Expressionist painter who was one of the first American artists of his generation to develop an international reputation after the Second World War, Sam Francis was a prolific painter, printmaker and draughtsman of extraordinary talent. In 1943, the young Francis crashed during flight training for the Army Air Corps. The following year he was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis and was hospitalised, confined to bed for several years, in a body cast with only his arms free. During this period, a physiotherapist suggested that he take up watercolours, which became a therapeutic activity and the beginning of his career as an artist. In 1950, after obtaining BA and MA degrees in Fine Art from the University of California at Berkeley, Francis left California for Paris, studying there with Fernand Léger under the GI Bill. To the earlier influence of older Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still was now added that of the Canadian artist Jean-Paul Riopelle, who had worked in Paris since 1947. He also closely studied Claude Monet’s series of monumental paintings of Nymphéas (Water Lilies), recently installed at the Musée de l’Orangerie.
Francis had his first exhibition at a gallery in Paris in 1952, and his work came to be promoted by the French art critic Michel Tapié as part of the Tachisme movement; a European response to American abstract expressionism. Indeed, Francis was the first American painter of his generation to establish a reputation in Europe. Further exhibitions in Paris took place in 1954 and 1956, when he also had his first show in New York, at the Martha Jackson Gallery, which came to represent him. Also in 1956, Francis was included in the exhibition Twelve Americans, alongside Phillip Guston, Grace Hartigan, Franz Kline, Larry Rivers and others, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which acquired a painting by the artist for its collection. In 1957 he made his initial visit to Japan, where his work was already popular with collectors – indeed, many of Francis’s finest paintings are in Japanese collections today –and the influence of Japanese art was to be evident in his paintings and works on paper from then on.
The later years of the 1950s saw Francis working in France, Switzerland, Mexico and Japan, producing highly original paintings that were shown in galleries in Paris, New York, Antwerp, London, Seattle and Bern. Museum exhibitions at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. in 1958 and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art the following year firmly established the artist’s reputation in America. Francis also received a number of important public commissions during this period, notably large-scale murals for a school in Tokyo, the Kunsthalle in Bern and the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. Among his most significant works of the late 1950s was the monumental and immersive Basel Mural triptych, commissioned to decorate the Kunsthalle in Basel and installed there between 1958 and 1964, after which they were shown at Documenta III in Kassel and subsequently dispersed.
In the early 1960s, while recuperating in Switzerland from a recurrence of tuberculosis, Francis began to produce the Blue Balls series of paintings that are now regarded as some of his finest works. In 1962 he left France for southern California, making his home in Santa Monica, although he kept studios in Paris, Tokyo and Bern. He continued to work productively over the next two decades, with numerous
gallery shows and museum exhibitions worldwide, and also undertook mural projects for buildings in Berlin, San Francisco, Brussels, Bonn and elsewhere. Francis continued to work while very ill in the late 1980s, though with less physical capacity. Even in the final year of his life, while dying from the effects of prostate cancer, he managed to produce over 150 small paintings and works on paper.
Sam Francis’s work as a painter and printmaker is characterized by an exuberant use of colour, and early in his career he was loosely associated with such artists of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists as Helen Frankenthaler. As has been noted of Francis, however, ‘Unlike most successful abstract painters of his era, he never settled into a ‘signature style’.’1 His work combined elements of the New York school of Abstract Expressionism, Colour Field painting, Japanese and Chinese art and calligraphy, and also displayed the influence of colour and light in the work of Claude Monet and the French Impressionists, together with Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse2. As one recent critic has written, ‘It has never been easy to place Sam Francis in the development of American painting…He is more highly regarded in Europe and Japan than the United States, where his delicate but irrepressible colours seem light when compared with the gravitas of his more renowned contemporaries. His rise as part of the ‘second wave’ of Abstract Expressionism also coincided with a shift in critical taste towards deadpan inscrutability and engaging objects. One result of this uncertainty is sincere but perhaps qualified respect, expressed as admiration for his mastery of colour or acknowledgment of his standing as a West Coast artist rather than as a full member of the celebrated heroic line. There remains a sense that his career deserves more careful scrutiny than has yet emerged.’3 Today Francis’s work is held in the permanent collections of over 130 museums around the world.
As has been noted of the artist, ‘Francis pursued works on paper with no less intensity than he did paintings on canvas.’4 This beautiful and vibrant gouache drawing was executed in 1956, when Francis was living and working in Paris and had already achieved a considerable measure of success and acclaim, with several solo and group gallery shows in the city under his belt. (Indeed, in the same year Time magazine described Francis, then aged thirty-two, as ‘the hottest American painter in Paris these days.’5) The particular influence of Monet’s expansive, nearly abstract canvases of Water Lilies, exhibited at the newly opened Orangerie from 1953 onwards, can be seen in the series of intensely lyrical paintings, murals and works on paper dominated by a blue tonality produced by Francis in the second half of the 1950s. As William Agee has noted, between 1955 and 1963 ‘blue became Francis’s signature color, replacing red and gray…With blue, in a mural format, Francis could realize on a new scale his ambition for a more expansive and open space, aerial and seemingly limitless. The entire surface of his paintings now seemed to unfold and billow…while the boundaries of shapes became less distinct and discrete, pulling apart and even blurring, one fusing with another.’6
Writing in the catalogue of a 1967 museum exhibition of the artist’s works on paper, the curator Anneleise Hoyer noted that ‘Sam Francis prefers to call many of his gouaches “drawings”, although they are not drawn with a pen or pencil but brushed in full color in wide areas. Drawings, as Francis conceives of them, have a special place in his work. They are, in fact, at the very root of it, its first and most direct manifestation…A painting by Sam Francis is a continuum, all-encompassing, a “walk-in” world in itself; a drawing represents a moment of creation made visible.’7 Indeed, as the artist himself once stated, ‘Making drawings is essential action and transforms my character. I wish the drawings to be a mirror, an act of faith, dedication to one thing. They are a sacrifice, excluding all other ideas for the sake of one. A painting, like brotherly love, embraces all the world. In the drawing, as in passionate love, all are forgotten but the chosen one. This is a metaphor.’8
As the artist’s friend and dealer André Emmerich wrote of Sam Francis, ‘Painting on paper…always held for him a special magic. He approached paper with a sense of freedom and spontaneity which is clearly reflected in the perceptible immediacy of the resulting works. Their gestural assurance and vibrant color endows them with a transcendent sense of joy and spirituality.’9
The Sam Francis Foundation has documented this work in their archive under the number SFF5.341 (Francis Archive SF56-195).
MICHAEL GOLDBERG
New York 1924-2007 New York
Untitled (White)
Oil on paper. Signed goldberg in pencil at the lower right centre. 430 x 402 mm. (16 7/8 x 15 7/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Martha Jackson Gallery, New York; Private collection, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan; Anonymous sale, Tokyo, Mallet Japan, 18 April 2014, lot 398.
A second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter, Sylvan Irwin (Michael) Goldberg was born and raised in the Bronx in New York City and began attending Saturday classes at the Art Students League in Manhattan in 1938, at the age of fourteen. He also studied with the German-born painter and renowned art teacher Hans Hofmann, but his training was interrupted by service in the Army during the Second World War, in the Pacific Theatre. After the war Goldberg continued studying with Hoffmann and at the League and, influenced by the work of painters such as Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Clyfford Still, became a committed abstract expressionist artist. He frequented the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village, a popular meeting place for avant-garde artists and writers, and became friendly with many of the painters of the New York School.
Goldberg first exhibited his work in public in the seminal Ninth Street Show of 1951, which was organized by a group of artists together with the art dealer Leo Castelli, where his paintings were shown alongside those of De Kooning, Hoffman and Kline, as well as Jackson Pollock and the young Helen Frankenthaler. Two years later Goldberg had his first one-man exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York. In 1955 he met the painter Norman Bluhm, and through him met the collector Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., who visited Goldberg’s studio and eventually acquired several paintings by the artist for $10,000. Not long afterwards Goldberg began to be represented by the dealer Martha Jackson, and from then on his work attracted considerable attention and acclaim.
From an early age Goldberg was an aficionado of New York’s jazz scene, and this lifelong passion for jazz music found its way into much of his art and the way he composed his pictures. Among his friends was the poet and museum curator Frank O’Hara, who dedicated several poems to the artist, and in 1960 the two collaborated on Odes, a book of poems and prints. In 1962 he took over Mark Rothko’s studio on the Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Both Goldberg and his wife, the artist Lynn Umlauf, taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and in the 1980s the couple began spending part of each year in Tuscany. Goldberg never abandoned the manner of powerful, gestural
Michael Goldberg in 1959.
painting, noting in a 2001 interview that, ‘For me, the concept of abstract painting is still the primary visual challenge of our time. It might get harder and harder to make an abstract image that’s believable, but I think that just makes the challenge greater.’1
Works by Michael Goldberg are today in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. In 2013-2014 the artist was the subject of a major museum retrospective exhibition, Abstraction over Time: The Paintings of Michael Goldberg, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida.
Painted in 1958, this sizeable sheet may be related to Summer House (fig.1), a large canvas of the same year that was one of the first works by Goldberg to enter a museum collection, when it was acquired, shortly after it was painted, by the Albright Art Gallery (later the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and today the AKG Art Museum) in Buffalo, New York2. In 1959, when the newly purchased painting was exhibited at the museum, alongside recently acquired abstract works by Ad Reinhardt, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages and others, Time magazine noted that ‘Under the guidance of Director Gordon Smith, the Albright is energetically pursuing a policy of buying the quick instead of the dead, the controversial instead of the safe. If, as seems likely, abstract expressionism establishes itself as the most vital painting of the period, the Albright will become a No.1 center for serious students of the age and its art.’3, adding that ‘Michael Goldberg’s Summer House looks more like a frost-adorned window in the dead of a winter night, reflecting firelight against the dark outside.’4
Of his works on paper, Goldberg has stated that ‘I like paper a lot. There’s a bigger investment emotionally on canvas. It takes more time. I can approach paper as a flippant exercise, very quick, da da da. If you don’t like it, rip it up, go on to the next one. That speed and energy are vital components of my art making. In that sense, I really like working with a hangover because I feel vulnerable.’5
BEAUFORD DELANEY
Knoxville 1901-1979 Paris
Untitled, 1961
Watercolour and gouache on paper. Signed and dated Beauford Delaney 61 / San Telmo Mallorca in black ink at the lower right. Further inscribed and dated Beaufort Delaney / 1961 / Mallorca on a label pasted onto the old backing board.
657 x 500 mm. (25 7/8 x 19 5/8 in.) [sheet]
PROVENANCE: Private collection, France.
Born in Tennessee, the eighth of ten children, Beauford Delaney was recognized as a skilled draughtsman from an early age. He studied first in Boston and then in New York, settling in Harlem in 1929 and later taking a studio in Greenwich Village. He soon established a reputation as a fine portraitist in pastel, particularly of such notable Black figures as Louis Armstrong, W. E. B. DuBois, Duke Ellington and W. C. Handy. In 1930 Delaney had his first small one-man show of five pastels and ten drawings at a Harlem branch of the New York Public Library, and further solo shows followed in 1938 and 1941. A photograph of the artist surrounded by his paintings, during the annual outdoor exhibition in Washington Square Park, appeared in Life magazine in October 1938 and first brought his work to the attention of an audience beyond New York. In Greenwich Village in 1940 Delaney met the young Black writer James Baldwin, to whom he became something of a mentor, and who was to be a lifelong friend and champion. Delaney and Baldwin shared an apartment for a while, and Baldwin often sat for the artist. Delaney was also the subject of a laudatory essay by Henry James, entitled The Amazing and Invariable Beauford DeLaney [sic], published as a chapbook in 1945. A one-man show at the Artist’s Gallery in New York in 1947 was followed by shows at the Roko Gallery between 1949 and 1953, while Delaney also spent one summer on a fellowship at the Yaddo writer’s and artist’s colony in upstate New York.
In 1953, at the age of fifty-two, Delaney settled in Paris, where he was soon reacquainted with Baldwin, who had moved to France in 1948 and was on the brink of fame. Living for a few years in Montparnasse, Delaney eventually settled in the Parisian suburb of Clamart. His work underwent a transformation in Paris, moving from the figurative subjects of his New York period to a greater interest in abstract compositions expressed through colour and light. A large exhibition of his work was held at the Galerie Paul Fachetti in 1960, which was a critical though not commercial success, and the following year he took part in a group show at the Centre Culturel Américain in Paris. There he met Darthea Speyer, the cultural attaché at the American Embassy in Paris and later a gallerist, who became a very close friend, patron and supporter.
Delaney continued to struggle financially, however, and by 1961 his alcoholism was affecting his psychological state. He began experiencing periods of manic behaviour and mental illness, often accompanied by paranoid delusions, although painting and listening to music helped him to retain a semblance of calm. Following a nervous collapse while on holiday in Greece in 1961, he spent a long period of time in a clinic in Nogent-sur-Marne. Following his release, he moved from Clamart to a studio, paid for by friends, on the Rue Vercingétorix in Paris, where he began to work productively again, resulting in a fine body of work that was shown in an exhibition at the Galerie Lambert in 1964. (The catalogue of the exhibition included commentaries by James Baldwin and the novelist James Jones, who was also a collector of Delaney’s paintings.) By 1970, however, the artist began showing signs of suffering from a neurodegenerative disease, and soon was unable to care for himself. Although his friends in Paris tried to care for him, he eventually had to be hospitalized. Delaney spent the last four years of his life confined to a mental hospital in Paris, where he died in March 1979, the year after a large retrospective exhibition of his work was mounted at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.
In the introduction to an exhibition of Delaney’s work at the Galerie Lambert in Paris in 1964, James Baldwin wrote that, ‘I learned about light from Beauford Delaney, the light contained in every thing, in every surface, in every face…Perhaps I am so struck by the light in Beauford’s paintings because he comes
from darkness – as I do, as, in fact, we all do. But the darkness of Beauford’s beginnings, in Tennessee, many years ago, was a black-blue midnight indeed, opaque, and full of sorrow. And I do not know, nor will any of us ever really know, what kind of strength it was that enabled him to make so dogged and splendid a journey… Perhaps I should not say, flatly, what I believe – that he is a great painter, among the very greatest; but I do know that great art can only be created out of love, and that no greater lover has ever held a brush.’1 Twenty years later, writing several years after the artist’s death, Baldwin added that ‘Beauford was the first walking, living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a warmer time, a less blasphemous place, he would have been recognised as my Master and I as his Pupil. He became, for me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion. An absolute integrity: I saw him shaken many times and I lived to see him broken but I never saw him bow.’2
This large sheet was drawn on the island of Majorca in August 1961, shortly after a trip to Greece when Delaney suffered a severe mental breakdown, believing that a mob was trying to kill him, and had attempted suicide. Accompanied by some friends from Paris – Charley Boggs, a painter from West Virginia, and his wife Gita, their young son Gordon, and Joe and Bernice O’Reilly – the artist had gone to the coastal village of San Telmo in Majorca to try and recover his health. His mental state remained very poor, however, and he continued to hear voices that led him to believe that criminals had followed him from Greece and were intent on doing him harm. Nevertheless, as Delaney’s biographer David Leeming notes, ‘In San Telmo he did eat well and rest, and, with the help of soothing talks with Bernice and Gita especially, managed to maintain a surface calm and even began to do some watercolors.’3 As the artist himself wrote in a letter from San Telmo to a friend, ‘Being here has calmed me much. Eat well and make watercolors and feel my old self.’
Leeming has written that ‘There is one brief period in his life during which Beauford’s paintings do seem to be a direct representation of his psychological problems. On his way to Greece in 1961, Beauford attempted suicide. After his return to Paris, he went with friends to Majorca in search of restoration, and later in 1962, he spent time in a mental hospital. During these months, Beauford did several works in watercolor and gouache on paper. He spoke of these works, executed quickly with wide brush strokes, as his “Rorschach tests”, and some of them were, in fact, done at his doctor’s suggestion…After his release from hospital and removal to the Rue Vercingétorix, Beauford wrote to his old friend Henry Miller that the “birth pains” associated with his passage from sickness to “enlightenment” were “almost unbearable…yet morning comes after the darkest night.”…The watercolor and gouache paintings on paper of the early sixties are liquid in feeling – green and blue pools serving as breeding sources for Beauford’s motion-filled and all-pervasive yellow light.’4
Only a handful of works by Delaney done during his brief stay in Majorca are known. Two gouache drawings also made at San Telmo in 1961 and acquired by a collector directly from the artist recently appeared at auction5, while an abstract composition in ink and watercolour, dedicated by the artist to his friend and patron Darthea Speyer, was sold from her estate in Paris in 20106.
Beauford Delaney
LYNNE DREXLER
Newport News 1928-1999 Monhegan Island
Washerwoman
Gouache on board. Signed, inscribed, titled and dated Top / LYNNE DREXLER / Washer woman 1962 in green ink on the verso.
328 x 410 mm. (12 7/8 x 16 1/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: The estate of the artist, Monhegan Island, Maine; Private collection, Connecticut.
In late 1955 Lynne Mapp Drexler moved to New York City to study with the painter and renowned art teacher Hans Hofmann, enrolling in his school in 1956 and also earning a scholarship to his summer class in Provincetown, Massachusetts1. Hofmann taught Drexler to focus on painting in terms of colour, form and space, and his theories about musical analogies in chromatic scales resonated with the younger artist. When Hofmann closed his school, Drexler began studying with the painter Robert Motherwell, who supported and encouraged the artist in her work2. As a disciple of both Hofmann and Motherwell, Drexler became associated with the second generation of Abstract Expressionist painters. By the late 1950s she had come of age as an artist, and her first solo exhibition of eleven abstract paintings was held at the Tanager Gallery in New York in 1961, although none of the works sold.
The following year Drexler married the abstract painter John Hultberg, whose career was much more established than hers. In 1961 Hultberg had bought a house on Monhegan Island, several miles off the coast of Maine, and he and Drexler spent summers there. Much of Drexler’s later work was inspired by the landscape of this small and remote island. In 1965 she had her second solo exhibition at a gallery in Los Angeles, which was well reviewed by local critics3. Drexler and Hultberg settled in New York in 1967, but spent the summer months on Monhegan Island, where she created a repertory of images that would provide the basis for larger abstract paintings done in the winter months in New York. By 1975 Drexler had shown her colourful paintings in a series of four exhibitions at a gallery on the Upper East Side. This period, between 1969 and 1975, marks the highpoint of the artist’s commercial and critical success during her lifetime. However, she was never able to gain gallery representation and struggled to achieve wider recognition.
In 1983 Drexler abandoned New York to settle permanently on Monhegan Island, where she lived and worked alone for the last sixteen years of her life. (She and Hultberg eventually separated in 1984, though they never divorced.) The artist was happy there and began to sell her work to a handful of local collectors. The scenery of Monhegan was a continuing inspiration, and she became a part of the tiny community of people who lived on the small, rocky island year-round4. By the early 1990s Drexler’s work had become more stylized and representational, though still brilliantly coloured and always anchored in a love of nature. She continued to work productively, content in the solitude of Monhegan Island, until her death at the age of seventy-one. Following Drexler’s death stacks of unframed paintings, watercolours and gouache drawings, dating from the 1950s to the 1990s, were discovered in her home. Gradually her work began to attract a new audience, and in 2008 the first museum retrospective of Drexler’s oeuvre, numbering some fifty paintings, drawings and textiles, was presented at the Monhegan Museum and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. Paintings, drawings and prints by Drexler are today in the collections of, among others, the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Drexler’s work was always first and foremost about colour. The artist’s use of squarish patches of vibrant colour is seen to brilliant effect in this large gouache, executed in 1962, which reflects the influence of the artist’s training with Hans Hofmann, notably his particular emphasis on a rhythmic approach to composition and a bright colour palette. This devotion to colour was something that Drexler also admired in the work of such artists as Van Gogh and Matisse5
ERNST WILHELM NAY
Berlin 1902-1968 Cologne
Ohne Titel (Untitled), 1963
Watercolour on paper. Signed and dated nAy 63 in pencil at the lower right. 419 x 602 mm. (16 1/4 x 23 3/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Private collection, Konigstein im Taunus; Anonymous sale, Frankfurt am Main, Auktionshaus Wilhelm M. Döbritz, in 1977; Robert and Helga Ehret, Frankfurt am Main.
Arguably the most significant German painter and graphic artist of the post-war period, Ernst Wilhelm Nay was self-taught until 1924, when he earned a scholarship to the studio of Karl Hofer at the College of Fine Arts in Berlin. He was one of the artists included in the show ‘Living German Art’ in Berlin in 1932, one of the last exhibitions of modern art to be held in Germany before the rise to power of the National Socialists. In 1937 Nay had his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Bucholz in Berlin, but the same year two of his paintings were included in the Nazi party’s Entartente Kunst (‘Degenerate Art’) exhibition, and he was soon banned from exhibiting his work. With the financial support of the artist Edvard Munch, Nay was able to travel to Norway, where he spent several months in 1937 and 1938 and painted a series of large-scale watercolours. In 1943 he had an exhibition of his works on paper at a gallery in Munich. After the war Nay had exhibitions at galleries in Munich, Berlin, Düsseldorf and Cologne, and it was around this time that his paintings became more abstract. A first retrospective exhibition of his work was held in Hannover in 1950.
The 1950s and 1960s found Nay fully embracing colour and abstraction in his work as a painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Among his best-known works were the Scheibenbildern, or ‘disc pictures’, created between 1954 and 1963, in which round shapes predominate. As the artist wrote of these large-format paintings and watercolours, ‘I started with very innocuous new experiments and found out: If I go with a brush on the canvas, there is a small blob, I enlarge that, then I have a disc. This disc is of course already doing a lot on the surface. If I add other slices, then a system of at least coloured and quantitative proportions is created, which can now be combined and further assembled into larger image complexes.’ Among the most public of these Scheibenbildern was a monumental mural painted in 1956 for the chemical building of the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. Nay’s international reputation began to grow in the 1950s, and his work was included in the first three editions of the Documenta exhibition of contemporary art in Kassel, in 1955, 1959 and 1964, while an exhibition in America and a solo presentation in the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale added to his standing outside Germany. In 1960 the first monograph devoted to Nay’s work was published, and two years later a large exhibition was held at the Folkwang Museum in Essen. Nay remained active until his death, from heart failure, in 1968. Works by him are today in numerous museum collections in Germany, as well as in museums in Basel, Brussels, Detroit, London, Milwaukee, New York, Paris, Saint Louis and Vienna. In 2022 a major retrospective of 120 paintings, watercolours and drawings by Nay was mounted at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg.
This large watercolour may be associated with a group of abstract works on paper produced by Nay during the second half of the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, in which rounded or circular shapes are repeated to create an almost floral effect. These works are closely related to both the artist’s critically acclaimed Scheibenbildern, and the successive series of Augenbilder, or ‘eye paintings’, of 19631964, in which the disc motifs were developed into eye-like forms. Drawn in 1963, the year in which Nay undertook a long trip to California and Mexico, this watercolour may be likened to several works of this period in which a bluish tonality is predominant1
The present sheet is registered in the online Ernst Wilhelm Nay catalogue raisonné, under no.CR 63011.
DOMENICO GNOLI
Rome 1933-1970 New York
Old Town Market Place, Warsaw
Pen and black (India) ink. Inscribed by the artist Starego Miastra square in / the old city, rebuilded identical / to what it used to be in black ink on the verso. Further inscribed Gnoli – Warsaw in pencil on the verso. 326 x 452 mm. (12 7/8 x 17 3/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Frank Zachary, East Hampton, New York; Thence by family descent.
LITERATURE: Edith Templeton and Domenico Gnoli, ‘Warsaw and Peace’, Holiday, September 1968, illustrated pp.50-51; Vittorio Sgarbi, ‘Nel mondo fantastico di Domenico Gnoli’, in Vittorio Sgarbi, L’opera grafica di Domenico Gnoli, Milan, 1985, p.23; Annie de Garrou Gnoli, ‘Catalogo ragionato’, in Sgarbi, ibid., p.160 (as location unknown, not illustrated); Carlo Barbatti and Giulia Lotti, ‘1933-70’. A Life in Pictures and Documents’, in Germano Celant et al, Domenico Gnoli, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 2021-2022, p.299, fig.898.
A precocious artist, Domenico Gnoli exhibited for the first time, aged just seventeen, at the Galleria La Cassapanca in Rome in 1950, and the following year his work was included in the exhibition Art Graphique Italien Contemporain at the Galerie Giroux in Brussels. After studying theatre design at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, Gnoli began working as a scenographer. He produced designs for stage sets and costumes for a production of The Merchant of Venice at the Schauspielhaus in Zurich in 1953, and the following year worked on designs for a staging of As You Like It at the Old Vic Theatre in London which opened in 1955. Despite the makings of a successful career as a scenographer, Gnoli decided to give up theatrical work in 1956 – claiming that ‘it was distracting [him] from the essential’ –in order to concentrate on drawing and painting. Having lived between London, Paris and Rome he eventually settled in 1956 in New York, where his friends included Leonard Bernstein, Henri CartierBresson, Jerome Robbins and Diana Vreeland.
Between 1956 and 1960 solo exhibitions of Gnoli’s drawings and prints were held in New York, London and Rome. He also worked as a book illustrator, writing and illustrating Orestes or the Art of Smiling, published in 1960, and two years later provided illustrations for the American writer Norman Juster’s Alberic the Wise and Other Journeys. He also received commissions for illustrations for magazines as diverse as Fortune, Horizon, Life, Sports Illustrated, Holiday and several others, and in 1968 was awarded a gold medal by the Society of Illustrators in New York.
Gnoli continued to have exhibitions of his work in Italy, France, Germany, England and America, and in 1969 his first solo exhibition of paintings was held at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. The artist seems to have hoped that his paintings would establish him in the public eye as more than just a fine and gifted draughtsman. In September 1968, Gnoli wrote to his American agent Ted Riley in New York: ‘It is somehow sad for me to realize more and more, that however good he is, no matter how hard he works an illustrator is always a second class citizen.’1 Some three months later, referring to the exhibition at the Janis Gallery planned for the following year, Gnoli wrote to the same friend, ‘I would hate you to think that I am just losing interest with all this, fooling myself with the idea that Janis will make a great painter out of me, and therefore I needn’t worry about drawings anymore. This would be mad, first because even if the show with him does well, it will only be a temporary success since the art scene is moving so fast that what is great today will be shit tomorrow, second, I am, regardless of big money and glamor, a born illustrator, and will not betray myself.’2 Gnoli died of cancer in New York in April 1970, two weeks before his 37th birthday.
The imagery, wit and technical virtuosity of Gnoli’s work continued to appeal to critics and collectors
long after his untimely death. As Francesco Bonami has written, ‘Gnoli journeys across the cosmos and visits imaginary societies…As an artist, Gnoli was truly an aristocrat, ruling his imagination like a kingdom. He observed his planet from both ends of the telescope: From one end he was able to see a faraway world, with many little characters on many different stages; from the other end, as if looking into a microscope, he was able to get very close, like a flea.’3 Today Gnoli is perhaps best known for his paintings executed from 1964 onwards; large canvases in which the artist almost obsessively concentrates his attention on isolated details of clothing, hair and objects.
In February 1968 Gnoli and his wife Yannick Vu travelled to several countries in Eastern Europe, visiting Prague, Warsaw, Moscow and Leningrad, on a commission to produce drawings for Holiday magazine. Warsaw was not actually meant to be on the itinerary, as the artist noted in a letter to Riley: ‘So here we are en route…Very excited indeed and ready for action…I know I was not supposed to go to Warsaw and Leningrad but I find it so silly given the fact that W. is on our route and the other only one and half hours from Moscow ($18 the air fare) that I just decided to go. If Holiday is not interested I’ll pay for it myself.’4 Gnoli and Vu spent two days in Warsaw, staying at the Hotel Europejski, and during their walks around the postwar city the artist was particularly impressed by how the buildings of the old city had been carefully reconstructed following the destruction of the Second World War.
As the artist noted, in a sort of travel diary written in early March, soon after his return to Rome: ‘The street[s] of Warsaw unbelievably white, swept by the wind, almost without traffic. The squares are as vast as airfields with the snow piled in great drifts along the sides, almost nobody around. Under these squares lie the remains of what had been densely populated areas of the city, also the memory of one million dead... walking further towards the old market and then through what used to be the ghetto and the ancient quarters, thousand[s] of squares, of churches, carefully rebuilt, of sculptures and ornaments dug from under the ruins and replaced where they were, the old colors remembered and now bright again, little by little we begin to understand that this incredible restoration of the past is even more significant than the monuments to the glory of those who perished. The whole city has been rebuilt stone by stone, house by house. Whenever something could be utilized it has been returned to its former place and the wounds from the blows received cured one by one; with patience and infinite labor. But more moving than the labor is the evident, meticulous effort of memory through which everything has been rebuilt. It is impossible to think that more than a few plans of the old buildings were still available: no, these houses have been rebuilt only through the memory of those who survived that remembered miraculously every detail, every shape, every shade of color. More than the tears, memory pays an homage to the past; a city amorously able to retain the image of itself…We’ve been walking for hours and we feel as if we’ve been visiting a double city, that is, a city that is the image of itself besides being itself. Like an echo that twenty years later returns to be the voice that once provoked it.’5
The present sheet was one of five drawings of Warsaw by Gnoli used to illustrate an article by Edith Templeton entitled ‘Warsaw and Peace’, published in Holiday magazine in September 1968. This overhead view of the Old Town Market Place in Warsaw (‘Rynek Starego Miasta’ in Polish) was used as a double-page spread illustration in the magazine, accompanied by the caption: ‘The Old Town Market, one of the finest squares in Europe, has been rebuilt from the ground up since World War II, when 85 percent of the buildings in Warsaw were destroyed.’6 In the words of one of Gnoli’s fellow artists and admirers, the English illustrator Paul Hogarth, ‘Gnoli’s imaginative reportage of Warsaw for Holiday remains one of the more remarkable examples of contemporary topographical reporting.’7
The first owner of this drawing was the magazine editor and art director Frank Zachary (1914-2015), who served as both picture editor and art director of Holiday magazine between 1951 and 1964.
A copy of the September 1968 issue of Holiday magazine is sold with the present sheet.
PABLO PICASSO
Málaga 1881-1973 Mougins
Nude with a Bunch of Grapes (Nu à la grappe de raisin)
Ballpoint pen on paper; a page from a sketchbook. Dated and numbered 31.5.70. III in black ink and signed Picasso in pencil at the upper right.
296 x 221 mm. (11 5/8 x 8 3/4 in.) [sight]
307 x 230 mm. (12 1/8 x 9 in.) [sheet]
PROVENANCE: Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris; Berggruen & Cie., Paris; Acquired from them by a private collector in December 1972; Bernard Danenberg Galleries, New York; Howard and Muriel Weingrow, Old Westbury, New York; Anonymous sale, New York, Christie’s, 5 May 2010, lot 205; Achim Moeller Fine Art, New York; Private collection.
LITERATURE: Paris, Galerie Louise Leiris, Picasso: Dessins en noir et en couleurs 15 décembre 196912 janvier 1971, exhibition catalogue, 1971, p.28, no.29; Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Vol.XXXII: Oeuvres de 1970, Paris, 1977, pl.40, no.94; The Picasso Project. Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue 1885-1973. The Final Years – 1970-1973, San Francisco, 2004, p.40, no.70-124.
EXHIBITED: Paris, Galerie Louise Leiris, Picasso: Dessins en noir et en couleurs, 15 décembre 1969 - 12 janvier 1971, April-June 1971, no.29; Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County Museum of Art, Picasso, 2005; Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County Museum of Art, Picasso and The School of Paris, 2006-2007.
During the summer months of 1970, Pablo Picasso created a substantial number of drawings, executed in pencil, chalk, ink, gouache or coloured crayons. The following year, nearly two hundred drawings –representing almost all of the drawings produced by artist over a period of thirteen months between December 1969 and January 1971, and including the present sheet – were exhibited at the Galerie Louis Leiris in Paris. Drawn on the 31st of May 1970, a Sunday, this large sheet was the third of seven drawings of female nudes drawn in one sketchbook on that day. Five of the drawings depicted single seated or reclining nudes, while one added a second female nude and the other included a seated male figure1
As one scholar has written, ‘Picasso is boldly devotional and adoring of women in the drawings of his last years…Part sad remembrance of things past, part idolatrous preoccupation with the body of his young wife, many of the drawings have the character of devotional images…The drawings restore a sense of well-being and vigor with the promise of an Arcadian restoration of youthfulness and vitality.’2 It has further been noted that Picasso’s late drawings ‘offer a richness of ideas and iconography for which no complete lexicon is likely to exist…The unabashedly first-person, diarylike entries, compulsively dated and frequently serialized, probably once held together more tightly, like a vast confessional epic novel. We are at a disadvantage, left to consider them now as individual sheets without the benefit of viewing the drawings in their original sequences as an organic whole.’3
Drawn just three years before the artist’s death – and while the great exhibition of his late paintings and drawings from 1969-1970, organized by Yvonne and Christian Zervos, was on display at the Palais des Papes in Avignon – this fine sheet is a testament to Picasso’s undiminished skills as a draughtsman at the age of eighty-nine.
GERHARD RICHTER
Born 1932
7.1991
Black (India) ink on paper. Signed and dated Richter VII.91 in black ink at the lower left centre. 296 x 398 mm. (11 5/8 x 15 5/8 in.)
PROVENANCE: Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London; Acquired from them in 1992 by Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport, Lincoln, Massachusetts.
LITERATURE: Dieter Schwartz, Gerhard Richter. Drawings 1964-1999: Catalogue Raisonné, Winterthur and Düsseldorf, 1999, p.299, no.91/16.
EXHIBITED: London, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, New Work on Paper: Richard Long, Gerhard Richter, Lawrence Weiner, February – March 1992.
Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in the former East Germany and studied there between 1952 and 1956. Much of his early independent commissions took the form of mural paintings for public buildings in Dresden. Richter moved to West Germany in 1961, and from 1963 onwards began inventorying his oeuvre in a self-organized catalogue raisonné, starting with a painting that he had completed the previous year and thereby choosing to ignore the work he had done in East Germany. In 1962 Richter produced his first photo paintings and two years later had his first solo exhibitions. Soon afterwards he began painting his earliest Colour Chart paintings, followed by monochrome paintings of corrugated iron and tubes, townscapes, clouds, mountains, shadows and grey compositions, as well as constructions made of glass. Throughout his career, Richter has painted purely abstract works alongside representational subjects, often based on photographs. In 1972 a large exhibition of his oeuvre was shown in the German pavilion at the 36th Venice Biennale, and by the second half of the 1970s Richter’s reputation had spread beyond Germany, with numerous gallery and museum exhibitions in New York, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris and London. The artist’s status continued to grow throughout the succeeding decades; in 1980 he produced his initial colourful abstract squeegee paintings and early in 1981 the first Mirrors, while in 1982 he began a series of Candle paintings. By the 1990s Richter was at the peak of his international success, firmly established as one of the most significant contemporary artists in Europe.
Richter’s extensive oeuvre of works on paper – watercolours, pencil or graphite drawings, brush studies in ink, oils on paper and overpainted photographs – only began to be exhibited to the public in the mid- and late 1980s. The present sheet is part of a small and distinctive group of twenty-four abstract compositions on paper, drawn in a rich black India ink, produced in a period of a month in late June and July of 19911. As Barbara Steffen has noted of this series of ink drawings by Richter, ‘These works are concerned with the observation of dripping black ink, its various layers, and the splashes that form a path across the picture plane following the principles of chance. They are about highly differentiated techniques of glazing, of allowing the ink to run, and of abstractly shaping the sheet. Attention is focused on the material – india ink – and on the fact that everything can be glazed in black to produce a plexus that consists entirely of uncontrolled forms of abstract shapes. By producing a drawing of black india ink in a manner that recalls a black watercolor, Richter dissolves the boundary between the categories of drawing and watercolor. India ink is made from extremely fine lampblack and a binding agent such as gelatin or glue. After this mixture has dried and solidified, it is mixed with water for use. Richter dispenses with the historical approach to india ink and uses it precisely as lightly as he uses watercolors in his abstract paintings. By producing works of glazed india ink that look like casual watercolors, he takes aim at the classical use of india ink.’2
Of the twenty-three other India ink and wash drawings from the same series, three examples are today in the collections of the Kunstmuseum in Wintherthur3 and the Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain in Nîmes4, one is in the Deutsche Bank Collection5, and the remainder are in private collections.
BRIGID EDWARDS
Born 1940
Red Hot Pokers (Kniphonia)
Watercolour, over an underdrawing in pencil, on vellum. Inscribed Red hot pokers, 1999. in black ink on the reverse of the panel.
534 x 405 mm. (21 x 17 3/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Beadleston Gallery, New York; Private collection.
EXHIBITED: New York, Beadleston Gallery, Brigid Edwards: Flora on Vellum III, 2000.
Born in London, Brigid Segrave Edwards studied illustration and graphic design at the Central School of Art in London and enjoyed a successful career as a television and film producer and director before turning to botanical illustration in the mid-1980s. She first exhibited her work at the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1990 – an unusual honour for a botanical artist – and has also had her work shown at the Linnean Society in London, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh and the Kew Gardens Gallery, as well as at commercial galleries in London and New York. Early in her career as a botanical artist, Edwards was commissioned to paint 115 watercolours of species of primulas from life as illustrations for the book Primula by John Richards, published in 1993; the watercolours for the project were later exhibited at Kew Gardens.
Edwards has won a number of gold medals for botanical illustration from the Royal Horticultural Society, and in 2005 her work was included in the exhibition A New Flowering: 1000 Years of Botanical Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. She also paints watercolours of insects (some of which were exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 2003) and takes black and white photographs of plant forms. In 2018 Edwards was commissioned to design a postage stamp as part of a series featuring endangered species for the United Nations, and she also designed the cover for the novel El ala izquierda (The Left Wing) by the Romanian writer Mircea Cartarescu. She lives and works in the town of St. Just in Cornwall. Watercolours by Edwards are today in the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the Shirley Sherwood Collection of contemporary botanical art.
In the catalogue of an exhibition of watercolours by Brigid Edwards at a London gallery in 1997, Ian Burton noted of her work that ‘The fine painting of the detail on the vellum is uncanny, but when these single objects are arranged and suspended in a contemplative space, they achieve their greatest power, and as a result of this creative act of attention, they have an almost religious intensity.’1 Like many botanical artists, Edwards works very slowly. As the artist has explained, ‘A large painting (and I mean volume and painted area as opposed to large but unpainted surface) can take up to twelve weeks to complete.’2
Drawn in 1999, the present sheet depicts the species of tall flowering plants, native to South Africa, familiarly known as Red Hot Poker or Torch Lily (Kniphofia caulescens). Reaching up to 1.2 metres in height, Kniphofia has flowers that open as a deep coral-red and change to a light lemon-yellow between late summer and mid-autumn.
BRIGID EDWARDS
Born 1940
Wren’s Nest
Watercolour on vellum. Faintly signed Brigid in pencil at the lower centre. 275 x 285 mm. (10 3/4 x 11 1/4 in.) [sight]
PROVENANCE: Thomas Gibson Fine Art, London, in 2021; Robert Kime, London; Thence by descent.
EXHIBITED: London, Thomas Gibson Fine Art Ltd., Brigid Edwards: New Works on Vellum, 2021, unnumbered.
Brigid Edwards almost always paints her watercolours on smooth, prepared vellum. As she has stated of her working methods, ‘I get my vellum from William Cowley Parchment and Vellum Works who also mount and stretch the skins on board to my specific dimensions. A white gesso ground is applied which smoothes the surface but inevitably because it is a natural skin there remains an irregularity of texture and pigment. In the past I have made my own boards but it is very time-consuming and expensive if things go wrong…So far there have been no problems with splitting or cracking. I think I decided to “anchor” them because I found the wavy edges rather distracting…I use Winsor & Newton or Rowney & Schminke watercolours, depending on pigment. I choose vellum rather than paper because I have always found paper too absorbent and difficult to rectify. I use ophthalmic surgical blades to remove paint from vellum where necessary.’1
The noted scholar and collector of botanical art Shirley Sherwood has recently written that ‘Brigid Edwards has already been recognized as a painter of the most potent images which have an arresting yet subtle impact.’2 As Sherwood has further noted of Edwards, ‘In 1994 she had a remarkable show at Kew Gardens Gallery where the critics compared her work with that of Rory McEwen, one of the standardbearers of today’s renaissance in botanical painting. Like McEwen she often works on vellum, painting with a glowing, quiet brilliance, sometimes framing her pictures like medieval treasures…Brigid Edwards is undoubtedly one of today’s finest botanical artists and I am particularly attracted to her work on vellum.’3
The present sheet was drawn in 2020.
NOTES TO THE CATALOGUE
No.1
The Dunois Master
1. H. Oskar Sommer, The Vulgate Version of The Arthurian Romances. Vol.IV: Le Livre de Lancelot del Lac, Part II, Washington, 1911, p.322, lines 17-25.
2. Inv. Fr.357; François Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1993-1994, pp.37-38, no.7. The Roman de Guiron le Courtois can be viewed in its entirety online at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8514422s/f1.item [accessed 3 December 2024].
3. Inv. 1995.4; Jeffrey F. Hamburger et al, ed., Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge and Boston, 2016-2017, p.222, no.186.
4. Inv. 519-521.
5. Inv. Takamiya MS 99; Toshiyuki Takamiya, ‘A Handlist of Western Medieval Manuscripts in the Takamiya Collection’, in James H. Marrow, Richard A. Linenthal and William Noel, ed., The Medieval Book. Glosses from Friends & Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, Houten, 2010, p.438, MS 99 (not illustrated). The three miniatures were purchased by the Beinecke Library from the Japanese collector Toshiyuki Takamiya in 2017.
6. London, Maggs Bros. Ltd., European Miniatures, Illumination and Drawings: Bulletin No.4, September 1966, pp.108-115, nos.55-58 (as ‘French (? Parisian) Artist, c.1415-1420’, priced at £225, £215 or £210 each).
7. For example, three cuttings depicting Lancelot Approaches Two Couples Dining, Lancelot with the Slain Giants, and Lionel Arriving at a Monastery were sold at auction in 2008 (Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 4 June 2008, lots 26-28, sold for £25,000, £25,000, and £27,500, respectively), while more recently a miniature of The Lady of Malohaut and her Cousin Visit Lancelot in Prison was sold at auction in 2020 (Sale (‘Professor, Dealer, Collector: Sandra Hindman Curates a Selection of Manuscript Paintings’), London, Christie’s, 14 December 2020, lot 9, sold for £25,000).
No.2
Circle of Pisanello
1. The French art historian Charles Molinier (1843-1911) of Toulouse was a professor of art history at the University of Toulouse. He began collecting drawings in 1875, acquiring them in Paris and the south of France, as well as on several trips to Italy. On his death his collection was inherited by his children and the drawings gradually dispersed to collectors and dealers, such as Lucien Guiraud.
2. The present sheet is one of two drawings given to Pisanello that were at one time in the collection of the Parisian art dealer Lucien Guiraud (d.1954), and which were lent by him to an exhibition of Pisanello’s work at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 1932. The other drawing owned by Guiraud, a pen and ink study of three views of a male nude, was also exhibited as a work by Pisanello at the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1932 but is not attributable to the artist himself; Fossi Todorow, op.cit., p.176, no.358, illustrated pl.CXXIX, fig.358 (as not by Pisanello).
3. Luke Syson and Dillian Gordon, Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court, exhibition catalogue, London, 2001-2002, pp.26-29.
4. Klazina Botke, ‘Defining the Human Figure. The Role of Drawing in Early Modern Italy’, in Maud Guichané and Rosie Razzall, ed., Italian Renaissance Drawings from Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, exhibition catalogue, Paris and New York, 2024-2026, p.27.
5. Recent scholars such as Bernard Degenhart and, to some extent, Dominique Cordellier, have taken a more expansive view of the corpus of autograph drawings, while earlier art historians, notably Maria Fossi Todorow, reattributed many drawings, including the present sheet, to members of Pisanello’s studio.
6. Luke Syson, ‘Paris and Verona. Pisanello’ [exhibition review], The Burlington Magazine, November 1996, p.769. Pisanello’s only firmly documented pupil, however, is the obscure Bono da Ferrara, who was active between 1441 and 1461.
7. George F. Hill, Drawings by Pisanello, Paris and Brussels, 1929 [1965 reprint], p.10.
8. A greyhound in profile appears, for example, in the damaged fresco of The Parting of Saint George and the Princess of Silena of c.1434-1438 in the church of Sant’Anastasia in Verona; Syson and Gordon, op.cit., pp.20-21, fig.1.21, C. Jean Campbell, Pisanello and the Grounds of Invention, Turnhout, 2024, illustrated pp.108-109, fig.48, detail illustrated p.91, fig.37. A detail of the dog is also illustrated in Bernard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Pisanello und Bono da Ferrara, Munich, 1995, p.147, fig.164, while a black and white photograph taken in 1884, before the removal of the fresco from the wall, is illustrated in Tiziana Franco, ‘Un orrizonte prossimo: Pisanello e Verona’, in Stefano L’Occaso, ed., Pisanello: il tumulto del mondo, exhibition catalogue, Mantua, 2022-2023, p.88.
9. Inv. NG 1436; Degenhart and Schmitt, op.cit., 1995, p.215, fig.228; Syson and Gordon, op.cit., p.157, fig.4.35, a detail of the hound illustrated p.185, fig.4.81; Bernard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der Italiensichen Zeichnungen 1300-1450. Teil III. Verona: Pisanello und Seine Werkstatt, Munich, 2004, Vol.I, p.148, fig.136. The painting has been aptly described as ‘Not an altarpiece, not merely a narrative, but a pretext for showing Pisanello’s skill in depicting different animals and for the patron to marvel at their poetic variety and the mystery of the inhabitants of the wooded landscape.’; Syson and Gordon, op.cit., p.160.
10. Inv. 2428; Dominique Cordellier et al, Pisanello: Le peintre aux sept vertus, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1996, pp.364-354, no.245, illustrated p.366; Inv. 2430; Hill, op.cit., p.42, no.48, pl.XLII; Cordellier et al, op.cit., p.272, no.175, illustrated p.274; and Inv. 2433; Hill, op.cit., p.41, no.45, pl.XXXIX; Cordellier et al, op.cit., pp.300-301, no.193, illustrated p.294.
11. For example, Inv. 2429; Hill, op.cit., pp.42-43, no.49, pl.XLIII; Cordellier et al, op.cit., p.273, no.176, illustrated p.275; Syson and Gordon, op.cit., p.170, fig.4.61; Inv. 2434; Hill, op.cit., p.42, no.46, pl.XL; Cordellier et al, op.cit., pp.299-300, no.191, illustrated p.294; and Inv. 2435; Hill, op.cit., p.42, no.47, pl.XLI; Cordellier et al, op.cit., p.300, no.192, illustrated p.295.
12. Inv. 2568; Degenhart and Schmitt, op.cit., 1995, p.30, fig.20; Cordellier et al, op.cit., pp.279-280, no.181, illustrated p.282 (as by an anonymous Lombard artist of the late 15th Century); Degenhart and Schmitt, op.cit., 2004, Vol.I, p.48, fig.23. A copy of part of the drawing, by a different hand which is sometimes thought be that of Pisanello himself, was likewise part of the Vallardi album; Inv. 2547; Cordellier et al, op.cit., pp.280281, no.182, illustrated p.283 (as Pisanello).
No.3
Spanish School, c.1550
1. London, Maggs Bros. Ltd., op.cit., pp.50-53, nos.34-37.
2. Juan de Yciar, Arte Subtilissima, Zaragoza, 1550; Facsimile ed. [trans. Evelyn Shuckburgh], London, 1958, unpaginated; Jane Morlet Hardie, ‘Juan de Yciar and Decorative Traditions in Spanish Cantorales of the Long Sixteenth Century: Some Manuscripts from the Sydney University Collection’, Acta Musicologica, 2013, p.164, pl.2(d).
No.4
Taddeo Zuccaro
1. The first recorded owner of the present sheet was the Reverend John Sanford (1775-1855), who lived in Florence for much of the 1830s, and was among the foremost English collectors of Italian paintings in the first half of the 19th century.
2. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Florence, 1568; translated Gaston du C. de Vere, London, 1912 [1996 ed.], Vol. II, pp.604-605.
3. As noted by Vasari: ‘on the vaulting, about certain ornaments in stucco, are four half-length figures representing the Four Evangelists, which are very beautiful.’; Vasari, ibid., p.605.
4. Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), pls.61a and 61b; Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., Vol.I, p.49, figs.10-13.
5. Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), p.65.
6. Inv. KE 4504; Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), p.159, no.88, pl.58; Kazlěpka and Zlatohlávek, op.cit., pp.162-165, no.87. The drawing bears the collector’s mark of the 17th century English court musician, composer and collector Nicholas Lanier.
7. Inv. 11897; Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), p.198, no.202, pl.59; Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Dessins de…), p.26, no.13, pl.IV; Julian Brooks, Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro: Artist-Brothers in Renaissance Rome, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, 2007-2008, pp.56-57, no.46.
8. Inv. 841 S; Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), p.144, no.44 (as a copy after Taddeo Zuccaro, not illustrated); Marco Simone Bolzoni, ‘Intorno a due poco noti disegni di Taddeo Zuccari per la cappella Mattei in Santa Maria della Consolazione’, ArtItalies, 2014, p.25, fig.11.
9. Inv. Z.A.B.1648; Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), p.218, no.263 (not illustrated); Bolzoni, ibid., 2014, p.25, fig.8; Jonas Breyer and Michael Matile, ed., Die Poesie der Linie: Italienische Meisterzeichnungen, exhibition catalogue, Zurich, 2020, pp.43-45; Marco Simone Bolzoni, ‘Rome Looking at Venice: The Zuccaro Brothers and the Colorito vs. Disegno Debate’, Master Drawings, Summer 2020, p.179, fig.16. An image of the drawing is also visible online at https://collection.kunsthaus.ch/en/collection/item/16336/ [accessed 13 November 2024].
10. London, Colnaghi, Old Master Drawings, 1984, no.4; John Gere ‘Taddeo Zuccaro: Addenda and Corrigenda’, Master Drawings, Autumn 1995, pp.314-315, no.264-J; Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., Vol.I, p.50, fig.15.
11. Brooks, op.cit., p.57.
12. Inv. 1992.038.029; Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), p.173, no.124* (not illustrated); E. James Mundy, Renaissance into Baroque: Italian Master Drawings by the Zuccari 1550-1600, exhibition catalogue, Milwaukee and New York, 1989-1990, pp.108-109, no.24 (where dated c.1553-1556); University of Notre Dame, Selected Works: Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, 2015, p.117.
13. Inv. 67.188; Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), p.179, no.142, pl.84; Mundy, ibid., pp.92-93, no.16; Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., Vol.I, p.67, fig.10 (illustrated in reverse); Brooks, op.cit., p.59, no.48.
14. Inv. Z.1943/0024; Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), p.218, no.261, pl.66; Bolzoni, op.cit., p.22, fig.1; Breyer and Matile, ed., op.cit., pp.40-42.
15. Inv. 21058; Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), pp.157-158, no.85, pl.62; David Klemm, Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett: Italienische Zeichnungen 1450-1800, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2009, Vol.I, pp.378-379, no.576, Vol.II, fig.576.
16. Inv. 17,1; 531.898-1979-AA; Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari et al, Disegni Italiani della Biblioteca Nazionale di Rio di Janeiro: La Collezione Costa e Silva, Pesaro, 1995, pp.271-273, no.226r.
17. Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), pl.57; Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., Vol.I, p.48, fig.8.
18. Inv 27959: Gere, op.cit., 1969 (Taddeo Zuccaro: His Development…), p.134, no.9, pl.56; Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., Vol.I, p.48, fig.9.
No.5
Federico Zuccaro
1. Mundy, op.cit., p.258, under no.86, fig.43; Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., Vol.II, p.133, fig.22 (illustrated in colour); Wolfgang Wolters, ‘Federico Zuccari malt im Dogenpalast’, in Matthias Winner and Detlef Heikamp, ed., Der Maler Federico Zuccari: Ein römischer Virtuoso von europäischem Ruhm. Akten des internationalen Kongresses der Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rom und Florenz, 23.-26. Februar 1993, Munich, 1999, p.217, fig.1. The
painting is signed and dated FEDERICUS ZUCCARUS / F. AN. SAL. MDLXXXII / PERFECIT AN. MDCIII. Zuccaro was commissioned by the Venetian Senate to replace a painting of the same subject by Titian, which had been destroyed by a fire in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in 1577.
2. Ward, op.cit., p.252.
3. Anonymous sale (‘Property of a Distinguished Private Collection’), New York, Sotheby’s, 27 January 2010, lot 17 (sold for $194,500). The dimensions of the sheet are 270 x 420 mm.
4. Inv. 1973.29; Gere, op.cit., p.132, no.21, pl.14; Mundy, op.cit., pp.256-259, no.86; Griswold and Wolk-Simon, op.cit., pp.94-96, no.85, p.229, fig.85; Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., Vol.II, p.134, fig.23; Eitel-Porter and Marciari, op.cit., pp.380-382, no.123. The dimensions of the drawing are 262 x 213 mm.
5. It is not known why the artist reversed the orientation of the scene, although James Mundy has suggested that it may have been because Zuccaro’s painting was to hang next to a large work by Palma Giovane in which the composition is directed to the left, and therefore to balance it the artist decided to orient his picture to the right.
6. Gere, op.cit., p.132, under no.21, fig.1.
7. Inv. W.4496; Cordellier et al, op.cit., p.96, no.60, illustrated in colour p.97; Bernadette Py, ‘Everard Jabach: Supplement of Identifiable Drawings from the 1695 Estate Inventory’, Master Drawings, Spring 2007, pp.24-26, no.[957], fig.17; Pierre Rosenberg, Les dessins de la collection Mariette: Écoles italienne et espagnole, Paris, 2019, Vol.III, pp.1260-1261, no.I2139). The dimensions of the drawing are 344 x 274 mm.
8. Inv. 83.GG.196; Ward, op.cit., fig.106; Goldner, op.cit., 1988, pp.132-133, no.55; Mundy, op.cit., pp.260-262, no.87, illustrated in colour p.47; Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., Vol.II, p.134, fig.24. The Getty drawing, like the present sheet, omits the baldacchino seen in the painting.
9. Inv. GB 5628; Fischer Pace, op.cit., Copenhagen, 2014, pp.53-55, no.25.
10. Drawings by Federico Zuccaro for individual figures in The Submission of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa before Pope Alexander III are at Christ Church in Oxford, the Fondation Custodia in Paris, and in a private collection.
11. Inv. 1380; James Byam Shaw, Drawings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, Oxford, 1976, Vol.I, p.158, no.553, Vol.II, pl.301 (as Studio of Federico Zuccaro).
No.6
Attributed to Annibale Carracci
1. Daniele Benati et al, The Drawings of Annibale Carracci, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, p.71, under no.10.
2. Inv. PR 319; Donald Posner, Annibale Carracci: A Study in the Reform of Italian Painting Around 1590, London, 1971, Vol.II, pp.16-17, no.32, pl.32; Patrick J. Cooney and Gianfranco Malafarina, L’opera completa di Annibale Carracci, Milan, 1976, p.94, no.30, illustrated in colour pl.XIII; Nicola Spinosa, Capodimonte, Naples, 1999, detail illustrated in colour p.65; Simone Verde, ed., I Farnesi. Archittetura, Arte, Potere, exhibition catalogue, Parma, 2022, p.338, fig.129; Sylvain Bellenger and Andrea Merlotti, ed., Capodimonte da Reggio a Museo; Cinque secoli di capolavori da Masaccio a Andy Warhol, exhibition catalogue, Reggia di Venaria, 2024, pp.206-207, no.26.
3. Diane De Grazia, ‘The Inventive Genius of Annibale Carracci’, in Benati et al, op.cit., p.18.
4. Posner, op,cit., Vol.I, p.31.
5. Alessandro Brogi, Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619), Ozzano Emilia, 2001, Vol.I, pp.267-268, no.R41, Vol.II, fig.283 (as Annibale Carracci); Daniele Benati and Eugenio Riccòmini, ed., Annibale Carracci, exhibition catalogue, Bologna and Rome, 2006-2007, pp.172-173, no.III.20 (as Annibale Carracci). Among scholars, the attribution of the Tatton Park picture has vacillated between Ludovico and Annibale Carracci.
6. Inv. WA1853.1.36; K. T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum; Volume II: Italian Schools, Oxford, 1956 [1972 ed.], p.89, no.186 (as Ludovico Carracci, not illustrated); New York, Wildenstein, Italian Drawings from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford exhibition catalogue, 1970, unpaginated, no.40 (as Ludovico Carracci); Carel van Tuyll, ‘Note sul alcuni quadri carracceschi provenienti dalla collezione Farnese’, in André Chastel et al, Les Carrache et les décors profanes. Actes du colloque de Rome (2-4 octobre 1986), Rome, 1988, p.46, fig.3. An image of the drawing is visible online at https://www.ashmolean.org/collections-online#/item/ash-object-71999 [accessed 24 November 2024].
7. An identical mount and inscription is found on another drawing by Annibale Carracci from Richardson’s collection; a red chalk study of a halflength male nude seen from behind, in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Inv. DYCE.326; Peter Ward-Jackson, Victoria and Albert Museum Catalogues: Italian Drawings II, 17th-18th century, London, 1980, pp.30-31, no.650). A colour image of the drawing and its mount is visible online at https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1069363/drawing-carracci-annibale/ [accessed 6 December 2024].
8. An inveterate collector of drawings, Saint-Morys assembled a collection of nearly 16,000 sheets – the majority of which were Italian drawings, together with Dutch, Flemish and French works – over a period of some twenty years, which he had to abandon when he fled France for England in 1790. Most of the drawings of this first collection were confiscated during the Revolution and are today in the Louvre.
9. The Comte de Carrière, who assumed his father’s title of Comte de Saint-Morys upon his return to France in 1803, was himself a collector mainly of antiquities, rather than drawings.
10. Apart from the present sheet, the lot included two sheets of studies by Jacques de Gheyn III that are now in the Harvard University Art Museums; William W. Robinson, Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 2016, pp.148-150, no.41 and fig.1; Brooks and Lee, op.cit., p.404, fig.19; Transcription of Auctioneer Henry Phillips’s Annotated Catalogues , op.cit., p.6, figs.10a-b.
11. Brooks and Lee, op.cit., pp.404-405.
No.7
Agostino Carracci
1. The present sheet once belonged to the film and stage costume designer Anthony Powell (1935-2021), who won three Academy Awards for costume design, in 1973, 1979 and 1981.
2. Rudolf Wittkower, The Drawings of the Carracci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1952, p.13.
3. Clare Robertson and Catherine Whistler, Drawings by the Carracci from British Collections, exhibition catalogue, Oxford and London, 19961997, p.64, under no.24.
4. ‘alla villa si disegnavo colli, campagne, laghi, fiumi e quanto di bello e di notabile s’appresentava alla lor vista’; ‘Orazione di Lucio Faberio accademico gelato in morte d’Agostin Carraccio’, in Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina pittrice: Vite de’ pittori Bolognesi, Bologna, 1678, edition supplemented and annotated by Giampietro Zanotti, Bologna, 1841, Vol.I, p.308.
5. Clovis Whitfield, ‘The Landscapes of Agostino Carracci: Reflections on his Role in the Carracci School’, in André Chastel et al, Les Carrache et les décors profanes. Actes du colloque de Rome (2-4 octobre 1986), Rome, 1988, p.78.
6. Inv. Mas 2991; Carel van Tuyll and Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Le dessin à Bologne. Carrache, Guerchin, Dominiquin…Chefs-d’oeuvre des BeauxArts de Paris, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2020, pp.58-60, no.11.
7. Inv. 923; Michael Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Italian Drawings: Bolognese and Emilian Schools, London, 1994, p.68, no.471; Robertson and Whistler, op.cit., p.64, no.24.
8. Inv. 460; Catherine Loisel, Musée du Louvre: Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins italiens VII: Ludovico, Agostino, Annibale Carracci, Paris, 2004, p.54, fig.69; Stefania Girometti, ed., Fantasie & Leidenschaft: Zeichnen von Carracci bis Bernini, exhibition catalogue, Frankfurt, 2024-2025, pp.41-43, no.2 (where dated c.1590),
9. Inv. RCIN 901825; Wittkower, op.cit., p.118, no.133, pl.34; Robertson and Whistler, op.cit., p.63, no.23.
No.8
Francesco Brizio
1. Inv. 21098; David Klemm, Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett: Italienische Zeichnungen 1450-1800, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2009, Vol.I, p.107, no.79, Vol.II, fig.79.
2. Inv. NM 1275/1863; Ellen Hermann-Atorino, Francesco Brizio, Bologna (ca.1574-1623), Worms, 1989, p.187, no.Z15, fig.62; Alessandro Brogi, ‘Francesco Brizio: Il “paesare di penna” e altre cose’, Studi di Storia dell’Arte, 1993, p.142, fig.42; Per Bjurström, Drawings from the Age of the Carracci: Seventeenth Century Bolognese Drawings from the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, exhibition catalogue, Oxford, 2002, pp.26-27, no.5; Per Bjurström, Catherine Loisel and Elizabeth Pilliod, Drawings in Swedish Public Collections 8. Italian Drawings: Florence, Siena, Modena, Bologna, Stockholm, 2002, unpaginated, no.1305.
3. Inv. 2205; Hermann-Atorino, ibid., p.195, no.Z28, fig.64; Veronika Birke and Janine Kertész, Die Italienischen Zeichnungen der Albertina: Generalverzeichnis, Voll.II, Vienna, 1994, p.1158, Inv.2205.
4. Quoted in Stephen Lloyd, Richard & Maria Cosway: Regency Artists of Taste and Fashion, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, 1995, p.80.
5. Another Old Master drawing given by Lady Sidmouth to Eliza Hobhouse, also in 1842, is a large Portrait of Nicolas Trigault SJ in Chinese Costume by Peter Paul Rubens, which is today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Inv. 1999.222; Stephanie Schrader, ‘Implicit Understanding: Rubens and the Representation of the Jesuit Missions in Asia’, in Stephanie Schrader, ed., Looking East: Rubens’s Encounter with Asia, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, 2013, p.41, fig.23; Anne-Marie Logan and Kristin Lohse Belkin, The Drawings of Peter Paul Rubens: A Critical Catalogue. Volume Two: 1609-1620, Turnhout, 2022, Vol.I, pp.255-259, no.363, Vol.II, p.270, fig.480).
No.9
Daniel Dumonstier
1. Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, Historiettes, c.1659, pub. Paris, 1834-1835, pp.57-58.
2. ‘Puis il recueillit, l’un des premiers, à une époque où ils étaient encore peu appréciés, d’excellents portraits dessinés de l’école des Clouet et Dumonstier. Plusieurs lui furent achetés plus tard par le Louvre, d’autres sont actuellement chez Bonnat.’; Frits Lugt, Les marques de collections de dessins & d’estampes, Amsterdam, 1921, p.356, under no.1944.
3. Destailleur collections, Vol.I, fol. 34; Lecoeur, op.cit., p.96, under no.27 (not illustrated). The drawing at Waddesdon is one of fifty copies of original portrait drawings by Daniel Dumonstier from the Béthune collection, and is part of a much larger collection of portrait drawings, including thirty autograph sheets by Dumonstier, purchased by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild from the posthumous sale of the collection of the architect Hippoltye Destailleur in 1893. The drawings were later bound into three volumes for the Baron.
4. Lecoeur, op.cit., pp.96-97, nos.27a. Lecoeur also lists an engraving by Claude Mellan (p.97, no.27b) as a portrait of du Perron derived from the present sheet, but the relationship between the two is tentative at best. Confusingly, he later illustrates the same print by Mellan (pp.192-193, no.269) as after a lost portrait drawing by Dumonstier of the 17th century theologian and poet Nicolas Coëffeteau, who was a pupil of du Perron.
No.10
Sigismondo Coccapani
1. Miles Chappell, ‘Theories of Relativity for Some Florentine Drawings’, Artibus et Historiae, No.61, 2010, p.53.
2. Inv. 9268F; Chappell, op.cit., 2004, p.21, fig.2; Acanfora, op.cit., 2017, p.193, no.D75, illustrated p.234, fig.155. The dimensions of the drawing are 212 x 181 mm.
3. Chappell, op.cit., 2004, pp.21 and 23.
4. Inv. Fc 124996; Elisa Acanfora, ‘Sigismondo Coccapani disegnatore e trattatista’, Paragone, November 1989, pl.49a; Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, The Golden Age of Florentine Drawing: Two Centuries of Disegno from Leonardo to Volterrano, exhibition catalogue, Fort Worth and elsewhere, 1994, pp.132-133, no.60; Acanfora, op.cit., 2017, p.209, no.D131, illustrated p.141 and p.233, fig.144. The drawing, which is a study for a small easel picture on copper by Coccapani now in a private collection in Florence, also bears the Coccapani drystamp.
5. Inv. 2020.12; Miles L. Chappell, ‘Proposals for Coccapani’, Paradigma, June 1990, p.190, fig.108 (as Circle of Cigoli; Sigismondo Coccapani?); Chappell, op.cit., 2004, p.19; Acanfora, op.cit., 2017, p.215, no.D154, illustrated p.62, fig.103 and p.234, pl.153. Datable to the 1620s, the drawing likewise has the Coccapani drystamp.
6. Miles Chappell, ‘On the Identification of a Collector’s Mark’, Master Drawings, Spring 1983, pp.36-58. Most of the drawings with this mark are today in the Uffizi in Florence. Other drawings with the Coccapani stamp are in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Louvre, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Fondation Custodia in Paris, and the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome.
No.11
Daniele Crespi
1. Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, Part III: Late Baroque and Rococo 1675-1750, New Haven and London, 1958, [1999 ed.], p.69.
2. Clario di Fabio, ‘Daniele Crespi’ [book review], The Burlington Magazine, November 1999, pp.687-688.
3. Giorgio Nicodemi, Daniele Crespi, Milan, 1914, pl. XII; Mina Gregori, Gli affreschi della Certosa di Garegnano, Milan, 1973, pl.XXI; Ward Nielson, op.cit., 1996, p.32, under no.14, p.167, fig.40B; Andrea Spiriti, ed., Daniele Crespi: un grande pittore del Seicento lombardo, exhibition catalogue, Busto Arsizio, 2006, p.177, pl.XXIV.
4. Inv. Cod. F 266 INF n.36; Milan, Palazzo Reale, Il Seicento Lombardo: Catalogo dei dipinti e delle sculture, exhibition catalogue, 1973, p.30, no.113, p.116, fig.113; Gregori, ibid., p.33, fig.27; Ward Nielson, op.cit., 1996, pp.81-82, no.D13, p.215, fig.73; Spiriti, ibid., pp.299-300, no.58.
5. Inv. 1978.133; Jacob Bean, 17th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1979, p.117, no.147; Ward Nielson, op.cit., 1996, p.82, no.D17, p.216, fig.74A.
6. The Crespi scholar Nancy Ward Neilson has noted that Crespi derived the motif of St. John the Baptist and King David in clouds witnessing the blessing of the monastery from an engraving of the same subject designed by Giovanni Lanfranco (Nancy Ward Neilson, ‘A Source for Daniele Crespi’, Arte Lombarda, 1969, no.1, pp.71-73, fig.4). Part of a series of twenty scenes from the life of Saint Bruno engraved by Dietrich Theodore Kruger and dated to between 1620 and 1621, Lanfranco’s designs were adapted by Crespi for a number of other frescoes at the Certosa di Garegnano.
7. Inv. 94; Ugo Ruggeri, Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia: Disegni lombardi, Milan, 1982, p.148, no.134; Ward Nielson, op.cit., 1996, p.84, no.D30, p.219, fig.77.
8. Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 20 May 1993, lot 249 (as Milanese School, Early 17th Century); Ward Nielson, op.cit., 1996, p.66, no.84, p.93, pl.1 (as location unknown).
9. Inv. F.235 inf. n.1164; Giulio Bora, ‘Ruolo e significato del disegno in Daniele Crespi’, in Fra Rinascimento Manierismo e Realta: Scritti di storia dell’arte in memoria di Anna Maria Brizio, Florence, 1984, p.158, fig.1; Ward Nielson, op.cit., 1996, p.81 no.D9, p.203, fig.61C.
No.12
Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain
1. Michael Kitson, ‘The Seventeenth Century: Claude to Francisque Millet’, in Alan Wintermute, ed., Claude to Corot: The Development of Landscape Painting in France, exhibition catalogue, Colnaghi, New York, 1990, p.14.
2. Joachim von Sandrart, Teutsche Akademie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste. Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister Nuremberg 1675 [ed. Peltzer, Munich 1925], pp.209-211; Quoted in translation in Brugerolles and Guillet, ibid., p.144, under no.33.
3. Roethlisberger, op.cit., Vol.I, pp.7-9.
4. Richard Rand, Claude Lorrain – The Painter as Draftsman: Drawings from the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco and Williamstown, 2006-2007, p.27.
5. Roethlisberger, op.cit., Vol.I, p.122, under no.143.
6. Roethlisberger, op.cit., Vol.I, p.111, no.107, pp.120-122, nos.137-146, pp.250-251, no.646, Vol.II, fig.107, figs.137-146 and fig.646.
7. Inv. DE 389; Roethlisberger, op.cit., Vol.I, pp.89-90, no.44, Vol.II, fig.44 (where dated 1630-1635); Baptiste Roelly, ed., Claude Lorrain (16001682): Dessins et eaux-fortes, exhibition catalogue, Chantilly, 2024, pp.38-41, no.1.
8. Wellesley seems to have acquired a large proportion of his Claude drawings from the June 1840 sale of drawings by the artist belonging to the banker William Esdaile (1758-1837), which in turn had come from the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830).
No.13
Giovanna Garzoni
1. Sheila Barker, ‘The Universe of Giovanna Garzoni. Art, Mobility, and the Global Turn in the Geographical Imaginary’, in Sheila Barker, ed., “The Immensity of the Universe” in the Art of Giovanna Garzoni, exhibition catalogue, Florence, 2020, p.16.
2. Inv. 9093; Gerardo Casale, Giovanna Garzoni “Insigne miniatrice” 1600-1670, Milan and Rome, 1991, p.60, no.A8; Gerardo Casale, ed., Gli Incanti dell’Iride: Giovanna Garzoni pittrice nel Seicento, exhibition catalogue, San Severino Marche, 1996, pp.48-49, no.11; Sheila Barker, ed., ibid., pp.136-137, no.9.
3. Barker, ed., op.cit., p.136, under no.9.
4. Casale, op.cit., 1991, pp.215-217; New York, Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd. at Carlton Hobbs LLC, An Exhibition of Master Drawings and Paintings, 2010, part of no.9; Anonymous sale (‘Property of a Private Collector’), New York, Christie’s, 24 January 2017, part of lot 49; Barker, ed., op.cit., p.59, fig.6, detail illustrated p.61. The Mary Magdalene, which is one of a pair of ovals by Garzoni (the other being a copy after Raphael’s Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness), is signed GA G at the lower left.
5. Casale, op.cit., 1996, pp.64-65, no.11.
6. Inv. 41; Cecil Gould, The Paintings of Correggio, London, 1976, pp.236-237, pl.161A; David Ekserdjian, Correggio, New Haven and London, 1997, p.151, fig.166; Lucia Fornari Schianchi, ed., Correggio, exhibition catalogue, Parma, 2008-2009, illustrated p.222.
No.14
Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
1. Suzanne Folds McCullagh, ed., Dreams & Echoes: Drawings and Sculpture in the David and Celia Hilliard Collection, exhibition catalogue, Chicago, 2013-2014, p.35, under no.6.
No.15
Philips Koninck
1. A native of Haarlem, A. M. (‘Ton’) van den Broek (1932-1995) began assembling an impressive collection of prints and books relating to the city of Haarlem in the 1960s. In later years he supplemented the collection with drawings and watercolours, including many landscape views of Haarlem and its environs.
2. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, Vol.6, New York, 1982, p.2945.
3. Inv. 2006.48; Sumowski, ibid., pp.3044-3055, no.1363; Sale, London, Christie’s, 1 July 1997, lot 211 (sold for £166,500); Denison et al, op.cit., pp.15-17, no.7; Eitel-Porter et al, op.cit., pp.100-101, no.46; Turner, op.cit., 2006, Vol.I, pp.92-93, no.119, Vol.II, pl.14; Jane Shoaf Turner, ‘Looking at the World in the Seventeenth Century’, in Jennifer Tonkovich, ed., Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection, exhibition catalogue, New York and Williamstown, 2017-2018, p.50, fig.5. The dimensions of the drawing, which is signed and dated p.- ko 1671 on the verso, are 117 x 240 mm.
4. Among other artists in Rembrandt’s circle, only Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Anthonie van Borssom and Pieter de With all drew landscapes worked up with colour. Rembrandt himself never seems to have applied colour in his landscape drawings.
5. Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 2010, Vol.I, p.262, under no.104. He adds that ‘coloured drawings became increasingly popular over the course of the seventeenth century and one would therefore expect to find these landscapes by Koninck in the second half of the century rather than the first.’
6. Eitel-Porter et al, op.cit., p.100, under no.46.
7. Turner in Tonkovich, ed., op.cit., p.50.
8. Inv. 2870; Sumowski, op.cit., pp.3364-3365, no.1519ax
9. Inv. 1112 (375); Sumowski, op.cit., pp.3350-3351, no.1513x; David Mandrella, Arcadie du Nord: Dessins hollandais du musée Condé à Chantilly, exhibition catalogue, Chantilly, 2001-2002, pp.50-51, no.21.
10. Inv. NI 459; Sumowski, op.cit., pp.3342-3343, no.1510x
11. Inv. 1895-9-15-1192; Sumowski, op.cit., pp.3342-3343, no.1509x
12. Inv. P*23; Horst Gerson, Philips Koninck, Berlin, 1936, p.141, no.Z.33, pl.31; Sumowski, op.cit., pp.3280-3281, no.1479x; Michiel C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum. Vol.II: Artists Born Between 1575 and 1630, Haarlem/Ghent/Doornspijk, 1997, p.212, no.224.
13. Inv. 261; Gerson, ibid., p.144, no.Z.63, pl.27; Sumowski, op.cit., pp.3286-3287, no.1482x; Schatborn, op.cit., Vol.I, pp.260-263, no.104, Vol. II, p.118, pl.104.
14. A River Landscape that was sold at auction in Paris in 1994 is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (Inv. 95.GA.28; Sumowski, op.cit., pp.3354-3355, no.1515x; Anonymous sale (‘Collection de Dessins Anciens réalisée par un amateur belge dans les années 30’), Paris, Hôtel Drouot [Ader], 28 October 1994, lot 48 (sold for 1,500,000 francs); Nicholas Turner, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. European Drawings 4: Catalogue of the Collections, Los Angeles, 2001, pp.132-133, no.46 and illustrated in colour on the cover), while a panoramic landscape with the mouth of a river was sold in 2004 and is now in a private collection (Sumowski, op.cit., pp.3336-3337, no.1506x; Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 21 January 2004, lot 63 (sold for $51,000)).
15. Turner, op.cit., p.132, under no.46.
No.16
Sigismondo Caula
1. Turner, op.cit., p.134, under no.58.
2. Inv. 1920,1220.1. An image of the drawing is visible online at https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1920-1220-1 [accessed 27 November 2024].
3. Inv. 1981.T.35; James Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 1983, Vol.1, p.402, no.405, pls.456-457.
No.17
Isaac de Moucheron
1. Leo van Puyvelde, The Dutch Drawings in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, London and New York, 1944, p.55, under no.628.
2. Wedde, op.cit., Vol.I, p.29.
3. Wedde, op.cit., Vol.I, pp.54-55.
4. Wedde, op.cit., Vol.I, p.63.
5. In her 1996 catalogue of Moucheron’s works, Nina Wedde gives a figure of 222 pen and wash drawings and 183 watercolours by the artist.
6. Johan van Gool, Die nieuwe schouberg der nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen…, The Hague, 1750-1751, pp.365-366; Quoted in translation in William W. Robinson, Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 2016, p.207, under no.60a-c.
7. Klaver sale (‘The Jacobus A. Klaver Collection of Dutch Old Master Drawings’) Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 10 May 1994, lot 72 (sold for 40,250 GLDR); Wedde, op.cit., Vol.I, p.352, no.W40, Vol.II, p.139, pl.120.
No.18
Giambattista Tiepolo
1. Egli è fecondissimo d’ingegno; perciò intagliatori e copiatori cercano d’intagliarne le opere, di averne le invenzioni e le bizzarrie di pensieri; e già i di lui disegni sono in tanta estimazione, che ne spedi de’ libri a’ più lontani paesi.’; Vincenzo da Canal, Vita di Gregorio Lazzarini, Venice, 1809; quoted in translation in Aikema, op.cit., 1996-1997, p.13.
2. Adriano Mariuz, ‘Giambattista Tiepolo’, in Jane Martineau and Andrew Robison, ed., The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century, exhibition catalogue, London and Washington, D.C., 1994-1995, pp.180-182.
3. Inv. 1975.74; Terisio Pignatti, I disegni veneziani del Settecento, 1966, p.177, no.57, pl.57; George Knox, Tiepolo: A Bicentenary Exhibition 17701970, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge (MA), 1970, unpaginated, no.5 (where dated c.1726); Bernard Aikema, Tiepolo and His Circle: Drawings in American Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge and New York, 1996-1997, pp.58-59, no.17. The dimensions of the drawing are 432 x 301 mm.
4. Massimo Gemin and Filippo Pedrocco, Giambattista Tiepolo: I dipinti. Opera completa, Venice, 1993, p.242, no.61 (where dated between 1722 and 1725).
5. Gemin and Pedrocco, ibid., pp.258-262, nos.85-94, one canvas also illustrated in colour p.55.
6. Aikema, op.cit., p.58, under no.7.
7. Inv. 37.165.14; Jacob Bean and Felice Stampfle, Drawings from New York Collections III: The Eighteenth Century in Italy, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1971, pp.41-42, no.61, pl.61; Jacob Bean and William Griswold, 18th Century Italian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, pp.194-195, no.187; Aikema, op.cit., pp.64-65, no.20 (as The Martyrdom of SS. Gervase and Protase (?)). The measurements of the drawing are 498 x 367 mm.
8. Inv. 37.165.15; Bean and Stampfle, ibid., p.42, no.62, pl.62; Bean and Griswold, ibid., pp.194-195, no.188; Aikema, op.cit., pp.66-67, no.21 (as The Martyrdom of SS. Domnius, Eusebia and Domninus (?)); Martineau and Robison, ed., op.cit., p.495, no.98, illustrated p.181, no.98. The dimensions of the drawing are 498 x 363 mm.
9. Inv. 1991.217.9; Martineau and Robison, ed., op.cit., p.495, no,96, illustrated p.180, no.96; Aikema, op.cit., pp.48-49, no.12; Andrew Robison, La Poesia della Luce: Disegni Veneziani dalla National Gallery of Art di Washington / The Poetry of Light: Venetian Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, exhibition catalogue, Venice, 2014-2015, pp.190-192, no.66. The dimensions of the drawing, which was later engraved by Pietro Monaco in 1763, are 425 x 278 mm.
10. Robison, ibid., 2014-2015, p.190, under no.66.
11. Sale (‘Collection de S.E. le Prince Orloff’), Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 29-30 April 1920, lot 162 (sold for 15,200 francs); George Knox, ‘The Orloff Album of Tiepolo Drawings’, The Burlington Magazine, June 1961, p.270, illustrated p.271, fig.96. The dimensions of the drawing, which was later in a private collection in Milan, are given as 520 x 390 mm.
12. Knox, ibid., p.270.
No.19
Francesco Guardi
1. Michael Levey, ‘Introduction to 18th-Century Venetian Art’, in Jane Martineau and Andrew Robison, ed., The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century, exhibition catalogue, London and Washington, D.C., 1994-1995, p.22.
2. Ibid., p.28.
3. James Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Francesco Guardi, London, 1951, pp.29-30.
4. Inv. 1197; Antonio Morassi, Guardi: Tutti i disegni di Antonio, Francesco e Giacomo Guardi, Venice, 1975, p.143, no.365, fig.371; Terisio Pignatti, Disegni antichi del Museo Correr di Venezia, Vol.III, Venice, 1983, pp.175-176, no.661 and illustrated in colour on p.8 and on the cover.
5. Inv. 730 and 911, respectively; Morassi, ibid., p.172, no.539, fig.532 and p.148, no.396, fig.396; Pignatti, ibid., pp.165-166, no.651 and p.162, no.647.
6. Inv. 1983.35; Morassi, op.cit., p.144, no.370, fig.372. An image of the drawing, which is on the verso of a study of a woman taming a lion, is also visible online at https://www.themorgan.org/drawings/item/108788 [accessed 11 November 2024].
7. Inv. WA1855.120; K. T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum. Vol.II: Italian Schools, Oxford, 1956 [1972 ed.], p.511, no.1017 (not illustrated); Morassi, op.cit., p.175, no.558, fig.350. An image of the drawing is also visible online at https://www. ashmolean.org/collections-online#/item/ash-object-72650 [accessed 11 November 2024].
No.20
Jean-Baptiste Greuze
1. Letter of 15 August 1767 from Diderot to Etienne Falconet; Quoted in translation in Anita Brookner, Greuze: The rise and fall of an eighteenthcentury phenomenon, London, 1972, p.66.
2. ‘Plusieurs dessins de M. Greuze…lui font autant d’honneur par l’exécution, que par le choix et le génie de l’invention.’; Philippe Bridard de la Garde, Observations d’une société d’amateurs sur les tableaux exposés au Sallon cette année 1761, Paris, 1761, p.53.
3. Quoted in translation in Edgar Munhall, Greuze the Draftsman, exhibition catalogue, New York and Los Angeles, 2002, p.14.
4. As the 18th century collector and connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette noted of Greuze, ‘Il a fait aussi nombre de desseins, qui, dans le commencement, lui ont été payés prodigieusement par quelque curieux.’; Pierre-Jean Mariette, Abecedario de P. J. Mariette et autres notes inédits de cet amateur sur les arts et les artistes, ed. Philippe de Chennevières and Anatole de Montaiglon, Paris, 1851-1860, Vol.II, p.331.
5. Martin and Masson in Mauclair, op.cit., p.6, no.50 (‘Dèlire de Silène. Composition de concours. 1859, vente Lebeil, 11 francs.’).
6. Inv. TA 10962; Munhall, op.cit., pp.168-169, no.56.
7. Inv. 1846,0509.152; Perrin Stein, French Drawings from the British Museum: Clouet to Seurat, exhibition catalogue, New York and London, 20052006, pp.140-141, no.55; Antoine Chatelain, Greuze, l’enfance et la famille, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Galerie Éric Coatalem, 2024, p.73, fig.24.
8. Inv. 12768; Brookner, op.cit., pl.48; James Thompson, Jean-Baptiste Greuze [The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin], New York, Winter 19891990, p.40, fig.35; Munhall, op.cit., pp.172-173-, no.58.
9. The Almanach général des marchands, négocians et commerçans de le France et de l’Europe of 1772 notes that Donjeux was also a painter, and that his premises were located on the rue des Fossés-Montmartre in Paris. Donjeux is also known to have worked in collaboration with the wealthy financier and collector Laurent Grimod de La Reynière – who owned a number of significant works by Greuze - in organizing an auction of paintings in February 1773.
10. At Walferdin’s death in 1880 many of his paintings by Fragonard were presented to the Louvre.
No.21
John Robert Cozens
1. Timothy Wilcox, ‘Questions of Identity: the Place of Watercolour in British Art’, in Colin Harrison et al, Great British Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Oxford, 2015, p.32.
2. Frederick Cummings in Frederick Cummings and Allen Staley, Romantic Art in Britain: Paintings and Drawings 1760-1860, exhibition catalogue, Detroit and Philadelphia, 1968, p.142.
3. C. F. Bell and Thomas Girtin, ‘The Drawings and Sketches of John Robert Cozens’, The Walpole Society, Vol.23, 1934-1935, p.44, no.140, lists seven other versions of this composition, but the present sheet was unknown to them, as were at least two others.
4. Inv. 3464; Bell and Girtin, ibid., p.44, no.140 [III] (not illustrated). The watercolour is signed and dated 1788.
5. Inv. D.706; Bell and Girtin, op.cit., p.44, no.140 [I] (not illustrated). The watercolour is signed and dated 1778.
6. Inv. D.1984.9; Charles Nugent, From View to Vision: British Watercolours from Sandby to Turner in the Whitworth Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, Manchester, 1993, pp.149-150 no.143, illustrated in colour p.108 (incorrectly captioned as The Valley of Isarco, near Brixen, North Italy); Charles Nugent, British Watercolours in the Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester: A Summary Catalogue of Drawings and Watercolours by Artists born before 1880, London, 2003, p.106.
7. Inv. 70.118.19; Bulletin of Rhode Island School of Design, Selection II: British Watercolors and Drawings from the Museum’s Collection, Providence, 1972, no.21.
8. Kim Sloan, Alexander and John Robert Cozens: The Poetry of Landscape, exhibition catalogue, 1986-1987, p.130, pl.142.
9. Nugent, op.cit., 1993, p.150, under no.143.
10. Sloan, op.cit., p.129.
11. Thomas Martyn, The Gentleman’s Guide in his Tour Through Italy, London, 1787, pp.242-243.
No.22
Domenico Tiepolo
1. Catherine Whistler, ‘Giandomenico Tiepolo. Maestria e Gioco. Disegni dal mondo’ [book review], Master Drawings, Autumn 1998, p.310.
2. Gealt, op.cit., 1986, p.36, under no.6.
3. Adriano Mariuz, ‘Giandomenico Tiepolo e la civiltà veneta di villa’, in Elettra Quargnal, ed., Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi sul Tiepolo, 1982, reprinted in Mariuz [ed. Pavanello], op.cit., 2008, p.118, fig.112, illustrated in colour pl.XIV.
4. Gealt and Vetrocq, op.cit., p.140, under no.S7.
5. Inv. 1975.1.471; Gealt and Vetrocq, op.cit., pp.140-141, no.S8, illustrated p.118; Gealt, op.cit., 1986, pp.38-39, no.7; James Byam Shaw and George Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection, Vol.VI: Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings, New York, 1987, p.210, no.173; Linda Wolk-Simon, Domenico Tiepolo: Drawings, Prints, and Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1997, pp.64-65, no.104.
6. Inv. 1957.309; Harold Joachim and Suzanne Folds McCullagh, Italian Drawings in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago and London, 1979, p.89, no.145, pl.149; Gealt and Vetrocq, op.cit., p.148, no.S27, illustrated p.124; Mariuz, op.cit., 1986, reprinted in Mariuz [ed. Pavanello], op.cit., 2008, p.227, fig.286; Gealt, op.cit., 1986, pp.110-111, no.43.
7. Walpole Society, op.cit., Vol.II, pp.99-100.
8. James Byam Shaw, ‘Some Venetian Draughtsmen of the Eighteenth Century’, Old Master Drawings, March 1933; reprinted in London, Colnaghi, J.B.S. Selected Writings, 1968, p.80.
9. James Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London, 1962, p.52.
No.23
Jean-Louis Prévost
1. Emy Pischel, Jean Louis Prevost: Bouquets, London, 1960, unpaginated.
No.24
Peter De Wint
1. Peter De Wint, quoted in Harriet De Wint, A Short Memoir of the Life of Peter DeWint and William Hilton RA, privately published c.1900; Reprinted in John Lord, ed., Peter DeWint 1784-1849: ‘For the common observer of life and nature’, exhibition catalogue, Lincoln, 2007, p.80.
2. Andrew Wilton and Anne Lyles, The Great Age of British Watercolours 1750-1880, exhibition catalogue, 1993, p.224.
3. Alfred W. Rich, Water Colour Painting, London, 1918 [1950 ed.], p.196.
4. Martin Hardie, Water-colour Painting in Britain, Vol.II: The Romantic Period, London, 1967, p.221.
5. Anne Lyles, in Suzanne Folds McCullagh, ed., Dreams & Echoes: Drawings and Sculpture in the David and Celia Hilliard Collection, exhibition catalogue, Chicago, 2013-2014, p.84, under no.31.
No.25
Théodore Géricault
1. Philippe Grunchec, Géricault’s Horses: Drawings and Watercolours, New York and Paris, 1984, p.9.
2. Loys Delteil, Le peintre-graveur illustré (XIXe et XXe siècles). Vol.18. Théodore Géricault, Paris, 1924, no.86; Grunchec, ibid., 1984, p.160, fig.A; Bergot, op.cit., pp.91-92, no.80; Bazin, op.cit., p.173, no.2413; Emmanuelle Brugerolles, ed., Géricault: Dessins & estampes des collections de l’École des Beaux-Arts, exhibition catalogue, Paris and Cambridge, 1997-1998, p.268, no.E.77; Bruno Chenique, Les chevaux de Géricault, Paris,
2007, p.86, fig.90; Gaëlle Rio and Bruno Chenique, Les chevaux de Géricault, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2024, p.164, no.69. The dimensions of the lithograph are 259 x 324 mm. A fine impression of the related lithograph is sold with the present sheet.
3. ‘Le public français avait enfin pris goût aux lithographies de Géricault; les frères Gihaut lui demandèrent une répétition de sa grande suite anglaise; mais on ne voulait que des chevaux. On conserva six des sujets de celte nature qui avaient paru dans la publication anglaise, et Géricault fit des aquarelles qui devaient servir de modèles pour les six autres. Il chargea de l’exécution du tout MM. Léon Cogniet et Volmar, dirigeant, revoyant et corrigeant çà et là.’; Charles Clément, Géricault: Etude biographique et critique, Paris, 1879, p.220.
4. ‘Le cheval est représenté attaché par un licou à un anneau fixé au mur. Il est attelé aux brancards d’une charrette à hautes ridelles chargée de sacs de plâtre. Il porte un collier d’épaule à larges attelles orné d’une touffe de laine et sur sa tête il y a deux pompons. Il est attaché aux brancards par la sous-ventrière et une dossière, et a un reculement. Sa queue est écourtée. Ce cheval doit être d’un caractère difficile, car ses yeux sont exorbités et il piaffe d’impatience; c’est un cheval mordeux car il porte une muselière. Il est de robe noire à balzanes: quatre, irrégulièrement chaussées. L’ombre du cheval et de la charrette porte sur le mur dont on aperçoit les moellons sous le crépi qui se déplaque et qui porte l’inscription: PLATRE. On distingue au-dessus du mur une toiture formant auvent, soutenue par un aisselier. Dans l’ombre du magasin, où l’on distingue au fond la lueur d’une fenêtre à barreaux, un roulier vêtu d’une blouse porte sur son épaule droite un sac qu’il va charger dans la charrette.’; Bazin, op.cit., p.173, under no.2414.
5. Paris, Galerie Jean Charpentier, Exposition Géricault, 1924, no.200 (‘Le cheval du platrier. Gros cheval hargneux, attelé à un tombereau et attaché à la porte d’une plâtrerie. Il piaffe en hennissant d’impatience.’, not illustrated and with no dimensions given); Grunchec, op.cit., 1976 (1978), p.408, fig.20 and p.410, under no.87, p.419, note 134; Thuillier and Grunchec, op.cit., pp.124-125, no.244 ; Grunchec, op.cit., 1984, pp.160161, unnumbered; Bazin, op.cit., pp.173-174, no.2415. The watercolour, which measures 242 x 288 mm., once belonged to the Napoleonic military commander Marshal Louis-Gabriel Suchet, Duc de Albuféra. It may be one of the ‘Six dessins coloriés: chevaux sortant de l’écurie, charrette de plâtrier, laboureurs, dame à cheval, sujet militaire, etc.’, sold for 1,060 francs at the posthumous vente Gericault, Paris, Hôtel de Bullion, 2-3 November 1824, as part of lot 28.
6. Thuillier and Grunchec, op.cit., pp.124-125, no.244; Bazin, op.cit., pp.174-175, no.2418. The dimensions of the painting are 25.5 x 33.5 cm. An oil sketch of the composition, regarded by Grunchec as an autograph study for the painting, is listed by Bazin as a copy after it; Thuillier and Grunchec, op.cit., pp.123-125, no.243; Bazin, op.cit., p.175, no.2419.
7. These include paintings in the Musée Fabre in Montpelier and the Musée des Beaux Arts in Rouen (Thuillier and Grunchec, op.cit., pp.124-125, nos.244 A and 244 B; Bazin, op.cit., pp.175-176, nos.2421 and 2422, respectively), and another formerly in the Maurice Gobin collection (Maurice Gobin, Géricault dans la Collection d’un Amateur, Paris, n.d. [1959], unpaginated, no.54; Thuillier and Grunchec, op.cit., pp.124125, no.244 C; Bazin, op.cit., p.175, no.2420), as well as a painted copy by the 19th century Polish artist Piotr Michalowski in the Muzeum Narodowe in Warsaw (Bazin, op.cit., p.38, fig.20). An anonymous copy of Le cheval du paltrier in black chalk is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans (Bazin, op.cit., p.176, no.2423).
No.26
Théodore Géricault
1. Philippe Grunchec, Master Drawings by Gericault, exhibition catalogue, New York, San Diego and Houston, 1985-1986, p.21.
2. Loys Delteil, Le peintre-graveur illustré (XIXe et XXe siècles). Vol.18. Théodore Géricault, Paris, 1924, no.86; François Bergot, Gericault: Tout l’oeuvre gravé et pièces en rapport, exhibition catalogue, Rouen, 1981-1982, pp.91-92, no.80; Germain Bazin, Théodore Géricault: Étude critique, documents et catalogue raisonné. Vol.VII - Regard social et politique: Le séjour anglais et les heures de souffrance, Paris, 1997, p.173, no.2413; Emmanuelle Brugerolles, ed., Géricault: Dessins & estampes des collections de l’École des Beaux-Arts, exhibition catalogue, Paris and Cambridge, 1997-1998, p.268, no.E.77.
3. Lorenz E. A. Eitner, Gericault, His Life and Work, London, 1983, p.224.
4. Eitner, ibid., p.225.
5. Eitner, op.cit., p.227.
6. Bazin, op.cit., pp.37-38 and p.173, no.2414.
7. A watercolour study of the same horse, formerly in a private collection, is an anonymous copy after part of the lithograph of Le cheval du plâtrier and includes the stretchers attached to the unseen cart; Bazin, op.cit., p.176, no.2424.
8. Eitner, op.cit., p.227.
9. Delteil, op.cit., no.39; Bazin, op.cit., p.88, no.2181.
10. Delteil, op.cit., no.61; Bazin, op.cit., p.189, no.2457.
No.27
Rodolphe Bresdin
1. The present sheet is one of several drawings by Roldolphe Bresdin owned by the 20th century French engraver Emile Philippe Magadoux, known as Philippe Mohlitz (1941-2019), who created a number of fantastical prints.
2. The close technical and stylistic relationship between Bresdin’s prints and his drawings has occasionally led to some confusion in distinguishing between them, as seen in the comments of one critic faced with Bresdin’s work in an exhibition of 1864: ‘Est-ce une gravure au burin, une eauforte ou un dessin à la plume? On ne sait.’; H. Devier, ‘Beaux-Arts: Exposition des Amis des arts (8e article)’, La Gironde, 6 June 1864, p.21.
3. ‘ces petits dessins sur bristol, qu’il exécutait avec une minutie attentionnée, et dont il gardait toujours, quand il les abandonnait à l’acheteur, un calque fait rapidement à l’emporte-pièce, calque admirable, amplifié de nouvelle invention.’; Reprinted in Odilon Redon, Critiques d’art: Salon de 1868, Rodolphe Bresdin, Paul Gauguin, Bordeaux, 1987, p.80.
4. Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot [Ferri], 11 June 1997, lot 9 (as Ville de réve); Anonymous sale, Hamburg, Hauswedell & Nolte, 8 December 2001, lot 492 (as Ville de réve).
5. The posthumous Mohlitz sale, Bordeaux, Blanchy-Lacombe, 12 October 2019, lot 414; Talabardon & Gautier sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot [Ader Nordmann], 23 March 2023, lot 247.
6. Louis Smart, Bresdin: dessins, Paris, 1975, unpaginated, pl.IX; Dirk van Gelder, Rodolphe Bresdin, Monographie et catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre grave, The Hague, 1976, Vol.I, p.96, fig.100; Dirk van Gelder and John Sillevis, Rodolphe Bresdin 1822-1885, exhibition catalogue, The Hague, 1978-1979, p.131, no.116; Trevor Dance, Rodolphe Brèsdin: An Incorrigible Bohemian, London, 2016, illustrated p.116.
7. Inv. 51.504.55; van Gelder, ibid., 1976, Vol.I, p.97, fig.101; van Gelder and Sillevis, ibid., p.131, no.117 (where dated 1865). An image of the drawing, which is signed and dated 1869, is visible online at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/343492 [accessed 11 November 2024].
No.28
Edgar Degas
1. Although the present sheet bears the Degas atelier stamp on the verso, it does not appear in any of the four sales of the contents of Degas’s studio, held in Paris in 1918 and 1919, and is likely to have remained with one of the artist’s descendants.
2. The politician David Alexander Robert Lindsay, 28th Earl of Crawford and 11th Earl of Balcarres (1900-1975), was at various times a trustee of the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery, the British Museum, the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. As well as serving as Chairman of the National Trust and the National Art Collections Fund, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres was also a noted collector of modern art.
3. Sarah Campbell et al, Degas in the Norton Simon Museum. Nineteenth-century Art, Vol.II, New Haven and London, 2009, p.178, under no.21.
4. Ronald Pickvance, Degas 1879, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, 1979, pp.8-9.
5. Ibid., p.12, under no.6.
6. Inv. 03-1034; Paul André Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre, Paris, 1946, Vol.II, pp.174-175, no.334 (where dated c.1873-1875); a detail of the related figure reproduced in Vol.I, between pp.87 and 87; Franco Russoli and Fiorella Minervino, L’opera completa di Degas, Milan, 1970, p.104, no.384; Jean Sutherland Boggs et al, Degas, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Ottawa and New York, 1988-1989, pp.159-160, no.96; Jean Sutherland Boggs, Degas at the Races, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1998, no.49, illustrated p.94, a detail illustrated p.8. The painting, which entered the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1903, was the first painting by Degas to be acquired by an American museum.
7. Boggs et al, ibid., 1988-1989, p.159, under no.96 (entry by Michael Pantazzi).
8. Inv. 1943.809; Third vente Degas, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 7-9 April 1919, lot 354.2; Boggs et al, op.cit., 1988-1989, p.160, under no.96, fig.85; Boggs, op.cit., 1998, p.95, fig.59; Marjorie Benedict Cohn and Jean Sutherland Boggs, Degas at Harvard, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, 2005, p.105, no.26, illustrated p.115, fig.71.
9. The third vente Degas, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 7-9 April 1919, part of lot 12 (sold for 5,300 FF); Lemoisne, op.cit., Vol.II, pp.76-77, no.157; Russoli and Minervino, op.cit., p.94, no.184; Boggs et al, op.cit., 1988-1989, p.160, under no.96, fig.86 (as location unknown); Boggs, op.cit., 1998, p.90, fig.58. The sketch, painted in essence on paper, was in the Rehns collection in Paris in 1946.
10. The fourth vente Degas, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 2-4 July 1919, part of lot 274; Franklin W. Robinson, One Hundred Master Drawings from New England Private Collections, exhibition catalogue, Hartford and elsewhere, 1973-1974, pp.130-131, no.58.
11. Inv. 1942.9.18; Lemoisne, op.cit., Vol.III, pp.512-513, no.878; Russoli and Minervino, op.cit., pp.118-119, no.709; Boggs et al, op.cit., 19881989, p.160, under no.96, fig.87; Boggs, op.cit., 1998, p.96, no.50.
12. Inv. 1998.65; Lemoisne, op.cit., Vol.III, p.435, no.767; Boggs et al, op.cit., 1988-1989, p.512, under no.306, fig.291; Boggs, op.cit., 1998, p.135, no.80; Jane Kinsman and Michael Pantazzi, Degas: The Uncontested Master, exhibition catalogue, Canberra, 2008-2009, pp.80-81, no.23; Alexander Eiling, ed., Degas: Klassik und Experiment, exhibition catalogue, Karlsruhe, 2014-2015, p.225, under no.100, fig.100.1.
13. Lemoisne, op.cit., Vol.III, pp.664-665, no.1145; Russoli and Minervino, op.cit., p.138, no.1164; Boggs et al, op.cit., 1988-1989, pp.511-512, no.306; Boggs, op.cit., 1998, p.159, no.98; Kinsman and Pantazzi, ibid., illustrated p.62; Eiling, ed., ibid., pp.224-225, no.100.
No.29
François-Joseph Guiguet
1. ‘Quand on regarde un crayon de François Guiguet, on sent tout de suite qu’on est en face d’un crayon français… François Guiguet a toujours été grand dessinateur. Il ne peint pas un tableau sans l’avoir fait précéder de nombreuses études. Il ne fait pas un portrait sans avoir auparavant cherché au crayon, à maintes reprises, l’attitude, la mise en page, l’expression. A vrai dire, il prend à cela un plaisir extreme. Il aime le dessin pour lui-même. Toute occasion d’avoir le crayon en main lui est bonne. Il a couvert de griffonis, de croquis, de travaux très poussés, des milliers de feuillets. Les collectionneurs ont emporté les plus décisifs. Ainsi se sont dispersés aux quatre coins de France, tant d’essais charmants qui sont des réussites.’; Tristan Leclère, ‘Les dessins de François Guiguet’, Art et Décoration, January-June 1922, p.45.
2. ‘Il disait que le dessin est plus que la moitié du tableau. Quand il parlait de la primauté du dessin sa parole s’animait…Souvent, quand il parlait du dessin, la main de Guiguet s’animait, ce qui nous faisant comprendre que la ligne est un movement que nous suivons, presque involontairement, par une geste plus or moins retenu…Vous pouvez placer des dessins de Guiguet à côté de ceux de Ingres, de Puvis et de Ravier, ils sont à la même hauteur, il en est de même de ses oeuvres peintes.’; Alphonse Delubac, François Guiguet, peintre lyonnais, Lyon, 1939, pp.6-7.
3. Jean-Pierre Michel, François Guiguet 1860-1937, Corbelin, 1996, one illustrated as frontispiece and the other on p.83.
No.30
Odilon Redon
1. Joris-Karl Huysmans, L’art moderne, Paris, 1883, p.215; Quoted in translation in John Rewald, ‘Odilon Redon’, in New York, Museum of Modern Art and Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Rodolphe Bresdin, exhibition catalogue, 1961-1962, p.30.
2. Emile Hennequin, ‘Odilon Redon’, Revue littéraire et artistique, 4 March 1882; Quoted in translation in Rewald, ibid., p.31.
3. As the artist noted, in an 1897 letter to his friend and collector Andries Bonger, ‘The pastel, in fact, gives me support, materially and morally, it has rejuvenated me. I work with it, without getting tired. It has led me to paint; in looking at the work that I have just done, I am not without hope of transferring to canvas certain ideas a little later.’; Letter of 9 November 1897, quoted in translation in Roseline Bacou, Odilon Redon: Pastels, London, 1987, p.13.
4. Bacou, ibid., pp.14 and 18.
5. Odilon Redon, À soi-même, Paris, 1922; Quoted in translation in Rewald in New York and Chicago, op.cit., pp.11 and 23.
6. Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné. Vol.II: Mythes et légendes, Paris, 1994, p.193, no.1122.
7. Wildenstein, op.cit., p.257, no.1231; Douglas Druick et al, Odilon Redon: prince of dreams 1840-1916, exhibition catalogue, Chicago and elsewhere, 1994-1995, no.46, illustrated p.98, fig.56. The drawing served a study for a lithograph entitled The Satyr with the Cynical Smile, published in 1883.
8. In 1988 fifteen of the Château de Domecy panels were acquired by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
No.31
Giovanni Boldini
1. Richard Kendall, ‘Drawing Paris: Boldini as a Draftsman in the 1870s’, in Sarah Lees, Giovanni Boldini in Impressionist Paris, exhibition catalogue, Ferrara and Williamstown, 2009-2010, pp.70-71.
2. Paris, Musée Marmottan, Giovanni Boldini, exhibition catalogue, 1991, pp.154-155, no.88.
3. Ibid., p.138, no.68; Doria, op.cit., p.373, no.064, illustrated p.97.
No.32
Giovanni Boldini
1. Bianca Doria, Acquerelli e Pastelli di Giovanni Boldini dagli Archivi Boldini: Catalogo generale, Milan, 2022, p.412, nos.141-142, also illustrated pp.174-175.
2. Bologna, Bottegantica, Giovanni Boldini: Il dinamismo straordinario delle linee, 1999, pp.114-115, unnumbered (where dated 1910-1911).
3. Emilia Cardona [Boldini], Lo studio di Giovanni Boldini, Milan, 1937, pl.XCII; ; Carlo Ragghianti and Ettore Camesasca, L’opera completa di Boldini, Milan, 1970, pp.106-107, no.199; Piero Dini and Francesca Dini, Giovanni Boldini 1842-1931: Catalogo ragionato. Vol.III: Catalogo ragionato della pittura a olio con un’ampia selezione di pastelli e acquerelli, pt.2, Turin, 2002, pp.317-319, no.584; Doria, op.cit., p.376, no.69, also illustrated p.169.
4. Inv. 1997 n.1410; Andrea Buzzoni and Marcello Toffanello, Museo Giovanni Boldini: Catalogo generale completamente illustrato, Ferrara, 1997, p.152; Doria, op.cit., p.393, no.104, also illustrated in colour p.137.
5. Doria, op.cit., 2022, p.377, no.71, also illustrated p.104.
No.33
Paul Klee
1. Sabine Rewald, ‘An Interview with Felix Klee’, in Sabine Rewald, Paul Klee: The Berggruen Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, exhibition catalogue, London, 1989, p.23.
2. Will Grohmann, Paul Klee: Drawings, London, 1960, p.40.
3. Quoted in translation in Rewald, op.cit., p.204.
4. Quoted in translation in Rewald, op.cit., p.204.
5. Will Grohmann, The Drawings of Paul Klee, New York, 1944, unpaginated, pl.23; Bern, Paul Klee Foundation, op.cit., p.312, no.3762; Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 4 December 1990, lot 165 (unsold); Anonymous sale, Berlin, Villa Grisebach, 26 May 1995, lot 57 (unsold); Anonymous sale, Bern, Galerie Kornfeld, 17 June 2005 (sold for 315,000 CHF hammer.) The drawing, titled and dated 1925, measures 282 x 225 mm.
6. For example, Gartenlage in Felsen (Garden among Rocks), Die Freitrippe im Garten von N. (Outside Stairs in the Garden of N.) and Obstgarten (Orchard); Bern, Paul Klee Foundation, op.cit., p.307, no.3747, illustrated in colour p.326, p.311, no.3758 and p.312, no.3760, illustrated in colour p.327, respectively.
7. For example, the paintings Blühender Baume (Blossoming Tree) in the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, Maibild (May Picture) in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Buntharmonisch (Colourful Harmonies) in a private Swiss collection; Bern, Paul Klee Foundation, op.cit., p.349, no.3800, illustrated in colour p.332, p.350, no.3801 and p.396, no.3938, illustrated in colour p.333, respectively.
8. Roland Doschka, ‘Foreword’, in Roland Doschka, ed., Paul Klee: Selected by Genius, 1917-1933, exhibition catalogue, Balingen, 2001, p.7.
No.34
Jacques Majorelle
1. André Demaison, ‘Jacques Majorelle et le Maroc ou l’Atlas et son peintre’, La Renaissance, November 1930; Quoted in translation in Marcilhac and Marcilhac, op.cit., p.58.
2. Now known as the Villa Majorelle, the building and its gardens remain one of the leading sights of the city today.
3. Marcilhac and Marcilhac, op.cit., p.141.
4. Marcilhac and Marcilhac, op.cit., pp.144 and 147.
5. Gaston Varenne, ‘Jacques Majorelle’, Le Pays lorrain, 1935, illustrated p.54; Anonymous sale, Paris, Drouot Richelieu [Millon & Associés], 28 November 2007, lot 18 (sold for €281,659); Anonymous sale, Paris, Drouot Richelieu [Gros & Delettrez], 21 June 2010, lot 9 (sold for €150,000); Marcilhac and Marcilhac, op.cit., p.286, no.26 (where dated c.1933-1934), also illustrated p.147. Executed in watercolour and gouache with highlights in gold metallic powder, the sheet measures 510 x 720 mm. and is titled by the artist ‘Habiba’.
6. La Vigie Marocaine, 4 April 1934; Quoted in translation in Marcilhac and Marcilhac, op.cit., p.144.
No.35
Sam Francis
1. David Carrier, ‘Los Angeles. Sam Francis’ [exhibition review], The Burlington Magazine, June 1999, p.383.
2. At one of Francis’s gallery exhibitions in Paris in the 1950s, one of his paintings was acquired by the wife of Henri Matisse. Francis’s work was also championed by the art critics Georges Duthuit, who was Matisse’s son-in-law, and Pierre Schneider, an expert on Matisse.
3. James Lawrence, ‘Sam Francis. Pasadena and Sacramento’ [exhibition review], The Burlington Magazine, December 2013, p.862.
4. William C. Agee, ‘Sam Francis: A Painter’s Dialogue with Color, Light, and Space’, in Debra Burchett-Lere, ed., Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings, 1946-1994, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2011, p.26.
5. ‘New Talent’, Time, 16 January 1956, p.72.
6. Agee in Burchett-Lere, ed., op.cit., pp.67-74.
7. San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and UCLA, Dickson Art Center, Sam Francis: Exhibition of Drawings and Lithographs, exhibition catalogue, 1967, unpaginated.
8. Quoted in Ibid., unpaginated.
9. Andre Emmerich, in New York, Andre Emmerich Gallery, Sam Francis. Paintings on Paper: 1956-64, exhibition catalogue, 1990 unpaginated.
No.36
Michael Goldberg
1. Saul Ostrow, ‘Michael Goldberg’, Bomb, Spring 2001.
2. Inv. K1958:35; Gordon Smith, ed., Contemporary Art: Recent Acquisitions 1957-1958, exhibition catalogue, Buffalo, 1958-1959, illustrated p.17, no.6; Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Contemporary Art 1942-72: Collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York, 1973, illustrated p.453. The dimensions of the canvas are 225.9 x 218.4 cm., and an image of the painting is also visible online at https://buffaloakg.org/artworks/ k195835-summer-house [accessed 3 October 2024].
3. ‘Art: Question Marks in Color’, Time, 26 January 1959.
4. Ibid.
5. Ostrow, op.cit.
No.37
Beauford Delaney
1. ‘Introduction to Exhibition of Beauford Delaney Opening December 4, 1964 at the Gallery Lambert’, in New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, 1978, unpaginated.
2. James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket, New York, 1985.
3. David Leeming, Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney, New York and Oxford, 1998, p.148.
4. David Leeming, ‘Beauford, Abstraction, and Light’, in New York, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, Beauford Delaney. Liquid Light: Paris Abstractions, 1954-1970, exhibition catalogue, 1999, pp.7-8.
5. Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 28 June 2023, part of lot 240. One of the three gouaches was inscribed and dated 61 San Telmo Majorca and the other 61 Mallorca San Telmo
6. Sale (‘Collection de Madame Darthea Speyer, une Américaine à Paris’), Paris, Christie’s, 7 July 2010, lot 262. The work is signed, dated and dedicated ‘Beauford Delaney Mallorca 1961 for miss Darthea Speyer’. Other examples from the same 1961 Majorca trip have recently appeared at auction in Paris (Anonymous sale, Paris, Christie’s, 10 October 2012, lot 71, signed and dated ‘Beauford Delaney 61. San Telmo Mallorca’) and New York (Anonymous sale, New York, Swann Auction Galleries, 7 April 2016, lot 42, signed and dated ‘Beauford Delaney San Telmo Mallorca 61’ and Anonymous sale, New York, Phillips, 26 September 2018, lot 66, signed and dated ‘Beauford Delaney Mallorca 1961’).
No.38
Lynne Drexler
1. Among his students, Hofmann counted several of the most significant women artists of the period, including Nell Blaine, Ray Eames, Marisol Escobar, Helen Frankenthaler, Jane Freilicher, Lee Krasner and Mercedes Matter.
2. However, when Drexler told Motherwell that she was thinking of becoming a teacher herself, he is said to have replied, ‘I’ll flunk you out of here before I see you go to teach. You’re too good a painter.’
3. The art critic of the Los Angeles Times noted of Drexler that ‘the artist impresses by her technical virtuosity and her distinctively personal, highly exuberant poetry. Essentially a colorist to whom texture is nearly as important as tonality, this painter manages to sum up characteristic facets of landscape experience ranging from an almost blinding stridency to calculatedly lyrical subtleties.’; Henry Seldis, ‘Drexler Art Evokes Bright Atmosphere’, Los Angeles Times, 5 April 1965, p.8.
4. As she pointed out, ‘There is no isolation in a place like this – impossible to find – but solitude is respected…I am not rich…but I have what I want. I mean, as long as I have food, heat, roof over my head, food for the cat and paint, I am happy. Oh, and Jack Daniels.’; Quoted in John Dorfman, ‘Symphonies of Color’, Art & Antiques, December-January 2021-2022, p.63.
5. Hans Hofmann had studied alongside Henri Matisse in Paris in the early years of the 20th century.
No.39
Ernst Wilhelm Nay
1. These include Ohne Titel (Aquarellstudie Blau) of 1956, Aquarell Blau of 1958, Ohne Titel of 1960 and Ohne Titel (Aquarell Blau) of 1962, all in private collections; Bonn, Kunstmuseum, and elsewhere, Ernst Wilhelm Nay: Das polyphone Bild. Gouachen, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, exhibition catalogue, 2012-2013, pp.123-124, figs. 102-103, p.126, fig.107 and p.130, fig.112, respectively.
No.40
Domenico Gnoli
1. Letter of 26 September 1968 from Gnoli to Ted Riley; quoted in Walter Guadagnini, ‘Domenico Gnoli’, in Walter Guadagnini, ed., Domenico Gnoli, exhibition catalogue, Modena, 2001, p.9.
2. Letter of 29 December 1968 from Gnoli to Riley; quoted in Barbatti and Lotti, op.cit., p.298.
3. Francesco Bonami, ‘Fleas on Mars’, in New York, Luxembourg & Dayan, Domenico Gnoli: Paintings 1964-1969, exhibition catalogue, 2012, p.12.
4. Letter of 1 February 1968 from Gnoli to Riley; quoted in Barbatti and Lotti, op.cit., p.288.
5. Account of 2 March 1968; quoted in Barbatti and Lotti, op.cit., pp.296-297.
6. Templeton and Gnoli, op.cit., p.49.
7. Paul Hogarth, The Artist as Reporter, 1986, p.161.
No.41
Pablo Picasso
1. Paris, Galerie Louise Leiris, op.cit., pp.28-29, nos.27-33; Zervos, op.cit., pls.40-41, nos.92-98; The Picasso Project, op.cit., pp.40-41, nos.70.122-70.128.
2. Jeffrey Hoffeld, ‘Picasso’s Endgame’, in New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Picasso: The Late Drawings, exhibition catalogue, 1988, p.13.
3. Ibid., p.7.
No.42
Gerhard Richter
1. Schwartz, op.cit., pp.298-306, nos.91/13 to 91/36. Twelve of the drawings, including the present sheet, were exhibited alongside recent works on paper by Richard Long and Lawrence Weiner at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in London in 1992.
2. Klaus Albrecht Schröder and Barbara Steffen, Gerhard Richter: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, exhibition catalogue, Vienna, 2009, pp.41-42.
3. Inv. Z 1996.30, 1996.31 and 1996.32; Schwartz, op.cit., pp.305-306, nos.91/34 to 91/36 and pp.144-145, pls. 91/34 and 91/36; Schröder and Steffen, ibid., illustrated pp.112-113 and 115.
4. Schwartz, op.cit., pp.302-303, nos.91/25 to 91/27; Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble, Richter en France, exhibition catalogue, 2009, illustrated pp.112-115.
5. Inv. K 950034; Schwartz, op.cit., p.300, no.91/18; Schröder and Steffen, op.cit., illustrated p.114 and p.17, fig.7.
No.43
Brigid Edwards
1. London, Thomas Gibson Fine Art Ltd., Brigid Edwards: Flora on Vellum II, exhibition catalogue, 1997; Quoted in Shirley Sherwood and Martyn Rix, Treasures of Botanical Art: Icons from the Shirley Sherwood and Kew Collections, exhibition catalogue, London, 2008, p.244.
2. Quoted in Shirley Sherwood, A Passion for Plants: Contemporary Botanical Masterworks from the Shirley Sherwood Collection, London, 2001, p.78.
No.44
Brigid Edwards
1. Shirley Sherwood, A Passion for Plants: Contemporary Botanical Masterworks from the Shirley Sherwood Collection, London, 2001, p.78.
2. Shirley Sherwood, ‘The Renaissance of Contemporary Botanical Art’, in Shirley Sherwood, A New Flowering: 1000 Years of Botanical Art, exhibition catalogue, Oxford, 2005, p.15.
3. Shirley Sherwood, Contemporary Botanical Artists: The Shirley Sherwood Collection, exhibition catalogue, Richmond and elsewhere, 1996, p.60.
PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS
No.2
Pisanello, circle
Fig.1
Pisanello, about 1394? – 1455
The Vision of Saint Eustace, about 1438-42 egg tempera on wood, 54.8 × 65.5 cm Bought, 1895 © The National Gallery, London
No.18
Tiepolo
Fig.1
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Crucifixion
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum
Gift of Agnes Mongan
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1975.74
BOLDINI, Giovanni; Nos.31-32
BRESDIN, Rodolphe; No.27
BRIZIO, Francesco; No.8
CARRACCI, Agostino; No.7
CARRACCI, Annibale (attr.); No.6
CAULA, Sigismondo; No.16
CLAUDE, Gellée, called Lorrain; No.12
COCCAPANI, Sigismondo; No.10
COZENS, John Robert; No.21
CRESPI, Daniele; No.11
DE WINT, Peter; No.24
DEGAS, Edgar; No.28
DELANEY, Beauford; No.37
DREXLER, Lynne; No.38
DUMONSTIER, Daniel; No.9
DUNOIS MASTER; No.1
EDWARDS, Brigid; Nos.43-44
FRANCIS, Sam; No.35
GARZONI, Giovanna; No.13
GÉRICAULT, Théodore; Nos.25-26
GNOLI, Domenico; No.40
GOLDBERG, Michael; No.36
INDEX OF ARTISTS
GREUZE, Jean Baptiste; No.20
GRIMALDI, Giovanni Francesco; No.14
GUARDI, Francesco; No.19
GUIGUET, François-Joseph; No.29
KLEE, Paul; No.33
KONINCK, Philips; No.15
MAJORELLE, Jacques; No.34
MOUCHERON, Isaac de; No.17
NAY, Ernst Wilhelm, No.39
PICASSO, Pablo; No.41
PISANELLO, Antonio (circle); No.2
PRÉVOST, Jean Louis; No.23
REDON, Odilon; No.30
RICHTER, Gerhard; No.42
SPANISH SCHOOL, 16th Century; No.3
TIEPOLO, Giovanni Battista; No.18
TIEPOLO, Giovanni Domenico; No.22
ZUCCARO, Federico; No.5
ZUCCARO, Taddeo; No.4
Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) Punchinello and his Family Spinning Flax No.22
Back cover:
Giovanna Garzoni (1600-1670) Saint Catherine of Alexandria No.13
