London Art Week 2015

london art week 2015 3rd - 10th July Exhibiting at Trinity House Fine Art 50 Maddox Street, London, W1S 1AY

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ANTWERP SCHOOL, C.1635 A Gilt-Metal-Mounted Ebony, Ebonized, Rosewood, Tortoiseshell and Ivory Cabinet on a Stand, Decorated with Scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses VLADIMIR FEDOROVICH AMMON (Moscow 1826 - Moscow 1879) A View of Moscow from Sparrow Hills

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NICHOLAES BERCHEM (Haarlem 1620 - Amsterdam 1683) Milkmaids and Shepherds with their Flock at the Mouth of a Grotto, a Drover Watering his Cattle beyond JAN DE BRAY (Haarlem c.1627 - Haarlem 1697) The Adoration of the Magi ELIAS VAN DEN BROECK (Antwerp 1650 - Amsterdam 1708) A Forest Floor Landscape with a Thistle, Fungi, Moths, a Lizard and Snakes

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PAUWELS CASTEELS (Active in Antwerp c.1649 - 1677) Joshua Stopping the Sun JOHN CROME (Norwich 1768 - Norwich 1821) A Wooded Landscape with an Oak

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ABEL GRIMMER (Antwerp 1570 - Antwerp 1618) An Allegory of Summer GIACOMO GUARDI (Venice 1764 - Venice 1835) AND FRANCESCO GUARDI (Venice 1712 - Venice 1793) A View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Island of San Giacomo di Paludo

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JEAN-BAPTISTE HILAIR (Auden-le-Tiche 1753 – Paris after 1822) A Roadside Coffeehouse between Milas and Bodrum, Turkey JOHN HOPPNER (London 1758 - London 1810) Portrait of the Right Honourable William Pitt the Younger (1759 - 1806), Three-Quarter-Length, in a Black Coat, Standing before a Column and Gold Brocade Drape

k adriaen thomasz. key (Antwerp c. 1544 - Antwerp, after 1589) Portrait of a Bearded Gentleman, Bust-Length, in a Black Doublet with a White Lace Ruff, Painted Oval

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COUNT MATTEO LOVATTI (Rome, b.1861) The Russian Army Mobilising Behind an Observation Balloon

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NICOLAES MAES (Dordrecht 1623 - Amsterdam 1693) Portrait of a Gentleman, Three-Quarter Length, in a Brown Tunic with a Red Cloak in a Wooded Landscape, at Sunset

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GIOVANNI ANTONIO PELLEGRINI (Venice 1675 - Venice 1741) Young Hannibal Swears Enmity to Rome

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JUSEPE DE RIBERA (Jรกtiva, Valencia 1591 - Naples 1652) The Philosopher Thales FRANTS ALEKSEEVICH ROUBAUD (Odessa 1856 - Munich 1928) Lone Cossack Horseman

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OTTO MARSEUS VAN SCHRIECK (Nijnegen 1619/20? - Amsterdam 1678) A Sottobosco with an Aspic Viper, Sand Lizard, Tree Frog, Moths and Fungi Spanish school, seventeenth century The Crucifixion MAERTEN STOOP (Rotterdam 1620 - Utrecht 1647) A Card Game in a Courtyard

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attributed to ANTONIO TEMPESTA (Florence 1555 - Rome 1630) The Stoning of Saint Stephen Helmich von Tweenhuysen II (Amsterdam c.1604 - Gdaล sk 1673) Portrait of a Bearded Cleric

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RICHARD KARLOVICH ZOMMER (Munich 1866 - Russia 1939) Kirghiz on a Camel

ANTWERP SCHOOL, C.1635 A Gilt-Metal-Mounted Ebony, Ebonized, Rosewood, Tortoiseshell and Ivory Cabinet on a Stand, Decorated with Scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses the architectural facade with thirteen drawers around a central cupboard with a stage-set interior, the drawers decorated with painted panels, partially remounted, the stand later 38 x 45.8 cm (15 x 18 in) cabinet: 84.5 x 121 x 46 cm (33¼ x 47⅝ x 18⅛ in) cabinet on a stand: 179.5 x 123.8 x 48.9 cm (70⅝ x 48¾ x 19¼ in)

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his cabinet is a fine example of the type of work that helped make Antwerp the leading international centre for the manufacture of these objects during the first half of the seventeenth century. The cabinet represents the collaboration between artist and craftsman, recalling the famous collaborative paintings for which Antwerp was famed. As such the piece can be considered through its individual components, and as a stunning whole.

The cabinet is decorated with fourteen painted panels which depict various episodes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the narratives of which are worth briefly outlining (fig. 1). The upper left-hand panel shows The Rape of Europa. This is the story of how Jupiter, enamoured by the Phoenician princess Europa, transformed himself into a bull and mingled with her father’s herd. When the princess saw him she started to stroke him until she ‘even ventured to sit with her legs astride on the back of the bull’,¹ at which point Jupiter galloped away into the sea, Europa on his back.

In the next panel down we see the Venus with her lover, the beautiful Adonis. Adonis was killed by a wild boar, an accident Venus had always

dreaded, and in this scene we the goddess trying to convince the young hunter not to leave her.

The story of Narcissus is a famous warning against pride and vanity. The nymph Echo fell in love with the handsome youth but she was spurned, a gesture which left her heartbroken. Having heard of Narcissus’ vanity, the god Nemesis cursed him and made him fall in love with his own reflection. Here we see Narcissus transfixed by his own image, unable to tear himself away from the fountain, whilst Echo lurks ghostlike in the background. The composition for this panel may derive from Hendrick van Balen I’s (1575-1632) rendering of the same theme (fig. 2).

The story of Mercury and Argus revolves around another of Jupiter’s many loves. In this case the object of his affection was the princess Io, but Juno thwarted his affections by turning Io into a white heifer and handing the animal over to the giant Argus to guard. Mercury was sent by Jupiter to kill the giant, and this he was accomplished by first lulling Argus to sleep with music.

In this depiction we see Argus trying to keep his grip on Io, but he appears helpless as sleep overwhelms him.

¹ Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2:868.

Mercury and Herse

The Rape of Europa

Pan and Syrinx

Venus and Adonis

Pyramus and Thisbe

Narcissus

Daedalus and Icarus

Mercury and Argus

Hermaphroditus and Salmacis

Latona and the Lycian Peasants

Cephalus and Procris

Erichthonius and the Daughters of Cecrops

Hendrick van Balen I, Narcissus, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania (Figure 2)

Antwerp School, c. 1635, Narcissus, (3rd panel, left side)

The story of Pan and Syrinx was another oft repeated theme in Flemish painting of the period. The nymph Syrinx was being pursued by the lustful god Pan, when she came to a river. Since the waters were barring her way she prayed to be transformed in order to escape the god’s clutches, and ‘So just at the moment when Pan believed that his Syrinx was caught, instead of a fair nymph’s body, he found himself clutching some marsh reeds’.² The story of Pyramus and Thisbe is analogous to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The lovers, forbidden by their parents to marry, planned a midnight tryst by a rural spring. Thisbe arrived at the meeting place first, but fled when a lion, blood dripping from its mouth from a recent kill, came to the water to quench her thirst. In her haste Thisbe dropped her cloak, which the beast tore to shreds. When Pyramus arrived and discovered the bloody garment he feared the worst and stabbed himself with his sword. When Thisbe returned to the scene to discover her lover dying, she threw herself upon the same sword, the scene depicted here.

Latona was the mother of Apollo and Diana. When she was travelling with her infant twins, she stopped at a lake in Lycia to quench her thirst.

However, the peasants working there refused to allow her to drink, abusing and threatening her despite Latona’s humble pleading. Eventually Latona became angry and, in the scene depicted here, ‘raised her hands to the heavens and cried, “May you live in your filthy pool for ever!”’³ Her prayer was answered

and the peasants were transformed into frogs.

The story of Cephalus and Procris is another tragedy brought about by jealously. Cephalus loved to hunt and possessed a spear, given to him by his wife Procris, which would always find its mark. Procris mistakenly believed her husband to have a secret lover, and so one day followed him out hunting.

When Cephalus heard a rustling in the leaves, he threw his spear, believing the noise to come from an animal. Inevitably the spear hit Procris, and she died in her anguished husband’s arms.

In the centre of the cabinet are four panels illustrating two stories from the Metamorphoses. In the arched pair we see the figures of Daedalus and Icarus, the father and son who famously escaped from their Cretan prison by flying away with wings which Daedalus had constructed. Icarus ignored his father’s warning about flying too close to the sun, and here we see Daedalus watching on helplessly, as his son plummets into the sea, melting wax dripping from his arms.

In the two panels below we see the beautiful youth Hermaphoditus, who was bathing in the lake when Salmacis, one of Diana’s nymphs, dwelt. Salmacis fell in love with him instantly and clung to him with such passion that ‘The bodies of boy and girl merged and melded into one’.⁴ The two large side panels illustrate two stories concerning the daughters of the Athenian king Cecrops. In the left-hand panel the sisters return from

² Ibid., 1: 705-706. ³ Ibid., 6:369-370.

⁴ Ibid. 4:374.

Antwerp School, c. 1635, Erichthonius and the Daughter of Cecrops (right panel, detail)

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Finding of Erichthonius, 1632-33, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Ohio (Figure 3)

Circle of Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Cabinet, Painted with Mythological Scenes, 1650, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Figure 4)

Antwerp School, c. 1640, An Antwerp Ebony and Ivory Cabinet, Private Collection (Figure 5)

the festival at the temple of Minerva in the background. Whilst they were journeying they were espied by Mercury, who instantly fell in love with Herse.

Their love was to provoke extreme envy in Herse’s sister Aglauros, who would later be turned to stone, as a punishment for her jealously.

The right-hand side panel depicts these sisters discovering the infant Erichthonius. Minerva entrusted the daughters with a basket, with the strict instruction that it should not be opened. The basket contained the new-born Erichthonius, a boy who had snakes for legs. Minerva had undertaken to bring the child up, but wished to keep his existence secret from the gods, hence the insistence on secrecy. The moment depicted here is when Agalauros, clad in yellow, is overcome by curiosity and opens the lid of the basket to discover Erichthonius. Reclining with her back to the viewer is Pandrosos, and standing is Herse⁵ The fourth figure is a nurse whose presence accentuates the youth and beauty of the young women, a common Rubensian device. This last panel is a particularly important one. It derives from a painting by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), which today is only a fragment (fig. 3). Rubens’ version has been dated to 1632-33,⁶ and thus this date must be a terminus post quem for the cabinet. When considered together with the Narcissus panel, it is also evidence that the artist who painted the cabinet had intimate knowledge of work of the leading artists in Antwerp of that period.

The cabinet does not only feature excellent examples of Flemish painting, but also contains exquisite craftsmanship. The use of materials such as ebony, rosewood, tortoiseshell, ivory, and gilt-metal, alongside the painted panels, would have made the cabinet a highly sought-after luxury object.

The judicious use of these materials, with their deep, rich colouring,enhances and complements the paintings of the present cabinet, and a similar effect is achieved in the Rijksmuseum’s comparable example (fig. 4). The use and combinations of these materials vary greatly from work to work. In addition to ebony, some are embellished with only a little ivory, see figure 5, whereas the famed Sudbury Cabinet, see figure 6, has extensive gilding but no tortoiseshell.

The presence of a rich and varied abundance of these materials, in comparison to other cabinets, together with the high quality of the painted panels, help

make the present work an especially fine example.

Cabinets of this type trace their origins to Augsburg, and in fact the first ebony workers to take up their trade in Antwerp were German.⁷ However, ‘By the 1630s Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands had begun to rival Augsburg as the main centre for the production of luxury cabinets.⁸ Antwerp cabinets were unique in their makeup, as ebony veneered cabinets embellished with painted scenes, exploited the city’s fame as the foremost centre for artistic excellence. Another characteristic aspect of Antwerp’s cabinets were the perspectiefje, or perspective, contained behind the central doors. Within these mirrored chambers collectors would display small objects, to be admired for their value, craftsmanship or exoticism, such as ‘small statues and crucifixes, shells and other naturalia, clocks and astrolabes.’⁹ The mirrored glass used in the perspectiefje is Italian, and thus cabinets of this type combined a luxury material of Italian origin, the German expertise in ebony cabinets, and the preeminence of Antwerp’s painters to create a new type of luxury object.

The painter of the panels in the present work has yet to be identified, which is the case for most Antwerp cabinets, with an occasional exception such as the Sudbury Cabinet, whose panels were painted by Frans Franken II (15811642). What is clear is that the artist was intimately aware of the work of the leading Antwerp artists of the period, such as van Balen and Rubens. Stylistically the artist is likely to have been part of Rubens’ circle, as the rounded, plump figures, particularly on the two side panels, echo the master’s work. The panels are also stylistically close to those on the cabinet of c. 1640 (fig. 5). In any case the quality of the works is unusually high and this quality, combined with the excellence of the craftsmanship and the lavish use of luxurious materials, make this cabinet an especially fine example of its type.

⁵ The figures are identified in Held, J. S., ‘The Daughters of Cecrops’ in Rubens and his Circle: Studies byJulius S. Held, ed. Lowenthal, A. H., Rosand, D., & Walsh, J. (Princeton, 1982), p. 163. ⁶ Burchard, L., ‘Rubens’ Daughters of Cecrops’, in Allen Memorial Art Bulletin vol.

XI, no. 1 (Fall 1953), p. 8. ⁷ De Munck, B., ‘Construction and Reproduction: The Training and Skills of Antwerp Cabinetmakers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship, ed. De Munck, B., Kaplan, S. L., & Soly, H. (International Studies in Social History, 2007), pp. 94-95. ⁸ Winterbottom, M., Secret Splendour: The Hidden World of Baroque Cabinets, exh. cat.

(The Holburne Museum, Bath, 2012-2013), p. 8. ⁹ Dupré, S., ‘Trading Luxury Glass, Picturing Collections and Consuming Objects of Knowledge in Early Seventeenth-Century Antwerp’ in Silent Messengers: The Circulation of Material Objects of Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries, ed.

Dupré, S., & Lüthy, C. (Münster, 2011) p.283.

A Flemish Ebony and Parcel-Gilt Cabinet, with paintings by Frans Francken II, Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire (Figure 6)

The Rape of Europa

Mercury and Herse

Venus and Adonis

Narcissus

Daed an Icar

Mercury and Argus

Hermaph an Salm

dalus nd rus

hroditus nd macis

Pan and Syrinx Pyramus and Thisbe

Latona and the Lycian Peasants

Cephalus and Procris

Erichthonius and the Daughters of Cecrops

VLADIMIR FEDOROVICH AMMON (Moscow 1826 - Moscow 1879)

A View of Moscow from Sparrow Hills signed and dated ‘W. Ammon/1856’ (lower right), and further inscribed ‘A Monsieur John Hick. / Gerassim Kloudoff / Moscou 2/4 Fevier 1857.’ (on the reverse of the canvas) oil on canvas 40 x 60 cm (15¾ x 23⅝ in) Provenance: Gerasim Ivanovich Kloudoff, c.1856; gifted to John Hick M.P., 1857; thence by descent to Mr Hick; by whom sold, Christie’s, London, 27th July 1955, where sold to; Mr F. Dent, sold to; Mr Herbert Bier; and thence by descent to the previous owner.

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rom the top of Sparrow Hills, Vladimir Fedorovich Ammon provides a stunning vista of Moscow. The view takes in many of the city’s landmarks, most prominently the famous Novodevichy Convent on the right-hand side of the work, before sweeping across the many spires and towers of nineteenth-century Moscow, including those of the Kremlin and the massive bulk of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, still shrouded in scaffolding. The lushness of the foreground, with the calm river and sprawling meadow, contrasts with the stunning architecture of the city itself. The scene is bathed in soft sunlight, so that the river glistens, and the whitewashed buildings sparkle in the distance. From this high, distant viewpoint there is a sense of calm and tranquillity, with none of the hustle and bustle one generally associates with urban living.

Topographical views in oils, from this period, are rare in Russian

19th Century Photograph of Moscow from Sparrow Hills (Figure 1)

art, and so Ammon’s painting serves as a valuable historical record.

Sparrow Hills is located on the right bank of the Moskva River, and as an one of the highest points in Moscow, provided some of the best views of the city, which has been taken advantage of by Ammon in this wonderful vista. Although the painting is packed with diverting details, several things stand out as being particularly interesting from a historical perspective. In the last 150 years the city has undergone massive transformations, particularly under Soviet rule, a period when major and extensive building programs were carried out. When Ammon painted this work in 1856, Sparrow Hills were on the outskirts of Moscow, hence the wide open spaces that can be seen in the foreground of the painting, or in a nineteenth-century photograph taken from a similar vantage-point (fig. 1). However, today this area has long since been enveloped by urban development.

Photograph of The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour under construction, taken from the Kremlin, 1856 (Figure 2)

Vladimir Fedorovich Ammon, A View of Moscow from Sparrow Hills, 1856 (Detail)

Perhaps the most interesting historical aspect of the present work is Ammon’s depiction of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which is clad in scaffolding (see Detail and fig. 2). Plans for the cathedral were first conceived in 1812, when Emperor Alexander I (1777-1825) wished to commemorate Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769-1821) retreat from the city by building a cathedral ‘to signify Our gratitude to Divine Providence for saving Russia from the doom that overshadowed Her’. Originally the cathedral was to be built on Sparrow Hills itself, but once the site proved insecure a location near the Kremlin was deemed more suitable, with the cornerstone eventually laid in 1839. Designed by Konstantin Andreyevich Thon (1794-1881), it was the largest religious building in Russia, dominating the Moscow skyline and ‘its size and scale gave out a clear message to visitors-especially foreign ones - about the supremacy of the Russian state’.¹ The scaffolding was not removed from the dome for twenty years and in Ammon’s work the golden dome emerges glistening above it. Finally completed in the 1880s, the cathedral was then torn down in 1931, in order to make way for the ill-fated Palace of the Soviets Project, but was then rebuilt during the 1990s.

To the left of the cathedral, the long walls of the Kremlin can be seen, although they are bright white, whereas today the walls appear a rusty red. Konstantin Nossov explains this drastic change, writing, ‘Originally, the brick-built Kremlin of the 15th century was red, but later it was whitewashed all over...up to the 20th century it was white, and only in the Soviet period was the white wash removed and the Kremlin coated with a special red paint to make it look like brick.’² On the right-hand side of Ammon’s work is the Novodevichy Convent. Founded in 1524, like many of Moscow’s monasteries it was built as a fortress, acting as an important part of the city’s southern defences. Today it is probably the best known of Moscow’s many convents and monasteries, and despite a sometimes turbulent history it has remained virtually intact since the seventeenth century, standing as a fine example of the architectural style known as Naryshikin, or Moscow, Baroque.

Urban views are a common feature of Ammon’s work, and he depicted cities throughout the Russian empire including Kiev and Moscow (fig.

3). Although The Embankment on the Neva by the Academy of Sciences is not a panoramic view, like that depicted in the present work, there are notable similarities between the paintings. There is a distinct sense of tranquillity in both works, at odds with their urban settings. In The Embankment on the Neva by the Academy of Sciences there are several figures in the foreground, but they are only roughly articulated and don’t serve any central role to the scene, acting merely as staffage. In both of the paintings Ammon is concerned with depicting some of the cities’ notable buildings. Although they are painted from very different perspectives, both works have a real sense of depth, and because of the large areas of sky the landscapes feel flat and expansive. Both works are also bathed in soft, warm light which contributes to the sense of calm.

Tsaritsino Park, see figure 4, is perhaps more comparable to View

¹ Brooke, C., Moscow: A Cultural History (Oxford University Press, 2006), p.82. ² Nossov, K., Russian Fortresses 1480-1682 (Osprey Publishing, 2006), p.29.

Vladimir Fedorovich Ammon, The Embankment on the Neva by the Academy of Sciences, Private Collection (Figure 3)

Vladimir Fedorovich Ammon, Tsaritsino Park, Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow (Figure 4)

Ammon received his initial artistic training at the Stroganov School of Design in Moscow, before moving to the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture, in order to further his artistic education. In the early part of his career he concentrated on pure landscape, and was mentored by Karl Ivanovich Rabus, a figure who is credited as being a huge influence on many of the great Russian landscape artists of the nineteenth-century.

These early landscapes brought Ammon to the attention of the Academy of Fine Arts, who encouraged him paint views in and around Moscow. It was with a view of Moscow led him, in 1857, to be “appointed” to the academy, just a year after the present work was painted, and in 1859 he was appointed an Academician of Landscape Painting for View in the Vicinity of Moscow. However, despite his academic success, Ammon was at the forefront of the rapid changes that took place in Russian art during the second half of the nineteenth century, participating in the in the first exhibition of the Peredvizhniki. In the 1870s he returned to painting pure landscapes. A testament to Ammon’s popularity and importance is that most of his works now reside in Russian museum collections. The present painting is a rare example of Ammon’s work on the private market.

of the Novodevichy Convent from Sparrow Hills. In it we see one of the former imperial residences nestling in the midst of one of Moscow’s great estates. This ability to depict majestic buildings, as complementary to the natural beauty of the Russian landscape, was an integral facet of Ammon’s work. This aspect of Ammon’s work is arguably at its high point in the present work; certainly it was a composition which achieved great success as he painted at least one other view from the spot, which is now in the State Russian Museum (fig. 5). In this slightly later work, Ammon has devoted more of the canvas to the sky, giving it a more open but less intimate fell than our version. The other notable difference is that the scaffolding, surrounding The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, had been removed by 1859.

Gerasim Ivanovich Khludov (1821-1885) and John Hick MP (1815-1894), the first two owners of the present painting (Figure 6)

Vladimir Fedorovich Ammon, View from Sparrow Hills, c. 1860, State Russian Museum, Moscow (Figure 5)

The first owner of the present work was the noted Russian art collector Gerasim Ivanovich Khludov (1821-1885), whose collection included works by ‘Bryullov, Fedotov, and Aivazovsky’.³ According to the inscription on the reverse Khludov soon gifted the picture to John Hick (1815-1894), an Englishman who would later become a Member of Parliament and who was also an enthusiastic patron of the fine arts. It seems likely that the two men, with their similar passion for collecting, would have met through business. The Khludov fortune came from their flourishing textile firm and the Russian textile industry at this time was supplied ‘with steam engines from two well-known English firms, John Musgrave & Sons and Hick, Hargreaves’.⁴ The present work would be a perfect gift from one business and art collector to another, to commemorate the latter’s trip to Moscow. ³ Stites, R., Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia: The Pleasure and the Power, (Yale University Press, 2008), p. 420. ⁴ Thompstone, S., The Russian Technical Society and British Textile Machinery Imports, (Discussion Paper, University of Nottingham, 2002), p. 12.

NICHOLAES BERCHEM (Haarlem 1620 - Amsterdam 1683)

Milkmaids and Shepherds with their Flock at the Mouth of a Grotto, a Drover Watering his Cattle beyond signed ‘Be*h*f ’ (lower right) oil on canvas 104 x 130.4 cm (40⅞ x 51¼ in) Provenance: Henry Fowler Broadwood (1811-1893) of Lyne House, Capel, Surrey; his posthumous sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, March 25 1899, Lot 23 (unsold); by descent to Captain Evelyn Broadwood (1889-1975) of Lyne House, Capel, Surrey; The Broadwood Trust; by whom sold, Sotheby's London, 6 April 1977, lot 11 (signed and dated 1652).

Right against the Eastern gate, Wher the great Sun begins his state, Rob'd in flames, and Amber light, The clouds in thousand Liveries dight.

While the Plowman neer at hand, Whistles ore the Furrow'd Land, And the Milkmaid singeth blithe, And the Mower whets his sithe, And every Shepherd tells his tale Under the Hawthorn in the dale.

- John Milton (1608-1674), L’Allegro, c.1631.

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n the dark shadows of an immense overgrown ruin, shepherds and milkmaids care for their livestock. The bucolic scene is one of industry and productivity, recalling the busyness of Milton’s L’Allegro. Although materially poor, the milkmaids and their swains are full of vitality and surrounding them are images of abundance. Vegetables spill out of an overfull basket set on the ground; lambs nestle amongst the sheep and rams, alluding to fertility. The men and women are healthy and vigorous and their animals well cared for. The unceasing nature of their work promotes harmony and stability among the workers, and sheltered in this cavernous grotto, they are far from the corrupting influences of civilisation. Nicholaes Berchem’s painting fits perfectly within a long tradition of artistic, theatrical and literary works idealising the pastoral way of life.

Central to the composition, three bare-footed young women wear rustic dress, their tight bodices revealing shapely figures, and their sleeves rolled up as they perform their chores. Two of the women are engaged in milking the cows and goats while the third winds sheep’s wool onto a spindle, ready for spinning into yarn. Her pose is reminiscent of classical sculpture, as is her contemplative expression and the style of her hair, which is loosely knotted in a chignon. The wool she winds has been recently sheared by the rugged man to her left and his companion. Near them, a shepherd lies down savouring his last minutes of sleep, and behind, a pair of rickety wooden doors leads the eye towards the faint glow of fire coming from within a forge in the recesses of the grotto. Two blacksmiths are hard at work. To the other side of the central group of women, a man loads a barrel onto a donkey. In the background, a drover coaxes a cow away from a watering hole, his loyal dog following close behind.

The architectural details of the painting are indistinct, although the presence of stone blocks supporting an enormous arch indicates that there was once a large and impressive structure on the site. Although fanciful, Berchem’s depiction may be inspired by elements of actual buildings and landmarks taken from his sketchbooks, or the works of other artists, superimposed to enhance their romanticism. The crumbling walls of this edifice are overgrown with weeds and the ground is littered with fallen stones. Through the arch can be seen more evidence of past

Nicholaes Berchem, Italian Landscape with a Small Bridge, 1656, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Figure 1)

magnificence, and the boundaries between what is natural and manmade are further blurred. A few distant figures with their livestock walk down a path carved out of massive rocks, on top of which appear to be the remains of a fortress. The dilapidated grandeur does not seem to intimidate the shepherds and shepherdesses who disregard it as they go about their work.

The crumbling architecture of the present painting is highly characteristic of Berchem’s work and is used to heighten the drama and romanticism of his compositions. In his painting, Italian Landscape with a Small Bridge, in the Hermitage (fig. 1), a neglected and nearly collapsed bridge, choked by foliage, dominates the landscape and gives it a poetic appeal. The everyday activity of the men herding their livestock and heavily laden donkeys over the bridge, much like the mundane work of the shepherds and milkmaids in the present painting, is elevated by the rugged beauty and classicism of their surroundings. The sun bouncing off a statue adorning the bridge gives the scene a particularly noble air and speaks of past magnificence.

Cornelis van Poelenburch, Romantic Landscape, c.1620, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Figure 2)

Nicholaes Berchem, Milkmaids and Shepherds with their Flock at the Mouth of a Grotto, a Drover Watering his Cattle beyond (Detail) From the 1650s onwards, Berchem began painting in a purely Italianate style, defined by not only the presence of fragmented architecture and sculpture in his compositions, but by a soft Mediterranean light. Milkmaids and Shepherds with their Flock at the Mouth of a Grotto, a Drover Watering his Cattle beyond and Italian Landscape with a Small Bridge are two prime examples in which antique ruins are bathed in a warm light, heightening their romanticism. Such works demonstrate the influence of Cornelis van Poelenburgh (1586-1667)(see inventory), under whom Berchem studied.

Considered one of the founders of Dutch Italianate landscape painting, van Poelenburgh’s reputation was built on his signature enamel-smooth landscapes, which often included romantic ruins and statuary fragments, being among the first artists to render Italian sunlight and atmosphere convincingly, a skill demonstrated in paintings such as Romantic Landscape (fig. 2).

Apart from the vivid blue, orange, red and white accents of the shepherdesses’ dresses in Milkmaids and Shepherds with their Flock at the Mouth of a Grotto, a Drover Watering his Cattle beyond, the painting’s colour scheme is predominately executed in shades of brown, illuminated in parts

by a soft golden glow from outside that slowly permeates the cavernous ruin. The hazy vagueness of the grotto, in contrast to the realism of the figures and animals, heightens the enchantment of the scene. Berchem adopted his murky and largely monotone palette from his contemporary Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) (see inventory). This dominance of browns and ochre is replicated in a third composition in the Hermitage by Berchem, dating to the mid 1660s, Italian Landscape with Two Young Women and Livestock, which depicts a woman conversing with a shepherdess in an Italian landscape (fig. 3). Here the light in the foreground is dim, and the touches of gold in the sky are fading, indicating that the day is drawing to a close. Even the green of the trees has been muddied to harmonise with the varying browns of the dirt, rocks and livestock. The blue skirt of the woman on horseback, and the shepherdess’s garments, which are identical in cut and colour to the ones worn by the young women in the grotto, stand in contrast to their surroundings. Again the figures and animals are painted with great attention to detail and naturalism, while their surroundings are

Nicholaes Berchem, Milkmaids and Shepherds with their Flock at the Mouth of a Grotto, a Drover Watering his Cattle beyond (Detail)

Nicholaes Berchem, Italian Landscape with Two Young Women and Livestock, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Figure 3)

more generalised.

Berchem was a highly talented and successful painter of pastoral landscapes and a member of the second generation of Dutch Italianate painters. These were artists who travelled to Italy, or aspired to, in order to soak up the romanticism of the country, bringing home sketchbooks full of drawings of classical ruins and pastoral imagery.

Berchem’s oeuvre is versatile and includes scenes of his native landscape as well as fanciful Mediterranean harbours and Italian ruins, night scenes, hunts, battles, complex allegories, mythological narratives and history paintings. Berchem’s prolific output was estimated by Hofstede de Groot to amount to over 850 paintings, a figure no doubt inflated by numerous misattributions, but significant nonetheless. In addition, he is credited with more than 300 drawings and fifty etchings, mostly animal studies. His career brought about a number of collaborations with artists such as Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) and Jan Baptist Weenix the Elder (1621-c.1660).

Often landscape artists employed Berchem to enhance their work with his singularly charming depictions of figures and animals. He occasionally painted the staffage for his friend Jacob van Ruisdael’s paintings, providing a welcome distraction from the monotony of the landscapes with his inventive characters. Berchem and van Ruisdael travelled through Westphalia together around 1650 and drew the countryside and landmarks such as the Castle of Bentheim, which figures prominently in both artists’ work. Berchem clearly had a particular affection for animals and inserted them into his paintings wherever possible. This was not limited to pastoral works but extended to his mythological scenes, such as the Education of Jupiter belonging to the Hermitage, in which the artist gives the flock of sheep the most prominent positioning on the canvas (fig. 4).

Berchem was first taught by his father, Pieter Claesz., who instructed him in drawing. Arnold Houbraken claims that Berchem went on to

study with Jan van Goyen, Claes Moeyaert (c.1591-1665) and Pieter de Grebber (1600-1653). Whether or not he had formal training with these artists, there are unquestionable parallels in their work. Berchem joined the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke on 6 May, 1642 where he quickly gained pupils. He also taught his son Nicolaes (van) Berchem, who made a career of copying his father’s works.

While it is obvious that Italianate landscapes play a significant part in Berchem’s oeuvre, the question of when and even whether Berchem visited Italy is unclear. It is most likely that he went there between 1651 and 1653, although he may have gone two or three times in total.

While there is no firm evidence of these trips, the presence of works

by Berchem within the Colonna family collection from an inventory dated 1714, and a biography written by Nicola Pio in 1724 with a list of the collections that contained works by Berchem, provide support for the artist’s presence in Italy. He often incorporated identifiable sites such as the waterfalls at Tivoli or the nearby Temple of Sibyls into his compositions.

Berchem’s paintings of the 1650s idealising rural life, like the present work, are reminiscent of the work of Jan Both (1618-1652) (see inventory), a founder of the Italianate movement. Both travelled to Italy around 1637, where he met the French painter Claude Lorrain (c.1600-1682), with whom he collaborated on a series of landscape paintings. These compositions, incorporating travellers on a road, peasants at work or Roman ruins bathed in the evening light, were the hallmarks of Dutch Italianate painting.

Posthumously, Berchem’s Italianate works were particularly exalted in the eighteenth century. More engravings were made after Berchem than any other Dutch artist, leading the French Rococo painter JeanBaptiste Oudry (1686-1755) to muse that, ‘one single picture of this brilliant artist can replace a complete course in practical training’.

Nicholaes Berchem, Education of Jupiter, 1670, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Figure 4)

JAN DE BRAY (Haarlem c.1627 - Haarlem 1697)

The Adoration of the Magi indistinctly signed and possibly dated (lower right, to the right of the kneeling king’s crown) oil on oak panel 71 x 55 cm (28 x 21½ in) Provenance: Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, de Winter & Yver, 8 September, 1773, lot 34 (apparently as Salomon de Bray); to J. van der Hoogt (according to Hofstede de Groot, cited by von Moltke under Literature); possibly anonymous sale, Amsterdam, 1 October, 1778, Ploos v. A. & Yver, lot 35 (as Salomon de Bray), to Delfos for 25 Guilders; Johannes van Bergen van der Gryp, Malucca and Leiden, His deceased sale, Soeterwoude, A. Delfos, 25 June 1784, lot 12 (as Jacob de Bray); anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 29 November, 1946, lot 137 (as G. van den Eeckhout), to Agnew’s; with Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., London, 1949, from whom acquired by John Vaughan-Morgan, later Lord Reigate; thence by family descent; Sold, London, Sotheby’s July 7, 2005 lot 14; with Otto Naumann.

Literature: Probably J.W. von Moltke, ‘Salomon de Bray’ in Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, vols. 11-12, 1938-9, p. 382, no. 34 (recording the 1773 sale as Salomon de Bray); J.W. von Moltke, ‘Jan de Bray’, in Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, vols. 11-12. 1938-9, p. 466, no. 14 (recording the van Bergen van der Gryp sale; as ‘Jan de Bray’); A. van Suchtelen, ‘De aanbidding der herders door J. de Bray’, in Mauritshuis in Focus, vol. 10, 1997, pp. 14-16, also footnote 4; J. Giltaij, in Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth Century Painting, exhibition catalogue, Rotterdam 1999, p. 303, under cat. no. 59, reproduced fig. 9b (as whereabouts unknown); P. Lammerstse, Painting Family: The de Brays, exhibition catalogue, Haarlem (Frans Hals Meseum) and London (Dulwich Picture Gallery) 2008, p. 104, illus. no. 37b.

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he Adoration of the Magi presents a poised and mature interpretation of the popular iconography of the Nativity of Jesus. Centrally seated, the Virgin Mary tenderly cradles the infant baby who is seated on her lap and nestled in amongst a crisp white cloth. In the centre one of the three Magi kneels closely to the Virgin and Child and presents a slightly opened gold jar.

His elaborate turban, topped with a gold crown, rests on the floor to the right and references his exotic homeland. His lengthy cream train is carried by a young pageboy who peers at the viewer directly on the left. The central three figures are gently illuminated by a soft light, allowing the viewer to sense the intimacy of the gift offering.

Kneeling closely behind are the two remaining biblical Magi. One wears a fur mantle, and in his hand clutches a decorative silver incense burner, presumably containing either the frankincense or myrrh. The other, his gift concealed, wears a red cloak and gazes intently at the infant Jesus. In the background, several armed soldiers and a plumed horse, representative of the Magi’s entourage, watch the activity unfolding inside the stable. The simple,

Jan de Bray, The Adoration of the Magi (Detail)

Jan de Bray, The Adoration of the Magi (Detail)

Jan de Bray, Adoration of the Magi, 1674, Historisches Museum, Bamberg (Figure 1)

rustic interior depicted is in keeping with the traditional stable believed to have housed the Adoration of the Magi; for example, the stack of logs on the left foreground and the wooden beamed ceiling. In the right foreground there is an open barrel with material slung over the side, and the stick that lies below suggests that this equipment is used for washing. Standing behind the Virgin on the right is the bearded figure of Joseph. With his left arm he leans on wooden machinery, which possibly refers to his métier as a carpenter.

As the recent exhibition catalogue, Painting Family: The de Brays (see lit.) discusses, ‘Jan de Bray was one of a large family of painters living and working in Haarlem; his father, Salomon, was a successful artist, as were two of Jan’s brothers, Dirck and Joseph. The family worked together very closely, studying each other’s paintings, sharing advice, and maintaining an archive of the workshop’s production. A feature of this studio practice was that Jan and the other de Brays regularly made drawn copies of the paintings produced in the family workshop, drawings that served not only as archival records, but also as prospecti for future clients who might want to commission similar paintings.’

Painted in 1658, The Adoration of the Magi and the drawing made after it are examples of this practice in the family workshop. De Bray returned to the subject of the Adoration once again in 1674. Most likely using the preparatory drawing from the present work, he completed the larger canvas, which is now in the Historisches Museum, Bamberg (fig. 1).¹ The Bamberg picture depicts the Adoration from a somewhat closer viewpoint with almost exactly the same central figure grouping as the present work, and displays a more expertly designed and neater composition.

Though the two works are virtually identical, the face of the Virgin is notably different. In the present work she appears youthful, almost girlish, with softened curls and subtly coloured cheeks, whereas in the Bamberg picture the Virgin is depicted as older and the rendering of her facial features and gaze towards the infant Jesus references the work of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Furthermore, in the Bamberg version she wears a yellow scarf wrapped around her head and neck, whereas in the present work it hangs loosely around her neck.

Paintings by Salomon de Bray (1597-1664) and his son Jan have often been confused in the literature. The confusion originates in descriptions in old sale catalogues: for example the present picture appears to be the one sold as Salomon de Bray in 1773, and can be identified with greater certainty as the one sold as by ‘Jacob de Bray’, dated 1658, in the van Bergen van der Gryp sale in 1784. Von Moltke therefore listed what was probably the same picture in his catalogue raisonnés of both artists. To further muddle the situation, the

Jan de Bray, The Adoration of the Magi (Detail)

¹ De Bray also completed a similar scene depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds in 1665, now held in the Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery, The Hague.

Jan de Bray, The Adoration of the Magi (Detail)

Jan de Bray, Adoration of the Magi, Private collection, (Figure 2) present picture was sold at Christie’s in 1946 with an attribution to Gerbrand van den Eeckhout. A photograph at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistoriche Documentatie in The Hague records subsequent attributions: to Jan de Bray made by Horst Gerson; and to Salomon de Bray by Albert Blankert.

The question was resolved with finality when the connection between the painting and Jan de Bray’s signed drawing was published by Ariane van Suchtelen in 1997 (fig. 2).

De Bray worked in Haarlem for virtually the whole of his career, except for

Jan de Bray, Leading Members of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, 1675, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Figure 3)

the period 1686-1688, when he lived in Amsterdam where he helped to design a freshwater reservoir. As in Utrecht, most of the Haarlem painters remained Catholic unlike their Protestant counterparts in Amsterdam. After training with his father, de Bray began working as a portrait painter in Haarlem in 1650, an activity he continued for the next forty years. Between 1667 and 1684 he served on the committee for the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, whose leading members he portrayed in a picture dated 1675 - Leading Members of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, see fig.3, which includes a self-portrait (Jan is seen standing and drawing on the left). He married three times, in 1668, 1670 and 1672. His first two wives died a year after their marriage, his third two years afterwards, and in each case the death was followed by disputes over the inheritance. De Bray’s bankruptcy of 1689 may have been a result of one of the lawsuits. He was sixty-two at the time, and from then onwards he seems to have lost his artistic drive, crushed by the financial blow and the consequent loss of social position.

As a key figure in Dutch Classicalism of the seventeenth century, de Bray, like his contemporaries, drew inspiration from the same ancient writers and sources as the Italian artists of the fifteenth century. Working in the classical tradition, these artists emphasised harmony, proportion and balance in their compositions in order to present an idealised beauty.

Jan de Bray, The Adoration of the Magi (Detail)

ELIAS VAN DEN BROECK (Antwerp 1650 - Amsterdam 1708)

A Forest Floor Landscape with a Thistle, Fungi, Moths, a Lizard and Snakes oil on canvas 37.4 x 29.9 cm (14¾ x 11¾ in) Provenance: French Private Collection.

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Forest Floor Landscape with a Thistle, Fungi, Moths, a Lizard and Snakes is a fine example of Elias van den Broeck’s characteristic still life paintings of insects, reptiles and amphibians set amidst the flora of a forest floor. The work reveals van den Broeck’s expertise in combining scientific accuracy in observation with a harmonious balance of colour and composition, narrative and symbolism.

The arresting image of two snakes attacking each other, one opening its jaws to swallow the other, dominates the painting. They are intertwined around a thistle, at the base of which a menacing clump of fungi grows. A lizard creeps along the mossy ground and several butterflies flutter about, mostly congregating near the central purple flower of the thistle. The plant is spot lit and around it a dense forest recedes into the darkness. The composition is very similar to a painting by van den Broeck in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which is also centred on a flowering thistle plant with butterflies hovering and fungi growing nearby (fig. 1). The snake in this image has reared up ready to lunge at a grasshopper. A snail slimes its way along the ground and another settles on a leaf, while a mouse shelters in the foliage.

A Forest Floor Landscape with a Thistle, Fungi, Moths, a Lizard and Snakes, like most of van den Broeck’s paintings, has a definite narrative element, provided in this case by the interaction between the two snakes. The image reveals as much of an interest in representing the ways animals behave as recording their appearance. It is probable that van den Broeck’s selection of reptiles and plants was not made merely out of zoological and botanical interest, but because of their symbolic and religious associations. The lizard and snakes are the ‘abominations’ of the Old Testament: ‘And every creeping thing that creeps on the earth shall be an abomination...Whatever crawls on its belly, whatever goes on all fours, or whatever has many feet among all creeping things that creep on the earth’.¹ The snake has the added ignominy of being the recipient of God’s curse after the Fall of Man: ‘cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life’.² The thistle also has religious connotations, its spines being linked to Christ’s crown of thorns and therefore his suffering, sin and sorrow. The profusion of butterflies gives the painting a hopeful and redeeming note, not only in their brightness and beauty but also as Christian symbols of the resurrection.

The subgenre of reptile, insect and plant paintings, that the current work fits into, was developed by Otto Marseus van Schrieck (see inventory). In order to achieve greater realism, van Schrieck sometimes made an impression of the wings of butterflies and other insects into the paint, or attached them to the canvas. This was a technique also adopted by van den Broeck, to enhance the

beauty and permanence of his creations; however, in almost all cases the wings have disappeared and been painted in by a later hand.³ Van den Broeck was born in Antwerp, and moved at an early age to Amsterdam, where he was apprenticed to a goldsmith in 1665. He also studied under Cornelis Kick, a still-life painter, until 1669, after which he became a studio assistant to Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-1684), one of the most influential exponents of seventeenth-century Netherlandish still life painting.

It seems that van den Broeck followed de Heem when he returned to Antwerp in 1672, and a year later became a member of the guild there. In 1685 he returned to Amsterdam, where he settled permanently.

The present work has been examined and authenticated by Fred Meijer of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistoriche Documentatie.

¹ Leviticus 11:41-42 ² Genesis 3:14 ³ F. Meyer, 'Philip van Kouwenbergh', Oud Holland, LII, 1980, p. 320.

Elias van den Broeck, Still Life with a Snake, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Figure 1)

PAUWELS CASTEELS (Active in Antwerp c.1649 - 1677)

Joshua Stopping the Sun signed 'PAVWELS CASSTEELS' (lower centre) oil on canvas 85.1 x 213.2 cm (33½ x 83⅞ in) Provenance: The property of a Lady of Title.

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n this large and engrossing work, Pauwels Casteels has depicted the biblical story of Joshua commanding the sun to stop in the sky. At Gibeon, the Israelites, under Joshua’s command, were fighting against an alliance of Amorite kings, as part of the conquest of Canaan. The Israelites were winning the battle, partly due to God raining hailstones upon the Amorite army, but with the day drawing to a close Joshua commanded ‘Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon’.1 Thus sun stopped in the sky, and the day was prolonged until the Israelites could complete their victory over the Amorites.

Casteels has depicted the battle as a chaotic but compelling scene. The composition is a swirl of movement as the armies clash, and the panoramic nature of the composition helps to convey the scale of the battle. The exaggerated undulations of the landscape also contribute to the dynamism of the work, and on the hill on the right-hand side of the painting we see swarms of people fleeing from the hailstones. Amidst this chaos Joshua stands out due to his calmness and composure, appearing almost statuesque in contrast to the churning mass of bodies. Astride a magnificent white horse he appears heroic as he points at the sun, commanding it to stop its progress across the sky.

Unfortunately, little is known about Casteels’ life, although he is recorded in the 1650s by the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp. He is best known as a battle painter, and his works are noted for their crowded compositions which convey the frenzy of battle. A Siege of a Town is a comparable work, in

¹ Joshua, 10:12.

Pauwels Casteels, A Siege of a Town, 1668, Private Collection (Figure 1) that the initial impression is of a heaving mass of battling bodies. However, in both works closer examination reveals how many of the figures have been individualised and so the viewer becomes engrossed by the details of the scene. Joshua Stopping the Sun, is an exceptionally fine example of Casteels’ work, because of its compositional complexity and sophistication, which helps create such a powerful image.

JOHN CROME (Norwich 1768 - Norwich 1821)

A Wooded Landscape with an Oak oil on panel 23.8 x 18.1 cm (9⅜ x 7⅛ in) Provenance: C. A. Sparke, St. Andrew's Castle, Bury St. Edmunds; sold St. Andrew's Castle sale, Lacy Scott, 7-9 July 1927, lot 671 for 21gns; where bought by Vicar Bros; by whom sold for £400, 30th November 1927 to Frederick John Nettleford; by descent to his daughter, Mrs Balene; from whom purchased by 'a Gentleman'; by whom Sotheby's, London, 20 November 1985, lot 81, £6,600.

Literature: C. Reginald Grundy, A Catalogue of the Pictures and Drawings in the Collection of Frederick John Nettleford (London, 1933), vol. I, p. 186 (illustrated).

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Wooded Landscape with an Oak is as much a tree portrait as a landscape study, as the sensitivity and naturalism of the painting imbues the subject with a great deal of character.

The oak, ‘half giant and half sage’,¹ is portrayed as the guardian of the landscape, towering over the shrubbery and foliage around it and cutting a magnificent figure against the blue sky. John Crome, along with John Constable (1776-1837) (see inventory), was one of the earliest English artists to represent identifiable species of trees, rather than generalised forms. His works, renowned for their originality and vision, were inspired by direct observation of the natural world combined with a comprehensive study of Old Masters.

A larger but essentially similar study of a tree by Crome is The Poringland Oak in the Tate, London (fig. 1). In this work, a group of bathers are depicted in the foreground; the subject of the painting, however, is undoubtedly the stately oak. Crome’s later work reveals a growing interest in atmospheric effects, as indicated in the use of extensive shading in The Poringland Oak, which gives the impression of a slightly overcast afternoon, in contrast to the bright sunshine of A Wooded Landscape with an Oak. The differing tonalities have a marked impact on the overall mood of the paintings.

Crome was apprenticed to a coach and sign painter, Francis Whistler from the age of fifteen to twenty-two, after which he presumably continued to practise the trade as well as learning oil painting techniques. His early influences were the local artists William Beechey (1753-1839), John Opie (1761-1807)and Thomas Harvey. Harvey was a collector, as well as an amateur painter and had in his possession works by Dutch seventeenth-century masters such as Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691), Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/9-1682) and Miendert Hobbema (1638-1709) as well as English eighteenth-century artists Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) and Richard Wilson (1713-1782), all of whom influenced Crome’s artistic development. Crome married in 1792 and soon afterwards established himself as a drawing teacher. He was one of the founders of the Norwich Society of Artists in 1803, and of the Norwich school of painters. Although during his lifetime his works were often criticised for their unfinished appearance, they became highly sought after following his death. In a letter written by the Rev. W. Gunn just weeks after Crome’s death, he reports that people were ‘crazy for his pictures’.² Crome was an art collector and etcher as well as a painter, and he is credited with having been ¹ William Wordsworth, The Oak and the Broom, a Pastoral. ² Rev. W. Gunn to J. Flaxman, 4 May 1821; Cambridge, Trinity College Library.

John Crome, The Poringland Oak, c.1818-1820, Tate Gallery, London (Figure 1) at the forefront of the nineteenth-century etching revival in Britain. The large number of etchings that he produced help to establish a chronology for his paintings, none of which were signed. Crome’s sons, the most talented of whom was John Berney Crome (1794-1842), painted in his father’s manner and continued his teaching practice, although they did not achieve the same success as their father.

ABEL GRIMMER (Antwerp 1570 - Antwerp 1618)

An Allegory of Summer oil on panel 28.7 x 39.3 cm (11¼ x 15½ in) Provenance: Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 13 October, 1989, lot 51; with Richard Green, London; Dimitri Mavrommatis.

Literature: R. de Bertier de Sauvigny, Jacob et Abel Grimmer, Belgium 1991, p. 268, no. 28, reproduced in a colour plate 95.

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eeking shade from the fierce summer sun, a group of harvesters recline under the boughs of a tree sharing a simple meal of bread and cheese. The whole scene bustles with activity as a number of labourers still toil in the field beyond, gathering the carefully scythed corn into neat stooks. Men, women and children all lend a hand giving a sense of dynamic community to the work. A little child dressed in a white smock can be seen wrestling with a bundle of corn far too big for her to manage. Another young child sits in the shade, his back to the viewer as he thirstily drinks from the bowl of milk that has been set upon a spotless, white table cloth. In bare feet a man and a woman frame the activity of the harvesters’ merry picnic; the woman bending forward to eat while the man leans back to drain a flagon of ale. With their hats and scythes cast aside for the brief respite provided by their meal, this group stands in contrast to the hard work still going on behind them. A little dog mischievously sniffs the picnic basket next to his unsuspecting owners, who are oblivious to everything except resting their weary limbs and sating their hunger. This imbues the ritual of the harvest with a sense of light hearted realism.

Abel Grimmer, Spring, 1607, Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp (Figure 1)

Abel Grimmer, Summer, 1607, Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp (Figure 2) In the composition of An Allegory of Summer, Abel Grimmer creates a pictorial narrative aided by a subtle yet highly effective use of light and shade. In the left foreground, a shepherd dressed in a loose red tunic and virtually obscured by the shade of a tall oak idly tends his flock as they amble unhurriedly down the brilliantly sun-lit path. Three sheep pause at the bottom leading the eye at once to the relaxed picnic of the tired labourers. The stooks and the precise line resulting from the harvesters’ toil lead the eye further back into the recesses of the composition, to the horsedrawn cart and a cluster of paler silhouettes of the same foreground stooks.

Two farmsteads stand at the edge of the field, while beyond, blue-green woods line the horizon. In the very far distance a shimmering church spire can be seen, the creamy clouds tinged with pink vividly conjuring up the reality of the searing heat and windlessness of a perfect summer’s day.

Grimmer is known principally for his numerous small-scale paintings of country scenes, sometimes with biblical themes. Often his works form part of a series of the four seasons or the months of the year and no doubt this present work followed the same format. A complete series of the four seasons is held in the Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp, two of which, Spring

and Summer, are detailed here (figs. 1 & 2). As Reine Berthier de Sauvigny has suggested, Grimmer’s An Allegory of Summer can perhaps be linked to The Month of May¹ which is of approximately the same dimensions and stylistically highly similar.² It is also possible that this panel was painted as a single month and incorporated into a series of the full twelve months of the year. While the majority of these series are now dispersed, Berthier de Sauvigny identifies one complete set of twelve that was last recorded in Belgium.

The origins of the Flemish tradition of landscape painting on panel, as exemplified by Grimmer’s An Allegory of Summer, can be traced back to the miniature paintings of medieval manuscript illumination. The celebrated Très Riches Heures de Duc de Berry (c.1411-1416, Musée Condé, Chantilly, France) illustrated by the Limbourg brothers, provides a supreme example of such craftsmanship. It depicts the labours of the months within detailed, naturalistic landscapes for the first time in the history of art (fig. 3).

The same type of calendar decoration was taken up once more in

Abel Grimmer, An Allegory of Summer (Detail) Netherlandish art with the Da Costa Book of Hours (c.1515, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York) by the native Bruges artist, Simon Bening (1483/4-1561).¹ The importance of the innovations heralded by manuscript illumination in the northern Netherlands was not lost on Grimmer given that, in a fashion similar to the Limbourg brothers’ illustration of July, see fig. 3, he too includes landscape, architecture and a highly accurate iconography of the seasons. In An Allegory of Summer with Three Signs of the Zodiac (fig. 5), the season is made recognisable by the weather and the activities of the figures depicted. The signs of the zodiac in the sky also identify the time of year. Signs of the zodiac are rare in Grimmer’s work and do not feature in An Allegory of Summer. Their inclusion in An Allegory of Summer with Three Signs of the Zodiac, however, demonstrates his clear knowledge of the traditions and techniques of manuscript illumination.

An equally, if not more, important influence upon Grimmer’s works came from his predecessor and compatriot, Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c.1525-c.1569). Figure 4 is one of six panels by Brueghel the Elder designed for the home of the wealthy Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jongelinck. The series, which represented the seasons or times of the year, included six works, five of which survive.⁴ Brueghel’s unique sensitivity to rendering nature in all her glory marked a clear departure from his predecessors since he favoured suppressing the religious associations of earlier depictions of the seasons in favour of an unidealised vision of landscape.

Brueghel’s The Harvesters probably represented the months of August and September in the context of the series. It shows a partially cut and stacked field of corn, while in the foreground a number of peasants pause to picnic in the relative shade of a pear tree. Work continues around them Limbourg Brothers Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry: Juillet (July), 1412-16, Musée Condé, Chantilly (Figure 3)

¹ With Galerie R. Finck, Brussels. ² See literature: R. Berhier de Sauvigny, p. 264, no. 9, fig. 136. ³ A. van Suchtelen, Holland Frozen in Time, The Dutch Winter Landscape in the Golden Age, Exhib. Cat., The Mauritshuis, The Hague, 24 November 2001-25 February 2002, Waanders, p. 37. ⁴ The other four are: Gloomy Day, Return of the Herd, Hunters in the Snow (all Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), and Haymaking (Nelahozeves, Czech Republic, Roudnice Lobkowicz Collection).

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Harvesters, 1565, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Figure 4)

Abel Grimmer, An Allegory of Summer with Three Signs of the Zodiac: A Wooded Landscape with Peasants Shearing Sheep and Harvesting Corn, Private Collection (Figure 5)

as a couple gathers wheat into bundles, three men cut stalks with scythes, and several women make their way through the wheat field with stacks of grain over their shoulders. The vast panorama across the rest of the composition reveals that Brueghel’s emphasis is not on the labours that mark the time of the year, but on the atmosphere and transformation of the landscape itself.

Grimmer’s An Allegory of Summer has much in common with Brueghel’s exquisitely naturalistic setting of the same subject matter. In both, tired peasants can be seen resting from the summer heat under the shade of a tree while others continue toiling in the field behind. The strikingly similar poses of the exhausted labourers, their legs splayed out in weary abandon is of particular note in both works. The linearity of Brueghel’s cornfield is also a point of comparison. In terms of its rigid line and methodical composition, Grimmer borrows aspects of Brueghel’s style. In a number of other ways, however, Grimmer’s An Allegory of Summer is highly individual.

The graphic, detailed treatment of the features in the foreground of the work, such as the twisted tree trunk, dark foliage, sheep and undulating path, are distinctively his own.

There is a typically schematised quality to Grimmer’s treatment of colour and composition in the painting with bands of brighter areas juxtaposed with darker ones. The bright sunlit path of the foreground is set against dark foliage just as the shimmering golden cornfield is bordered by the deep blue-green woods on the horizon. Scarcely perceptible flecks of white on the foliage of the distant trees lend them a silvery quality which contrasts with the warm green, brown and ochre tones of the foreground foliage.

The artist’s progressive use of cooler, blue-green hues as the scene recedes into the distance derives from the tradition of atmospheric perspective prevalent in Flemish landscape painting, which was introduced by Joachim Patenir (c.1475/1480-1524). Not only does this technique serve to lend the work a greater depth, it also keenly evokes a palpable atmosphere of a tranquil summer’s day.

Grimmer was the son of his painter father, Jacob (1525/6-before 1590) whom the art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) considered one of

the finest landscapists of his time and of whom van Mander made the claim that he knew of no other artist who was so ‘outstandingly skilled in landscapes’.⁵ Jacob Grimmer was one of the first Netherlandish artists to break with the tradition of the mountain landscape pioneered by Patenir.

Instead he depicted broad landscapes of the Flemish countryside, as exemplified in his Four Seasons of 1575 which were executed ten years after Brueghel’s six panels of the months (fig. 6). Although Grimmer’s An Allegory of Summer is akin to his father’s Four Seasons both in its naturalism and close observation of nature, it is also individual in style and distinct from Jacob Grimmer’s panels.

Born in 1570, Grimmer became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1592. His paintings owe much to his father’s style as well as to Brueghel the Elder, as discussed above. Grimmer often copied prints engraved by Pieter van der Heyden (c.1530-1572) after designs by Brueghel and the artist Hans Bol (1534-1593).⁶ His series of the Twelve Months (1592, Montfaucon-en-Velay, Haute-Loire, Chapelle Nôtre-Dame), for instance, are exact copies of Adriaen Collaert’s prints after Bol.⁷ While he also painted church interiors and other architecturally inspired pieces, Grimmer is perhaps best known for his depictions of peasants at work or leisure in the outdoors as in An Allegory of Summer.

⁵ Vasari, G., Vite, 1550, ed. Milanesi, G., 1878-1885, vii, p. 586 ⁶ The series of engravings by P. Van der Heyden after Pieter Breughel the Elder and Hans Bol are at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Reproduced in A. van Suchtelen, Holland Frozen in Time, The Dutch Winter Landscape in the Golden Age, pp. 42-44. ⁷ Hollstein: Dutch and Flemish, iv. no's. 523-34 (published by Hans van Luyck, fl. c.1580-85, in 1585).

Jacob Grimmer, Spring, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (Figure 6)

GIACOMO GUARDI AND FRANCESCO GUARDI (Venice 1764 - Venice 1835) (Venice 1712 - Venice 1793)

A View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Island of San Giacomo di Paludo inscribed on the reverse in an old hand, possibly the artist’s own: ‘di S. Jacopo di Paludo di Venez[ia]’ oil on panel 17.3 x 25 cm (6¾ x 9⅞ in) Provenance: Sir Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, 1st Baron Hesketh (1881-1944), Rufford Hall, Ormskirk, Lancashire in August 1917; Thence by family descent to the previous owner.

Literature: Anon. compiler, Specification of Pictures and Furniture belonging to T. Fermor-Hesketh Esq., at Rufford Hall, Ormskirk, Lancashire, August 1st 1917, 'Two ditto by Guardi (very small) £200'.

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his beautifully serene depiction of the Island of San Giacomo in Paludo is, according to Professor Dario Succi, principally the work of Giacomo Guardi with the hand of Giacomo’s father, Francesco Guardi, discernable in parts of the staffage. The painting is executed in the style of Francesco and demonstrates the great influence Giacomo took from his father. The flat glossiness of the lagoon, the sketchiness of the buildings, the spirited brush strokes and the impressionistic feel of the paintwork resemble Francesco’s work. His characteristic style, known as pittura di tocco, was loose and informal, consisting of small dotting and quick strokes of the brush. This style, adopted by Giacomo, differed vastly from the linear, architecturally accurate approach of artists such as Canaletto (16971768), and gives the viewer a unique impression of life on the Venetian waterways.

The dominant feature of the painting is the church and convent of San Giacomo di Paludo, both of which were demolished in 1810. The church’s steeple surmounted by a cross stands boldly delineated against the warmth of the sky, whilst gondolas pass by on the murky waters, one about to dock by a wooden jetty that leads to the entrance of the church. The view is based upon Antonio Visentini’s (1688-1782) engraving of the same site, one of twenty islands featured in the Isolario Veneto.¹ The island takes its name from the church that once stood there, and is today known as San Giacomo in Paludo, and is located in the Venetian lagoon, between the islands of Murano and Madonna del Monte (fig.1).

The island’s name translates to ‘St. James in the Marsh’, an appropriate

¹ A second edition was published in 1777 by Teodoro Viero.

Photograph of San Giacomo in Paludo (Figure 1) name considering the church’s watery foundations. In 1046, the island was given to Giovanni Trono of Mazzorbo for the purpose of building a monastery dedicated to San Giacomo Maggiore, which was to serve as a stopping point for pilgrims. In 1238, the convent was passed on to Cistercian nuns who inhabited it until 1440, after which they moved to the Santa Margherita Abbey in Torcello. In 1546, the church complex was

uniformity of colour and tone in both paintings gives the impression that they were created with a wash. Areas of the composition are blurred and blended in a manner reminiscent of wet on wet watercolour painting, while other details, such as the sky, are more delineated and formed using a drier brush. Giacomo also employs methods such as scratching out, which is primarily associated with works on paper.

Giacomo’s interest in the contrast between light and shadow is evident throughout his oeuvre and gives his compositions a strong sense of form, compensating lesser embellished works. Although the architectural details in his gouaches, see fig. 2, are bold and outlined in black ink, these details are mostly omitted in his oil paintings. Instead of appearing bland and

Giacomo Guardi, View of the Piazza San Marco, Venice, The Courtauld Gallery, London (Figure 2) temporarily converted into a hospice, after which it was inherited by a Franciscan order. Despite its regular use and maintenance, the banks of the island increasingly eroded causing the buildings to decay. During the Napoleonic occupation of Venice, religious orders were suppressed, and the monastery, like many others, was demolished. From that point it was used as a military outpost, after which time the island became a munitions depot and in the nineteenth century, the Austrians, and then Italians, built a rampart on the site from which they controlled the navigation in the north Laguna. Today it lies in partial ruin.

Giacomo was primarily a painter in gouache, only occasionally venturing into oil painting. View of the Piazza San Marco, Venice in The Courtauld Gallery, see fig. 2, is an example of his work in gouache, whereas View of the Isola di San Michele in Venice in the Rijksmuseum, see fig. 3, like the present work, is a rare example of a composition in oil. The size of the panel in the Rijksmuseum is 14 x 21.5 cm, slightly smaller than the present painting, and both are typical of Giacomo’s minute jewel-like works.

What is evident in A View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Island of San Giacomo di Paludo, is how Giacomo appears to approach oil painting in a similar manner to painting with gouache or bodycolour, applying the pigment in as few layers as possible, which when translated into oils, endows the composition with a loose and fluid finish.

Elements of both the present painting and View of the Isola di San Michele in Venice display characteristics associated with watercolour. The Giacomo Guardi and Francesco Guardi, A View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Island of San Jacopo di Paludo (Detail)

Giacomo Guardi, View of the Isola di San Michele in Venice, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Figure 3)

featureless on account of this economy of colour and line, however the architecture is dynamic and expressive, and the reflection of the buildings in the murky water is just hinted at in order to give the composition greater depth. In both the present painting and the Rijksmuseum example, the opacity of the lagoon, as well as the overcast sky, adds to the mystery and romanticism of the Venetian view.

The figures in Giacomo’s oil compositions, made up of dashes and dots of paint, are striking in their simplicity and barely indicate details of clothing or hairstyle. This pared down approach allows the viewer to appreciate the entirety of the composition without focusing on the figures, as they are successfully integrated with the other elements of the painting instead of competing with them.

In A View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Island of San Giacomo di Paludo, the staffage, which is thought to have been painted by Francesco,

reveals the great range of expression and movement that can be conveyed with a bare minimum of delineation or variation in colour. The sparing use of white to heighten selected parts of the staffage, such as the oars of the gondoliers who gently navigate their gondolas and more utilitarian traghetti through the lagoon, is particularly effective. This method is replicated in Francesco’s painting View of the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in the Hermitage, which is a larger and more highly finished composition, depicting a busy scene on the lagoon and the grander and more elaborate building complex of San Giorgio Maggiore (fig. 4). Certain elements of the painting, however, particularly the way in which the vessels are depicted, and the posture and movements of the gondoliers are very similar to the present image, as is the presence of a fishing boat in the left of the panel, whose mast echoes the vertical line of the bell tower.

Francesco Guardi, View of the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Figure 4)

Giacomo Guardi and Francesco Guardi, A View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Island of San Jacopo di Paludo (Detail) Both Giacomo and Francesco’s style contrasts greatly with that of other prominent Venetian artists, such as Canaletto, who was noted for his precisely depicted views of Venice, which were painted for the tourist market and found particular favour amongst English collectors. They often record lavish Venetian public ceremonies such as Reception of the French Ambassador in Venice in the Hermitage, see fig. 5, which is a riot of colour and splendour, in contrast to the more subdued style of the Guardi family. The meticulously painted gondolas in the foreground of Canaletto’s painting, their oarsmen and the figures crowding around the Doge’s palace, of which every architectural detail is indicated, differ greatly from the impressionistic style of the present painting. A View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Island of San Giacomo di Paludo depicts its subject matter with vagueness instead of painstaking precision, yet manages in a few hasty brush strokes to convey the essence of the scene.

Giacomo was born in Venice in 1764, and was the son of Francesco, and grandson of Domenico Guardi (1678-1716), who founded the family workshop of veduta painting in Venice. The golden age of vedutismo, the art of painting Italian views of cities, towns, and villages, began in the

eighteenth century and the paintings produced were especially popular with travellers on the Grand Tour.

The business was inherited by Francesco and his older brother, Giovanni Antonio (Gianantonio) Guardi (1699-1760) (see inventory), one of the founders of the Venetian Academy. Francesco, now recognised as the last of the great Venetian vedutisti, spent many years working alongside Gianantonio painting altarpieces, and only began specialising in Venetian views around 1760. Though Francesco’s style was initially influenced by the other great Venetian veduta painter, Canaletto, he was also influenced by another Venetian painter, Luca Carlevaris (1663-1730), who may have been a teacher of Canaletto. Francesco’s cityscapes evolved to embrace a more free-handed style which created atmospheric effect.

Giacomo studied with his father and from c.1780 onwards painted numerous views of his native city, which were considerably influenced both in subject and style by his father. His paintings capture the picturesque beauty and atmospheric drama of Venice in an imaginative and distinctive fashion. Collectively, the Guardi family are often said to be the last true painters of the Venetian School in its classical form.

Canaletto, Reception of the French Ambassador in Venice, 1726/27, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Figure 5)

JEAN-BAPTISTE HILAIR (Auden-le-Tiche 1753 – Paris after 1822)

A Roadside Coffeehouse between Milas and Bodrum, Turkey oil on paper, laid down on canvas 16.9 x 27.3 cm (6⅞ x 10¾ in)

Provenance: anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, Paris, 25th June 2008, lot 91, as Jean-Baptiste Le Prince; with Agnews, London, by whom exhibited at TEFAF, Maastricht, as Jean-Baptiste Le Prince.

Literature: Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste, Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce, (Paris, 1782), vol I, pp. 151-152, pl. 94.

Engraved: Jean-Baptiste Liénard, Route de Melasso à Boudroun.

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his painting has long been misidentified as a work by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (1734-1781).

However, recent research has led to it being identified as a missing painting by Le Prince’s pupil Jean-Baptiste Hilair. It is executed in Hilair’s characteristic flowing brushwork, and is a fine and rare example of his Turkish work.

In 1776 Hilair travelled to the Mediterranean alongside Marie-GabrielFlorent-Auguste, Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier (1752-1817). Identified as a voyageur-philosophe in his official éloge, the Comte was not only a passionate antiquarian but also wished to examine and explain the political situation in the Aegean between the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia.¹ His subsequent book, Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce, ‘was a model of contemporary travel literature’, which was illuminated by engravings after paintings by Hilair, of which the present work is an excellent example.² In Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce the Comte discusses the scene in unusual detail.³ It depicts a roadside coffeehouse that the travellers encountered on their journey between Milas and Bodrum, where a Tartar messenger has paused for refreshment. This was a key point on the Comte’s exploration of ancient sites, as it is in the historic south-western Aegean region of modern Turkey. Bodrum was formerly known as Halicarnassus, site of the Mausoleum of Mausolus, one the Seven Wonders of the World. As the ancient capital of Caria, Milas is similarly rich in history, with a remarkable twenty-seven archaeological sites of note. In his text, the Comte praises Hilair’s ability to faithfully capture the detail of the scene, and exotic details such as the figures’ dress, the camels in the background, and the ramshackle nature of the

Jean-Baptiste Liénard, Route de Melasso à Boudroun, engraving after the present work (Figure 1)

Jean-Baptiste Hilair, Oriental Landscape, Louvre, Paris (Figure 1) coffeehouse which would have fascinated and appealed to a contemporary French audience. In a similar vein, Hilair places a camel prominently in the foreground of the Louvre’s Oriental Landscape (fig. 2).

Auguste Boppe, in his Les Peintres du Bosphore, considered Hilair to be the artist who best understood the Levant amongst the early Orientalists.⁴ As already mentioned he was trained by Le Prince, and although the present work reflects his teacher’s influence, especially its concern with conveying an exotic and alien culture, it is unquestionably in Hilair’s distinctive style. This is particularly evident in details such as Hilair’s treatment of trees, where the thin, sinuous branches can be seen both in this Turkish work, and his painting from his French period, such as the Louvre’s La Lecture. Hilair’s illustrations to Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce, contributed to the book’s huge success, and so when the Comte later became the French ambassador in Istanbul, he continued to employ Hilair. He also contributed illustrations for Tableai General de l’Empire Ottoman, by the Armenian Mouradgea D’Ohsson, and as Gaston Migeon has written, his work demonstrates a devotion to accuracy in addition to an unusual sensitivity to the beauties of the East.⁵ ¹ Dacier, B-J., ‘Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. Le comte de ChoiseulGouffier’, in Histore et memoires de l’Institut royale de France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres VII (Paris, 1824), pp. 175-176. ² Harris, W. V., Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005), p.263. ³ Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce, (Paris, 1782), vol I, p.152. ⁴ Boppe, A., Les Peintres du Bosphore au Dix-Huitième Siècle (Hachette, Paris, 1911), p.vi. ⁵ Migeon, G.‚ 'Peintres-Voyageurs en Turquie au XVIII Siècle: J.-B. Hilair,' in Syria (vol 5, no 3, 1924), p.256.

JOHN HOPPNER (London 1758 - London 1810)

Portrait of the Right Honourable William Pitt the Younger (1759 - 1806), Three-Quarter-Length, in a Black Coat, Standing before a Column and Gold Brocade Drape oil on canvas 114.5 x 144.5 cm (45⅛ x 56⅞ in) Provenance: The Marquesses of Londonderry; with Owen Edgar Gallery, London; sale, Christie’s New York, 11th January 1995, lot 235, where purchased by the previous owner.

Literature: E. Beresford Chancellor, The Private Palaces of London Past and Present (Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner & co, London, 1908), p.296.

H. Montgomery Hyde, Londonderry House and its Pictures (The Cresset Press, London, 1937), pp. 27, 57.

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n this three-quarter-length portrait of William Pitt the Younger, John Hoppner has painted an image of restrained elegance. The cut of Pitt’s clothing, his confident, upright bearing and the background column create a sense of reserved power that is heightened by the touch of opulence brought out by the gold brocade drape.

Pitt the Younger was one of Britain’s preeminent politicians of the late eighteenth and early ninetieth centuries. He served as Prime Minister from 1783 to 1801 and then again from 1804 to 1806. His father, William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, had also been Prime Minister. As a child, Pitt the Younger was extremely intelligent, though sickly, and is said to have expressed parliamentary ambitions at the tender age of seven. He attended Cambridge University at the age of fourteen and left three years later after taking advantage of a little used privilege available only to the sons of noblemen by choosing to graduate without passing any examinations. It was during his time at Cambridge that Pitt formed a lifelong friendship with the politician and leading protagonist for the abolishment of the slave trade, William Wilberforce (1759-1833). After the death of his father in 1778, Pitt received legal training at Lincoln’s Inn and was called to the Bar in 1780.

Pitt’s first unsuccessful foray into politics was during the General Election of 1780 where he contested, and lost, the University of Cambridge seat. However his second attempt proved more fruitful and, having gained favourable local patronage, he won the ‘rotten’ borough of Appleby in Cumbria during the 1781 by-election. Pitt came into his own as a politician, casting aside the withdrawn aloofness that had characterised his university days, becoming a respected parliamentarian and a talented debater. Like his father, he strongly denounced the American War of Independence and aligned himself with influential figures such as the prominent Whig statesman and radical, Charles James Fox, who would later become Pitt’s lifelong political rival. He was made Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Shelburne in 1782.

At the age of twenty-four, having rejected the post three times previously, Pitt accepted George III’s appointment and became Great Britain’s youngest ever Prime Minister; a position many felt he was too young to carry out. A popular ditty commented that it was ‘a sight to make all nations stand and stare: a kingdom trusted to a schoolboy’s care’. In two separate ministries Pitt served as Prime Minister for almost twenty five years. He died in office from liver disease and was unmarried, having also accumulated debts of forty thousand pounds. Parliament agreed to pay the sum on his behalf, and granted Pitt the honour of burial in Westminster Abbey.¹ A patriot, his last words are said to have been ‘Oh my country! How I love my country!’.

James Gillray, William Pitt, published by Samuel William Fores, 20th February 1789 (Figure 1)

Pitt’s time as Prime Minister was certainly momentous as he led the country through major events, including the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, regaining financial stability for Britain after the American War of Independence, and bringing about Union with Ireland. He also helped to define the role of the Prime Minister as the supervisor and co-ordinator of the various Government departments. Pitt resigned as Prime Minister in 1801 after he had lost the confidence of George III when the king refused to accept Pitt’s Emancipation of Catholics Bill, saying that his assent would break his coronation oath of loyalty to the Church of England. However, Pitt resumed the position once again in ¹ After his death in 1833, William Wilberforce was also buried in Westminster Abbey, close to his friend William Pitt the Younger.

Nathaniel Dance, Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford, 1773-1774, National Portrait Gallery, London (Figure 2) 1804, when Napoleon threatened invasion, despite his failing health, possible alcoholism and limited support in the House of Commons.

The present portrait is one of several versions completed by Hoppner of Pitt the Younger. Hoppner’s original portrait of Pitt (now at Cowdray Park) was commissioned by Lord Mulgrave and begun in 1804. It had not left Hoppner’s studio when Pitt died in 1806 as it was being engraved in mezzotint

by George Clint, and applications for copies were immediately submitted

by Pitt’s friends and colleagues. These were all made with the permission of Lord Mulgrave before the original left Hoppner’s studio. The demand was considerable and Hoppner himself is said to have executed 20 versions, one of which is the present painting. Still further replicas were painted by Richard Reinagle (1775-1862), Samuel Lane (1780-1859), John Rising (1753-1817) and John Jackson (1778-1831)² The provenance of the Marquesses of Londonderry is of particular note, given that Robert Stewart, first Marquis of Londonderry, was elevated to the peerage by Pitt as Baron Londonderry in 1789. He was later created Viscount Castlereagh on the 1st October 1795, Earl of Londonderry on the 8th August 1796, and then Marquis of Londonderry after Pitt’s death. Lord Castlereagh played an important role during Pitt’s attempts to reform the Irish Parliament and to bring about greater unity between Westminster and Dublin.

Interestingly, in this work, Hoppner has not focused on Pitt as a politician, rather he is presented as a distinguished and refined gentleman.

His parliamentary status is subtly alluded to as his right hand rests on the black and gold gown of the First Lord of the Treasury; an office usually, but not always, held by the Prime Minister. However, one can only see a glimpse of this gown, which seems to have been flung onto the chair. When one compares this portrait to those of other eighteenth-century Prime Ministers, we see how understated it is. For example in Nathaniel Dance’s (1735-1811) portrait of Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford the Prime Minister wears the gown over an eye-catching red suit and blue sash, thus more overtly focusing on Lord North’s affluence and his role as Prime Minister (fig. 2). ² see R. Walker, National Portrait Gallery, Regency Portraits, 1908, I, pp. 392-3

Due to his position, Pitt was frequently portrayed by artists. However, the sober mood of Hoppner’s work was a recurring theme in these depictions, as evidenced by James Gillray’s (1757-1815) etching, William Pitt (fig. 1).

Despite the fact that he invented, almost single-handedly, the genre of British political caricature, Gillray has provided a serious and sympathetic portrayal of Pitt. Although here Pitt is clearly much younger than in the present work there is still the same elegance in his demeanour, dress and surroundings. Pitt is shown looking into distance, possibly pondering on what is written on the paper in front of him. The writing desk and the paper are the most significant differences between this and the present work, and their inclusion reflects the image of austerity for which Pitt was renowned.

For a period, Hoppner was the most important portrait painter in England and the high status of his sitters reflects this reputation. During the 1790s, he was the principal painter to the Prince of Wales and produced works such as George IV as Prince of Wales (fig. 3). As in his portrait of Pitt, Hoppner has painted the prince as a gentleman in everyday dress, although his dark coat bears royal insignia. One major difference however, is that, whereas Pitt stands in a dark interior, the portrait of George IV as Prince of Wales is set within a landscape. This work is an example of how Hoppner’s landscape portraits were often painted with an almost abstract vigour, hinting to the future work of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) .Indeed, Hoppner was instrumental in advising Turner at the beginning of the latter’s career as an oil painter: Turner’s first exhibited oil, Fishermen at Sea (Tate, London), owes more than a little to Hoppner’s Gale of Wind (Tate, London).

However, not all of Hoppner’s portraits employ this simplicity of dress, for example George IV as Prince of Wales (The Royal Collection) is a far more extravagant work (fig. 4). The prince is dressed in the ceremonial robes of the Order of the Garter, a highly exclusive medieval order of chivalry. This is an image that reflects the sitter’s royal status. The huge velvet mantle, the hat’s ostrich feathers, and the glitter of gold are signs of the opulence and extravagance that one would associate with the sitter. The classical columns, in front of which George IV stands, further exaggerate the notion of grandeur.

This is an image of pomp, power and ceremony, themes which Hoppner only hints at in his Portrait of the Right Honourable William Pitt the Younger (17591806), Three-Quarter-Length, in a Black Coat, Standing before a Column and Gold Brocade Drape and George IV as Prince of Wales.

John Hoppner, George IV as Prince of Wales, Wallace Collection, London (Figure 3)

John Hoppner, George IV (1762-1830), when Prince of Wales, c.1790-1796, Royal Collection (Figure 4) Hoppner was born in Whitechapel to Bavarian parents. According to contemporary accounts, he was the most important portraitist in Britain in the period following the retirement of Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) (see inventory) in 1789. His mother was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III. During his time as a chorister in the Chapel Royal he was noticed by the King as a ‘Lad of Genius’ for his drawing ability. As a result he was sent to live with the keeper of the King’s drawings and medals and given a royal allowance. This preferential treatment led to later speculation that he was an illegitimate son of the King, although there is no evidence for this. However, Hoppner, who was attuned to the value of publicity, never discouraged the rumours.

Hoppner entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1775, winning the Academy’s silver medal for life-drawing three years later. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780 and two years later won the Academy’s gold medal for history painting, with a now untraced scene from King Lear. His marriage in 1781 resulted in the withdrawal of his royal allowance and so he began to support himself by painting works that were suitable for engraving, such as portraits of beautiful women. His early pictures are well drawn and broadly painted, resembling Johann Zoffany’s (1733-1810) life-size paintings.

By the mid-1780s, Hoppner’s brushwork was beginning to take on some of the freedom that was to mark his mature work, as exemplified in Portrait of the Right Honourable William Pitt the Younger. A greater reliance on scumbling and impasto is evident, and his palette becomes purer. His paintings were noted for their colour and it was unfortunate for Hoppner that, due to fashion trends, clothes were often restricted in colour to black for men and white for women. By 1787, he was well established as the prime successor to Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). In the 1790s he began painting close friends, drawing upon early sixteenth-century Venetian examples, which resulted in portraits set against a rich, dark background, executed with a sensitive appreciation for the qualities of the paint. He made widespread use of sfumato for his treatment of hair, fur and, occasionally, foliage, and his whites are applied with considerable energy.

During the 1790s, Hoppner was the preeminent portraitist in England, as Thomas Lawrence (1769-1788) was struggling to maintain his own spectacular successes of 1790; a circumstance that continued to be the case until the end of his life. Hoppner painted most of the prominent figures of the day, including Pitt, several members of the royal family, Horatio Nelson and

Pitt’s successor as Prime Minister, William Wyndham Grenville. Hoppner’s portraits were known for their excellent likenesses; the faces of his sitters are almost anatomically and structurally built up with paint, while his treatment of costume indicates a similar appreciation and understanding of the texture of each fabric. His best portraits are simply constructed and brilliantly executed with vibrant brushwork and luscious colour, with some of his quarter-length portraits providing remarkable psychological insights. Hoppner took over the broad brushwork of the mature Reynolds, but followed the fashion of the 1790s and early 1800s for more restrained compositional structure and simplicity in dress.

Hoppner was a regular traveller and sketcher in England, Scotland and Wales and only once travelled abroad when, in 1802, he visited Paris during the Peace of Amiens. During this sojourn, his exposure to Napoleon’s spectacular art collection in the Louvre profoundly affected his style. His work became simpler in composition and any exceptions to this stylistic modification are invariably due to the specific whims of his patrons. The masterpiece of his last years is Sleeping Nymph (1806, Petworth House, West Sussex), which depicts a reclining nude and an accompanying cupid in a lush landscape, is a picture that has been highly praised for its colouring.

The picture’s provenance, originating as it did with the Marquesses of Londonderry is of particular note. Robert Stewart (1739-1821), the 1st Marquis of Londonderry enjoyed a close friendship with Pitt the Younger and was one of the few people to be elevated to the peerage without inheriting any titles prior to his creation (fig. 1). He had represented County Down in the Irish House of Commons earlier and was created Baron Londonderry in 1789, Viscount Castlereagh in 1795 and Earl of Londonderry in 1796. On reaching this rank, his son took Viscount Castlereagh as a courtesy title. Robert Stewart was not created Marquess of Londonderry by King George III until after the death of Pitt the Younger. He sat in the British House of Lords as one of the twenty eight original Irish Representative Peers from 1800 to 1821 and played a pivotal role in Pitt the Younger’s attempts to reform the Irish parliament and in bringing about a greater unity between Westminster and Dublin. He was succeeded to the marquessate by his son from his first marriage to Lady Sarah Seymour. Stewart’s son, also named Robert, was styled as Lord Castlereagh and was equally influential in the politics of his day (fig. 5).

Sir Thomas Lawrence, Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (Lord Castlereagh), National Portrait Gallery, London (Figure 5)

adriaen thomasz. key (Antwerp c. 1544 - Antwerp, after 1589)

Portrait of a Bearded Gentleman, Bust-Length, in a Black Doublet with a White Lace Ruff, Painted Oval signed ‘ATK’ (in ligature) and dated ‘1574’ (upper left), inscibed ‘AETA: 48’ (upper right) oil on panel 75.6 x 60.3 cm (29¾ x 23¾ in) Provenance: Anonymous sale, J. Fiévez, Brussels, 3-4 July 1919 [=1st day], ‘Catalogue d’une collection importante de tableaux anciens & modernes dessins provenant de la Galerie du vicomte Jacques de la L. et autres provenances’, lot 121, illustrated, as Antonis Mor; where acquired by Jules Porgès (1839-1921), Paris; with Jacques Goudstikker, Amsterdam, by 1925 (where recorded by Max Friedländer), no. 1446, as Antonis Mor; looted by the Nazi authorities, July 1940; recovered by the Allies, 1945; Institute for Cultural Heritage, Netherlands 1946-2006, inv no. NK 1906, as Frans Pourbus the Elder; restituted in February 2006 to the heir of Jacques Goudstikker; their sale, Christie’s, London, 5th July 2007, lot 24, as Frans Pourbus the Elder.

Exhibitions: Utrecht, Centraal Museum, Kersttentoonstelling van werken van eenige oude schilderigen uit de collectie Goudstikker, 1925-1926, no. 17.

Literature: Christopher Wright, Paintings in Dutch Museums. An Index of Oil Paintings in Public Collections in The Netherlands by Artists born before 1870, (Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1980), p. 373, as attributed to Frans Pourbus I; Old Master Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue, Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (The Netherlandish Office for the Fine Arts), The Hague, 1992, p. 243, no. 2106, illustrated, as Frans Pourbus (1); Koenraad Jonckheere, Adriaen Thomasz. Key (c.1545-c. 1589) Portrait of a Calvanist Painter, (Brepols, Turnhout, Belgium, 2007) cat. no. A91, p. 116, illus. p. 298.

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his remarkable portrait of a forty-eight year old man, painted in 1574, is a fine example of the portraiture of Adriaen Thomasz. Key during the period when ‘he was at the height of his ability’ as an artist.¹ The sitter wears a black doublet with very little ornamentation, against which his starched white ruff stands out. Key has here imbued his subject with a palpable humanity, giving him a stronger presence than his otherwise plain features and clothing would suggest. The keen attention paid to the details of the man’s appearance, from the wayward strands of his beard climbing up his cheek to the lines on his skin and the shadows around his eyes, seem to be designed to kindle the viewer’s empathy for the sitter. Although the portrait has no Italian influence, the work recalls Leon Battista Alberti’s Renaissance ideal ‘that the art of painting harbours a divine force making those who are absent present...and raising the dead to life’.² It is only after recent cleaning that the present work can be securely attributed to Key. Before the Second World War, the painting had traditionally been thought to be the work of Antonis Mor (c. 1517-1577), who worked in Antwerp and who was clearly a major influence on his work.

Since the Second World War, whilst the painting was in the custody of the Dutch Government, an attribution to Frans Pourbus the Elder (15451581) had been assigned and generally accepted. Pourbus is an artist whose work is often confused with that of Key, and it should be born in mind that throughout the twentieth century Key’s monogram was obscured a layer of old and extremely dirty varnish. Despite this, the leading scholar on Key’s work, Prof. Dr. Koenraad Jonckheere, recognised the present painting on stylistic grounds as the work of Key, and published it in his 2007 monograph as an unsigned work.³ Now, after careful cleaning, Key’s monogram has been revealed and any uncertainty over the attribution has been dispelled.

Portrait of a Bearded Gentleman is an excellent example of Key’s bustlength portraiture, comparable to some his best work, such as Bust Portrait of Gillis Beys (fig. 1). In both paintings the sitters are dressed in very dark simple clothing, which merge with the black backgrounds. Against this darkness, the visages of both figures appear illuminated and heightened, so that the viewer’s focus is on Key’s exceptional rendering of his subject’s facial features. Both works demonstrate Key’s meticulous attention to

¹ Jonckheere, K., Adriaen Thomasz. Key (c.1545-c.1589) Portrait of a Calvanist Painter, (Brepols, Turnhout, Belguim, 2007), p. 40. ² Alberti, L. B., On Painting, ed. John R. Spencer (New Haven, 1977), p. 63.

³ Jonckheere, p.116, no. 91.

Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Portrait of a Bearded Gentleman, Bust-Length, in a Black Doublet with a White Lace Ruff, in a Painted Oval (Detail) in his larger, three-quarter length works, Key occasionally included extra, symbolic elements, to refer to a particular aspect of his subject’s character.

One such example is the Pushkin Museum’s Portrait of a Man, painted just a year before the present work (fig. 3). As is typical of Key, ‘objective and reserved, he explored every wrinkle and crack in the face and hands and sculpted anatomical relief, as it were, with light and colour’.⁵ Much of the work is reminiscent of Portrait of a Bearded Gentleman, and yet on the table beside him ‘money, a ledger, pen, compass, nutcracker and salt tub leave little room for doubt that the man in question was an international

Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Bust Portrait of Gillis Beys, 1571, Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp (Figure 1) detail, with each wrinkle and blemish carefully depicted. Both sitters have beards, a feature Key excelled in depicting because, as Jonckheere has pointed out, ‘Unlike Willem Key or Frans Pourbus the Elder, for example, whose portraits often closely resemble those of Adriaen Thomasz., the latter always painted a beard into a full mass hair by hair’.⁴ It is his patience and devotion to detail, so evident in these works. that make Key such an engrossing portraitist.

It is notable that the ruthless objectivity of Key’s portrayal of our anonymous gentleman was applied by the artist in all his commissions, including his most prestigious, such as his Portrait of William I (1544-84), Prince of Orange (fig. 2). In this work, of which there are three versions, Key does not attempt to idealise the prince but provides a realistic image of the slightly worn face of a middle aged man. William is wearing an embroidered gown and a calotte, or small cap, thus he is portrayed as a civilian, with no reference to his great military past. Although William is well groomed, as one would expect from one of his noble status, Key has not shied away from portraying the Prince’s thinning hair, furrowed brow, or the bags under his eyes. Key has composed Portrait of William I and Portrait of a Bearded Gentleman in a comparable manner, and both works they turn their heads slightly and look out directly at the viewer.

Although there is no great animation in either portrait their gazes are imbued with a restrained confidence. Such is Key’s skill that, although these gazes are almost expressionless, due to the depiction of the eyes, there is psychological depth to each figure.

Although the present work, like many of Key’s portraits, is relatively stark and free of iconography, so that the focus is on the sitter’s appearance

Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Portrait of William I (1544-84), Prince of Orange, 1579, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Figure 2)

⁴ Ibid., p.50.

⁵ Ibid., p. 77.

Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Portrait of a Man, 1573, Pushkin Museum, Moscow (Figure 3) dealer in spices’.⁶ Perhaps Key’s use of symbolism is most notable in the Prado’s masterpiece of 1583 Family Portrait, see figure 4, which contains the vanitas symbols of a skull and an hourglass. However, in when one compares these works which have elements of iconography, to the present work, they lack some of immediacy of Portrait of a Bearded Gentleman.

Such is the vitality which Key subtly imbues within his subjects, that the extra details feel almost distracting, and deride from the visual power of the portrait. Jonckheere has suggested that in the case of Family Portrait, Key has deliberately dulled the eyes of the father, one of a number of reasons he cites to suggest that the father may have actually died, and that this is a memorial portrait.⁷ This theory has yet to be proved, but in the context of the tremendous psychological depth which Key’s subjects generally have, the Prado’s father is conspicuous.

After having his legacy overlooked for many years, the work of Key is undergoing a rapid critical reassessment, and he can now be considered one of the most significant portraitists of his generation. He was trained by Willem Key (c. 1515-1568), and was part of his workshop for many years.

Traditionally it was thought that Adriaen was a relation of his master but it is now known that his family name was Thomasz. Adriaen only adopted the name Key after he took over his masters workshop in 1568, because of the advantages of aligning his work with a long-established and successful painter. In effect ‘He thus used the name ‘Key’ to brand his art’.⁸ ⁶ Ibid. p. 78. ⁷ Ibid. p.84. ⁸ Jonckheere, K., ‘Supply and Demand: Some Notes on the Economy of SeventeethCentury Connoisseurship’, in Art Market and Connoisseurship: A Closer Look at Paintings

by Rembrandt, Rubens and their Contemporaries, ed. Tummers, A. & Jonckheere, K. (Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2008), p. 72.

Although he art was firmly rooted in the tradition of Willem, Adriaen developed his own style, arguably surpassing the work of his master.

Although he is justifiably considered one of the great Antwerp portraitists, a genre which makes up ninety percent of his preserved oeuvre, he also painted numerous religious scenes in which he developed pre-existing ideas of Willem, and Michiel Coxcie (1499-1592). However, after Calvinists took over the administration of Antwerp in 1579, production of altarpieces ceased, and the demand for mythological or devotional work must have been minimal.

Although there is little biographical information on Key, it is clear that he was one of most talented and successful painters working in Antwerp.

The present work is evidence if a talent that has too long been neglected by art history, and is rapidly finding recognition and appreciation.

Portrait of a Bearded Gentleman, Bust-Length, in a Black Doublet with a White Lace Ruff, in a Painted Oval has a notable and turbulent provenance.

As yet, the earliest definite recording of the work is at the 1919 auction in Brussels, where it was purchased by Jules Porgès (1839-1921). Porgès was a wealthy Parisian businessman, who was a pioneering figure in the gold and diamond mining industries in South Africa. He retired from business in 1890, and devoted his remaining thirty-one years to building his art collection, which he housed in his Parisian home on the Avenue Montaigne. In addition to the present work, the collection included major paintings by Frans Hals (1585-1666), Joos van Cleve (c. 1485-c. 1540) and Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805).

The present work later came into the collection of Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940), one of the most notable art dealers of the twentieth century.

Between the wars he built a flourishing career as a dealer, based on rigorous scholarship, and he staged major exhibitions throughout Europe and America. However, in 1940 when escaping Nazi persecution, he fell down an open hatch on the SS Bodegraven and died. On his person was his famous black notebook, in which he meticulously recorded his collection.

The collection ended up in the hands of the Nazis, and after the war was given to the Dutch Government. It is only in 2006 that the paintings were finally returned to Goudstikker’s heirs, a task for which the black notebook proved invaluable.

Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Family Portrait, 1583, The Prado, Madrid (Figure 4)

COUNT MATTEO LOVATTI (Rome, b.1861)

The Russian Army Mobilising Behind an Observation Balloon signed 'M. Lovatti' (lower right) oil on canvas 56 x 79.5 cm (22 x 31½ in) Provenance: Sotheby's, London, 15 June 1995, lot 135.

Exhibited: Probably London, Fine Art Society, Catalogue of War Pictures in Various Lands by Matteo Lovatti, October 1917, no. 1., Cossacks.

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HE SHEER NUMBERS OF SOLDIERS RIDING ACROSS the vast landscape is overwhelming in this work. The figures are blurred and blend into the distance, thus the force and power of the Russian army is communicated, working en masse. Ahead of the troops an observation balloon floats in the distance. Count Matteo Lovatti II’s work depicts the Russian Army mobilising on the eve of The Great War (1914-1918). The subject can be identified due to the presence of the new flag of the Russian Empire, created ‘for private use’ between 1914 and 1917, which can be seen several times in the picture (fig. 1).

Flag of the Russian Empire ‘for private use’ 1914-1917 (Figure 1)

Although this variant of the Russian flag was never made official it was authorised for private use by Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918) during The Great War, adding the Romanov eagle on a yellow field in a canton in the top lefthand corner. The conventional Russian flag has changed its form throughout history; it was first used as a naval ensign for merchant and war ships and only became official in 1896. Possibly based on the Dutch tricolour, the flag continued to be used by the Russian Provisional Government even after Nicholas II was thrown from power in the February Revolution of 1917. It was not replaced until the October Revolution later that year. From that time onwards a red flag charged with communist symbols was adopted instead of the tricolour. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that the tricolour was brought back as the official flag of the new Russian Federation.

At the beginning of The Great War the Russians mobilised fielding 114 infantry and 36 cavalry divisions in what was called the ‘steamroller’, indeed it may be this formation which is depicted here in Lovatti’s work. An observation balloon, used for intelligence gathering and artillery spotting, can also be seen on the right-hand corner of the composition. The first time an aerial navigation device was used with absolute certainty was in sea-borne warfare at the Bay of Biscay in 1806. Although, Russian claims exist that a manned hot air balloon flight took place in November, 1731 when, allegedly, a Mr Kriakoutny flew a balloon made of ox-hides from Ryazan town square and landed in the church bell tower, where he was, apparently, beaten by superstitious peasants.

Experimentation with balloons was a feature of the work of the French engineers Jaques-Étienne (1745-1799) and Joseph Mitchel de Montgolfier (1740-1810) who, after years experimenting, launched their first public demonstration of a ballon in flight on 4 June, 1783. It was a decade later that

Late nineteenth century collecting cards depicting events from ballooning history, Romanet & cie., c.1890-1900, (Figure 2) a balloon was to become used for the first time as a military device. In 1794 a decree of the Revolutionary France’s Committee of Public Safety created the world’s very first ‘air force’, called the Compagnie d’Aerostiers. The force was able to launch a balloon for the first time in the history of warfare during a border fight with the Austrians on 2 June, 1794, at the siege of Maubeuge.

Thus the balloon and warfare now had a definite future and their destinies would be entwined for several centuries. Figure 2 shows two sets of late nineteenth century collecting cards, depicting historical events in ballooning and parachuting between 1783 and 1846.

Lovatti, born in 1861, was from an aristocratic Roman family, and inherited his love of art from his father who was an architect. Lovatti exhibited in his native city of Rome from 1877. The smallest of the family’s many grand residencies, the Villa Lovatti, Rome, is situated in the gardens of the Russian Ambassador’s residence, the Villa Abamelek.

Matteo Lovatti, The Russian Army Mobilising Behind an Observation Balloon (Detail)

NICOLAES MAES (Dordrecht 1623 - Amsterdam 1693)

Portrait of a Gentleman, Three-Quarter Length, in a Brown Tunic with a Red Cloak in a Wooded Landscape, at Sunset signed and dated ‘MAES. 1676’ (lower left) oil on canvas 54.9 x 46 cm (21⅝ x 18⅛ in) Provenance: with Leggatt, London, 1929; Sir William Ewert Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose (1879-1954), Hackwood Park, Basingstoke, by whom bequeathed with Hackwood to his son; Sir John Seymour Berry, 2nd Viscount Camrose (1909-1995); Christie's, London, 9 July 1999, lot 44, anonymous sale [The Property of a Gentleman], Sotheby's, London, 10 July 2003, lot 135; Private Collection.

Literature: L. Krempel, Nicolaes Maes, Berlin 2000, p. 318, cat. no. A 181, reproduced plate 249.

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n this accomplished portrait, Nicolaes Maes presents a confident young man with a disarmingly open gaze and jaunty demeanour. Although painted centuries ago, the portrait possesses a powerful immediacy and timeless appeal.

The sitter is posed nonchalantly with one arm akimbo and the other propped up against a mossy rock. His hair is worn long with luxurious curls falling below his shoulders which, matched by the brightness of his eyes, the smoothness of his skin and the hint of facial hair above his upper lip, indicate that he is a very young man. He wears a simple and elegant informal garment known as a vest in the seventeenth century. It fastens at the chest with decorative clasps, revealing his shirt underneath in a fashionably negligent manner. Dominating the composition is the gentleman’s requisite cloak which wraps around his shoulders, falling in luminous folds and lending him a classical air. The sitter openly aspires towards a romantic look in his choice of dress and hairstyle and in the dramatic nature of his surroundings. The grotto under which he shelters is appropriately dark, craggy and overgrown, and the ivy tendril climbing up the rock at the left of the painting adds to the overall lyricism of the scene.

Maes’ Portrait of a Young Woman in the Hermitage was painted two years after the present painting, and reveals similar choices in composition and palette (fig.

1). Maes’ portraits of this period clearly favour red, gold, brown, ochre and russet tones, all of which were very much in vogue towards the end of the seventeenth century. The young woman in the Hermitage portrait is posed against a backdrop of sumptuous red drapery, emphasising a soft femininity, while the surroundings of the present portrait suggest masculine vigour and poetic sensibility. In both works, Maes reveals the clear influence of Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) who decades earlier had mastered the skill of portraying his subjects with casual elegance and timeless grace by generalising dress details and focusing heavily on the lustre and richness of the fabrics.

Born in Dordrecht, Maes spent his late twenties studying under Rembrandt (1606-1669) and emerging as one of the Dutch master’s most talented pupils; Maes’ employment of colour, chiaroscuro and brushwork, particularly in his early paintings of religious and genre subjects, is clearly inspired by Rembrandt.

He settled permanently in Amsterdam in 1673, where he became a highly

Nicolaes Maes, Portrait of a Young Woman, 1678, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Figure 1) sought after artist. The contemporary biographer Arnold Houbraken (16601719) remarked, ‘so much work came his way that it was deemed a favour if one person was granted the opportunity to sit for his portrait before another, and so it remained for the rest of his life.’

A note on provenance: William Berry (1879-1954), created 1st Viscount Camrose in 1941, controlled the largest media empire of his day, owning the Sunday Times, Financial Times and Daily Telegraph, as well as other newspapers and magazines. In 1935 he bought Hackwood Park, built for the 1st Duke of Bolton (c.1625-1699) at the end of the seventeenth-century and altered by Samuel (1737-1699) and Lewis Wyatt (1777-1853) in the early nineteenthcentury. The heirs of the Duke of Bolton had let Hackwood between 1850 and 1935, so Camrose also acquired much of the original furniture and contents. This he complemented, continued by his son, John Berry, 2nd Viscount Camrose (1909-1995), with a fine collection of Old Master and later paintings, including most notably Van Dyck's Portrait of the Abbé Scaglia (National Gallery, London; inv. no. 6575).

GIOVANNI ANTONIO PELLEGRINI (Venice 1675 - Venice 1741)

Young Hannibal Swears Enmity to Rome oil on canvas 71 x 94 cm (27⅞ x 37 in) Provenance: Ruggero Sonino, Venice; Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, April 24, 1981, Lot 98; The Matthiesen Gallery, London.

Exhibited: London, Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd., The Settecento 1700-1800, 1987, no. 10, pl. 5.

Literature: R. Pallucchini, 'Novita ‘ed appunti per Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini', in Pantheon, vol. XVIII, 1960, pp. 247-248, reproduced; G. Knox, Antonio Pellegrini, Oxford 1995, p. 239, cat. no. P. 169.

‘When I come to age, I shall pursue the Romans with fire and sword and enact again the doom of Troy. The gods shall not stop my career, nor the treaty that bars the sword, neither the lofty Alps nor the Tarpeian rock. I swear to this purpose by the divinity of our native god of war, and by the shade of Elissa.’

- Silius Italicus, Punica, Book I, 114-119

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n this powerful work Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini depicts one of the formative episodes in the life of Hannibal (147183/182 BC), the famed Carthaginian general who is considered one of the great military leaders of antiquity. Hannibal’s father was Hamilcar Barca (c. 275-228 BC), commander of Carthage during their defeat to Rome in the First Punic War (264-241 BC). In the wake of this defeat, Hamilcar aimed to subjugate the tribes of the Iberian Peninsula. As Livy relates ‘Hannibal, then about nine years old, begged, with all the childish arts he could muster, to be allowed to accompany him; whereupon Hamilcar, who was preparing to offer sacrifice for a successful outcome, led the boy to the altar and made him solemnly swear, with his hand upon the sacred victim, that as soon as he was old enough he would be the enemy of the Roman people’.¹ This is the scene which Pellegrini has depicted, and he has opted to almost fill the composition with his figures, which focuses attention to the emotional relationship between father and son. Hannibal is depicted deliberately youthful and innocent, his face upturned to his father with an expression of naivety and awe. There is no hint of the great warrior that he will become. Hamilcar towers above his son, and looks down at

him with a fierce expression, as if to try and convey to him the importance of the oath. Although his son is only a child, Hamilcar has a strong grip on his arm, and this rough treatment suggests that if Hannibal is ready to take this oath, then he is ready to be treated as an adult. Indeed this moment can be seen as the start of Hannibal’s journey from a child to the great general who surpassed the achievements of the powerful warrior depicted here.

There is another version of the present work hanging over the doors in the former Antechamber if the Residenz at Würzburg (fig. 1). This version, along with its pendant Polyxena Led to Sacrifice,² is larger, but otherwise is almost identical with the exception of absence of the third halberdier at the extreme right-hand side of the composition. However, the Würzburg version is coarser in its handling, and less finely detailed, as would be expected from a work designed to be hung high up. The Würzburg picture probably dates to 1737, and the present version is commonly thought by scholars to predate this, although the date of execution is disputed. Rodolfo Pallucchini believes Pellegrini painted the present work c. 1731,³ although Bernard Aikema and Professor Alessandro Bettagno believe this date should be slightly later, c. 1737.⁴

¹ Livy, The War with Hannibal: The History of Rome from its Foundations, Book XXI, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt.

² Knox, G., Antonio Pellegrini (Oxford, 1995), p. 265, cat. no. P.509, illustrated plate 145. ³ Pallucchini, R., ‘Novita 'ed appunti per Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini’ in Pantheon, vol. XVIII, 1960, pp.247-248. ⁴ The Matthiesen Gallery, The Settecento 1700-1800, 1987, no. 10.

the same model as the young Hannibal. By using the technique of an upturned face, Pellegrini effectively conveys one figure’s subservience to the other. It also serves to underline the figure’s gaze and the pyramidal composition, and so places emphasis on the central figure in the narrative.

Pellegrini’s ability to arrange a composition full of clarity is one of the outstanding features of his art.

A notable feature of Young Hannibal Swears Enmity to Rome is the rich and vivid colouring used by Pellegrini. The palette is dominated by shades of yellow and gold, as the picture is flooded in warm light, which is enlivened with the large areas of deep red and blue that make up Hannibal and Hamilcars’ cloaks. This dynamic use of colour is often seen in Pellegrini’s work, another example being The Clemency of Alexander before the Family of Darius (fig. 4). The red, yellow and blue of the central figures’ costume immediately draws the viewer’s attention and helps them emerge from the muted background. The theatricality

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Young Hannibal Swears Enmity to Rome, Würzburg Residence, Germany (Figure 1) The emotional intensity of Young Hannibal Swears Enmity to Rome is heightened by Pellegrini’s theatrical composition. Emotions and gestures are expressed dramatically, which gives the work clarity of narrative. Similar techniques are in evidence in Achilles Discovered with the Daughters of Lycomedes (fig. 2). In that work the composition has been arranged so that the viewer’s gaze is immediately drawn and held by the figure of Achilles, holding a sword and disguised as a young woman.

The realisation and shock on Achilles’ face, as he realises that he has been tricked into revealing his identity is the central aspect of the work. As with Young Hannibal Swears Enmity to Rome, it is the emotional responses of the protagonists that seems to chiefly concern Pellegrini, and in order to focus attention upon this he ensures that his figures dominate the canvas, and discards superfluous details and background which could distract the viewer.

Hannibal’s upturned profile in the present work is a common motif in Pellegrini’s work. It reoccurs in many of his paintings, for example in the figure of the fiancé in The Continence of Scipio (fig. 3). In fact this figure, with his long hair and youthful appearance, seems to derive from

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, The Continence of Scipio, c. 1710, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio (Figure 3)

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Achilles Discovered with the Daughters of Lycomedes, The Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas (Figure 2)

of this colouring is bought to prominence even further by Pellegrini’s effective use of chiaroscuro. This skilful modelling of light is a feature in the present work but is even more in evidence in a painting such as Mucius Scaevola before Porsenna (fig. 5).

Pellegrini, together with Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) and Jacopo Amigoni (c. 1685-1752), was one of the finest Venetian history painters of his day. Credited with seamlessly melding the Renaissance style promoted by Paulo Veronese (1528-1588) with the Baroque of Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669( and Luca Giordano (1634-1705), Pellegrini enjoyed great popularity amongst the European aristocracy. He travelled widely around Europe executing elegant commissions to decorate the

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, The Clemency of Alexander before the Family of Darius, Musée de Soissons, Soissons (Figure 4) palatial residences of the wealthy upper classes.

Having trained under P. Pagani (1661-1716) in Venice, Pellegrini was invited to England in 1708 by the British ambassador to Venice, Charles Montagu. Whilst there he decorated the stairwell of Montagu’s London home in Arlington Street, which has since been destroyed. The following year, Pellegrini, along with Marco Ricci (1676-1730) who had also been invited over to England by the ambassador, painted the set designs for Alessandro Scarlatti’s opera, Pirro e Demetrio and for Giovanni Bononcini’s Camilla. That same year he received a commission from Charles, the 3rd Earl of Carlisle to paint the cupola, staircases and entrance hall of Vanburgh’s magnificent Castle Howard in North Yorkshire which was largely destroyed by fire in 1941. Employing the fashionable genre of mythological and allegorical paintings, Pellegrini created a dramatic version of the Fall of Phaethon for the cupola and used the walls for allegorical settings. Following this success at Castle Howard, Pellegrini was also called upon to decorate another of Charles Montagu’s residences, Kimbolton Castle. He adorned the walls with The Triumph of a Roman Emperor and a rendition of Minerva on the ceiling.

Minerva includes a portrait of the patron upheld by putti. Again, the light and radiant colours are indebted to Veronese; the scene of musicians playing a fanfare, painted in a triangular area, is brilliantly accomplished, both as an independent work and as part of the whole. Both of these frescoes represent the most important surviving British achievement with a spaciousness of design and a radiance of colour that anticipates Giambattista Tiepolo (1695-1770).

Other large-scale projects undertaken whilst in England include a series of mythological canvases originally intended for Burlington House, London which hang now in Narford Hall, Norfolk. Pellegrini worked with Sebastiano Ricci on this commission and together they produced Diana and her Nymphs Bathing.

Pellegrini was particularly successful in England and through his acquaintance with Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723) he assisted in the foundation of Kneller’s Academy in London in 1711 and also became a director. Pellegrini even submitted designs for the dome of the new St. Paul’s Cathedral and his design is said to have been Sir Christopher Wren’s (1632-1723) preferred choice. In the end Pellegrini was pipped to the post by the English painter Sir John Thornhill (1675-1724) who

received the commission instead. This anecdote in itself goes some way to demonstrate the great esteem in which Pellegrini was held. His rivals for the St. Paul’s commission included some of the greatest European artists of the day: Juan-Baptiste Catenaro, Pierre Berchet and Louis Laguerre (1663-1721) were among his competitors. According to the writer and antiquarian George Vertue, Sebastiano Ricci on finding out that the commission had been awarded to Thornhill, ‘left England once and for all when he found it was resolved that Mr. Thornhill shou’d paint the Cupolo of St. Paul’s’.

Pellegrini left England in 1713. Subsequently he was employed by Johann Wilhelm, Elector of the Palatinate in Düsseldorf for whom he painted The Fall of the Giants and The Fall of Phaethon to adorn the stairwell of the Elector’s Schloss Bensberg. He also completed a series of allegorical canvases to celebrate the Elector’s rule. These are commonly regarded as the apex of his achievement as a history painter. Pellegrini worked all over Europe, in Antwerp, The Hague, Würzburg, Dresden, Mannheim and Vienna. Following this extensive travelling, Pellegrini finally settled in Venice for the remaining years of his life.

In 1735 he was paid for the delivery of an altarpiece, St. Catherine, for the Santo in Padua, which is now in the library of the Santo. Pellegrini had an important collection of Dutch art, which, after his death, was acquired by the English consul Vivian Smith. His work was widely influential and played an important role in the formative years of Tiepolo and Giovanni Antonio Guardi (1699-1760).

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Mucius Scaevola before Porsenna, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Venice (Figure 5)

JUSEPE DE RIBERA (Játiva, Valencia 1591 - Naples 1652)

The Philosopher Thales oil on canvas 126 x 94 cm (50 x 37 in) Provenance: Probably commissioned by Don Fernando Enríquez Afán de Ribera, 3rd Duke of Alcalá and Viceroy of Naples (1583-1637); Maria Letizia Bonaparte, ‘Madame Mère’ (1750-1836), Palazzo Bonaparte, Via del Corso, Rome; with her collection acquired en bloc by John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury (1791-1852), Alton Towers, Staffordshire, 1829; by whom bequeathed to his cousin Bertram Arthur Talbot, 17th Earl of Shrewsbury (1832-1856), Alton Towers, Staffordshire; his posthumous sale, Christie’s, on the premises, 8 July 1857 (2nd day), lot 164, ‘Archimedes, Capitally painted’ (£8-18s-6d); where purchased by John Upton Gaskell (1804-1883), Ingersley Hall, Cheshire; by descent to Ann Theodora Gaskell (1844-1923), Ingersley Hall, Cheshire; purchased in 1933 by Denys Eyre Bower (1905-1977), Crich, and Chiddingstone Castle, Kent (from 1955); Sotheby’s, London, Old Master Paintings and Drawings, 26th February 1958, lot 32, as ‘Archimedes’ (unsold); Christie's, London, Old Master Pictures, 5th August 1977, lot 121 (unsold) Denys Eyre Bower Bequest, Chiddingstone Castle, Kent.

Exhibited: On Loan to the Derby Art Gallery, Derbyshire, 1938-1952.

Literature: Rhodes, Ebenezer, The Derbyshire Tourist’s Guide and Travelling Companion (London, 1837), p. 271; Waagen, Gustav Friedrich, Works of Art and Artists in England (John Murray, London, 1838), vol. III, p.254; Waagen, Gustav Friedrich, Treasures of Art in Great Britain (John Murray, London, 1854), vol III, p.385; Derby Evening Telegraph, Thursday, March 24, 1938, p. 6; A Short Guide to Chiddingstone Castle and Its Collections (1973), p. 14.

“Western philosophy begins with Thales” - Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy, 1945

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n this striking, recently re-discovered work, Thales of Miletus, a figure often regarded as the first philosopher, glances up from his work to meet the viewer’s gaze. Despite his neatly cropped hair and beard, he is dressed in layers of ragged and torn cloths.

He has been studying the scroll of paper in his left hand, upon which are numerous geometrical diagrams, and his right hand rests upon an hour glass. Although the room is dark, an intense light floods in from the left hand side. This expert modelling of light helps give elements, such as the scroll, an almost tangible quality, whilst the brilliantly rendered right sleeve feels almost sculptural.

The present work is one of numerous ‘beggar-philospher’ pictures produced by Jusepe de Ribera and his studio during the 1630s. The origin of these works relate to a commission undertaken by Ribera for Don Fernando Enríquez Afán de Ribera, 3rd Duke of Alcalá (1583-1637), see figure 1, when the latter was viceroy of Naples between 1629 and 1632. The commission was for a series depicting philosophers from antiquity, and such was the success of the series, because of the originality of the works and the prestige of the Duke of Alcalá, that numerous replicas were commissioned from Ribera and his studio. Perhaps the most notable of these replicas are a series of six commissioned directly from Ribera by Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein (1611-1684) in 1636.¹ The original Alcalá series has long been dispersed, and scholars continue to try to discern the originals from the numerous replicas by Ribera and his studio. Although previously unaware of the present work, Professor Nicola Spinosa believes that it may have formed part of this original Alcalá series.

Prior to the present work’s rediscovery, he has always proposed that a work ¹ Felton, C., ‘Ribera’s ‘Philosophers’ for the Prince of Liechtenstein’, in The Burlington Magazine (vol. 128, no. 1004, November 1986), pp. 785-789. This commission was originally for twelve philosophers, but Ribera only completed six and so this series lacks a depiction of Thales.

Medal of Don Fernando Enríquez Afán de Ribera, 3rd Duke of Alcalá (1583-1637), 1630, Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid (Figure 1) formerly with the Galeria Caylus in Madrid, was the most likely candidate for the primary version of Thales (fig. 2).² However, there are significant discrepancies between the size of the Caylus version and other works thought ² Spinosa, N., Ribera: l’Opera Completa (Naples, 2006), p. 296, no. A89.

Jusepe de Ribera, Thales, Private Collection (Figure 2) to have formed the original Alcalá series. For example, the Caylus Thales measures 117.5 x 95 cm, whereas The Getty Museum’s Euclid, see figure 3, or the unknown philosopher in the Kress Collection, both of which Spinosa thinks were probably part of the Alcalá series, measure 124.9 x 92.1 cm and 129 x 91 cm, respectively.³ The present work measures a comparable 126 x 94 cm, and this, taken in conjunction with its exceptional quality, suggests that it may well be the primary and original version of Thales. This theory is given further credence by a recent examination of the work using infra red photography, which revealed that Ribera made some changes to the composition as he worked, particularly in the right hand and left shoulder, and there is evidence of drawing lines in some areas of the face. These type of late changes suggest that the present work may have been Ribera’s first rendering of the composition of, and therefore part of the original Alcalá series.

The debate over the reconstruction of this series is a complicated one, and even extends to how many works the original series consisted of. In their studies of Alcalá’s inventory, Jonathan Brown and Richard Kagan found reference to four philosophers by Ribera.⁴ However, the inventory is frustratingly vague in places and there are several other works recorded that could well have Ribera philosophers. Other scholars have argued that a series of six, formerly in the collection of Conte Matarazzo di Locosa, provide ³ Ibid., no. A88 and A87. ⁴ Brown, J. & Kagan, R. L., ‘The Duke of Alcalá: His Collection and its Evolution’ in The Art Bulletin, vol. 69, no. 2 (June 1987), pp. 231-255. ⁵ Spinosa, 2006, p. 293. ⁶ Ibid., 2006., p.297. ⁷ Sold Christie’s, London, 15th July 1977, lot 16 as Pythagoras. ⁸ NG 83. ⁹ See Neopolitan Baroque and Rococo Paintings, exh. cat. Barnard Castle, 1962, ed. T. E. Waterhouse.

an accurate visual record of the Alcalá series, whereas Spinosa believes that Ribera painted twelve originals.⁵ In addition to the present work and the Caylus Thales, there are several further versions of the composition recorded, including an autograph work in a Parisian private collection,⁶ a work formerly in the collection of Oscar Falkman,⁷ two inferior copies, one of which is in the Scottish National Gallery, as attributed to Pietro Novelli,⁸ and another recorded in the collection of the Earl of Wemyss, as Galileo.⁹ The 3rd Duke of Alcalá was part of the most important collecting family of Seville, at a time when the city was one of Europe’s greatest centres of learning and wealth, the gateway for all Spanish trade with the American colonies. Successive generation of the family had filled their ancestral home, the famed Casa de Pilatos, with an extraordinary collection of tapestries, holy relics, ancient coins, books and antique sculptures. Fernando Enríquez, the 3rd Duke, expanded the Casa de Pilatos to include a new library and picture gallery, with ceiling decorations by Francisco Pacheco (15641644), who also advised him on his art purchases. The Duke was sent to Rome in 1625 as Spanish Ambassador to the Papacy, where he may first have encountered Ribera’s art in prominent Roman collections. On his arrival in Naples in 1629, Alcalá became one of the artist’s main clients, commissioning, amongst other works, the famous depiction of a bearded woman in Magdalena Ventura with her Husband and Son (Museo Fondación Duque de Lerma, Toledo) and the series of Twelve Philosophers to which the present painting may have belonged. The Duke returned to Spain in 1631, and Pacheco writes almost reverentially of the newly acquired collection of Riberas, saying ‘Such is Jusepe de Ribera’s manner of painting that among all the great paintings owned by the duke of Alcalá his figures and heads appear alive, while the rest seem only painted’.¹⁰ In the early part of the nineteenth-century the painting was in the collection of Maria Letizia Bonaparte (1751-1836), mother of Napoleon, often known as ‘Madame Mère’. Letizia was born in Corsica, and married Carlo Bonaparte when she was thirteen. Her husband died when she was thirty-five, but they had thirteen children, many of whom were created monarchs by her eldest son Napoleon. After Napoleon’s ascendance to power she was declared ‘Madame Mère de l’Empereur’, and she moved to Rome in 1815. Here she lived in the Palazzo D’Aste-Bonaparte, and was chiefly accompanied by her younger brother, Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763-1839), himself a famous art collector. Where exactly she acquired the present work from is less clear. Much of her collection came to her from another of her sons Lucien (1775-1840), a discerning but extremely active collector. However, the present work does not occur in Lucien’s 1808 inventory, or in any of the famous sales of his pictures held in 1814, 1815 and 1816.¹¹ Nicholas Turner suggests that Lucien may have purchased paintings after 1816 which he then passed onto his mother, but at present this remains speculative.¹² In 1829 John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury (1791-1852) visited Rome and purchased almost the whole of Madame Mère’s collection (the remainder, mostly family portraits, were left to Cardinal Fesch). The Earl of Shrewsbury hung his newly acquired collection in Alton Towers, the stately home his father had begun building in 1801, where it was seen by the famous art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794-1868), who described the present work as ‘of powerful effect and great excellence in the execution’.¹³ Alton ¹⁰ Pacheco, F. Arte de la Pintura, 1649, ed. Bonaventura Bassegoda i Hugas (Cátedra, Madrid, 1990) p. 441. ¹¹ There is one Ribera painting of Archimedes recorded in Lucien Bonaparte’s collection, but an engraving reveals this to be the painting today in the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts (inv. no. 1925.116). ¹² Turner, N., in Laing, A. (ed.), Cleric and Connoisseurs: The Reverend Matthew Pilkington, the Cobbe Family and the Fortunes of an Irish Art Collection through Three Centuries, (London, 2001), p.239. ¹³ Waagen, G. F., Works of Art and Artists in England (John Murray, London, 1838), vol. III, p.254.

Jusepe de Ribera, Euclid¸c. 1630-1635, J. Paul Getty Museum, California (Figure 3) Towers and its collections were inherited in 1852 by the 16th Earl’s cousin, Bertram Talbot (1832-1856). However, the 17th Earl died just four years later, leaving no direct heirs, and the contents of the house were soon sold at an enormous auction held on the premises in 1857.

The present work was purchased at the Alton Towers Sale by John Upton Gaskell (1804-1883) of Ingersley Hall, Cheshire and passed by descent until 1933 when it was acquired by Denys Eyre Bower (1905-1977), an antiques collector and dealer. In 1955 Bower purchased Chiddingstone Castle in Kent in order to display his extensive and varied collection to the public. When he died Bower left Chiddingstone and its contents as a public museum, where the present work has remained, unrecognised and unrecorded.

The identification of the various philosophers has long been a matter of debate amongst scholars. The vast majority of the paintings bear no inscription, but as Delphine Fitz Darby has written ‘they had properties no less carefully selected than were the distinguishing symbols of the Saints. Apparently these attributes were intended to identify the historical persons whom the artist was charged to revive for the delectation of erudite patrons...No doubt the ¹⁴ Fitz Darby, D., ‘Ribera and the Wise Men’ in The Art Bulletin, vol. 44. No. 4 (Dec., 1962), pp. 280-281. ¹⁵ For an illustration of the inscribed version of Thales see Spinosa, 2006, p. 297. For Archimedes see, Spinosa, N., Ribera: La Opra Completa (Madrid, 2008), p. 366, no.

A104 . ¹⁶ Boyer, C. B., A History of Mathematics, (New York, 1991), p. 43. ¹⁷ Salas, C. G., ‘Elements of a Ribera’, in Getty Research Journal, no. 1, 2009, p.17.

Philosophers could be named by their original owners, but, passing from one collection to another...they ceased to be easily recognizable’.¹⁴ Luckily the depictions of Thales and Archimedes are the two philosophers that can be most securely identified. This is because although the original paintings bear no inscriptions, another version of each, both of which were previously in the Marquis de Remisa’s collection, have inscriptions identifying the subject.¹⁵ The two attributes Thales holds in the present work would reinforce this identification. On the scroll are various geometrical diagrams. Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. Due to Thales’ Theorem he has also been hailed as the first true mathematician and is the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed.¹⁶ Charles G. Salas has demonstrated, in a discussion of the Getty’s Euclid, that although ‘Ribera’s geometrical lettering is incomplete, imprecise, and sometimes bizarre...The diagrams, by contrast, are carefully drawn and identifiable’.¹⁷ In this context it is interesting to note that the middle diagram on Thales’ scroll could relate to Thales’ Theorem being used to construct a tangent.

The other attribute Thales holds is the hourglass, a common symbol of death. For several of his philosopher portraits, it is believed that Ribera drew upon Diogenes Laërtius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosphers of Antiquity.¹⁸ In his passage on Thales’ life, Diogenes says the following: ‘He held there was no difference between life and death. “Why then,” said one, “do you not die?”

“Because,” said he, “there is no difference.”’¹⁹ The light touch with which Thales handles the symbol of death seems to reflect this almost indifferent attitude to his mortality.

Portrayals of ‘beggar philosophers’ were a genre in their own right, which was already flourishing at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Although artists as diverse as Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Salvator Rosa (16151673) produced these ‘beggar philosopher’ portraits, it was Ribera who had the most success in the genre. Steven N. Orso describes the type as ‘rough, plebeian figures, dressed in tattered garments, pursuing their intellectual inquiries with neither benefit of, nor concern for, material comforts of any sort’.²⁰ These series responded to a widespread tradition throughout Catholic Europe, in particular concerning trends of an ethical nature and the social remits of ‘neo-stoic’ doctrines drawn up above all in Roman circles and based on a review and adaptation of the recent Christian ‘counter-reformation’ tenets of the philosophical currents of the ancient stoicism of Greek origin.

For example if we consider the Prado’s version of Democritus, see figure 4, the importance of the teachings of Seneca become apparent. When describing Democritus’ development into a beggar philosopher, Seneca says that ‘Democritus, considering riches to be a burden to the virtuous mind, renounced them’.²¹ This follows the central theme of Stoicism, that the virtuous man lives in harmony with nature, achieving virtue by cultivating reason and developing the fortitude and self-control necessary to resist being distracted by destructive emotions. Things not essential to living in accordance with nature were considered unnecessary and in poverty a beggar philosopher could exercise the logic and good judgment that would enable him to virtuously overcome emotion and temptation.

The present work is an excellent example of these ‘beggar philosopher’ works, notable for its exceptional quality. In some of the series, there is a more sombre mood. Some of the philosophers, such as Archimedes do not ¹⁸ Pérez Sánchez, A. E. and Christiansen, E., ‘Aristotle’, in Jusepe de Ribera: 15911652, exh. cat. eds. Pérez Sánchez, A. E., & Spinosa, N. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1992), p.116, no. 40. ¹⁹ Diogenes Laërtius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosphers of Antiquity, trans. Robert Drew Hicks (Harvard University Press, 1942, 1: 35. ²⁰ Orso, S. N., ‘On Ribera and the “Beggar Philosophers”’ in Art in Spain and the Hispanic World, ed. Schroth, S. (London, 2010), p. 87. ²¹ Seneca, De Providentia, VI, 2.

In 1616, Ribera moved to Naples where he spent the rest of his life. His reputation was quickly secured in Naples and he began executing commissions for important patrons such as Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Viceroy of Naples, the 3rd Duque de Osuna. Ribera became renowned as an engraver as well as a painter and achieved considerable financial success in both media. Throughout the following decades his prestige grew and he was awarded major commissions in Naples and elsewhere. Several of his paintings were sent to Spain and although Ribera never returned to his homeland, he strongly identified as a Spanish artist, frequently signing his paintings ‘hispanus’. In the 1640s, his health began to deteriorate and he fell into economic difficulties. Ribera continued to paint, with the assistance of a large workshop, until his death in 1652. He exerted considerable influence in Italy and Spain and was known through his paintings and prints as far as central and northern Europe. His students included Francesco Fracanzano (1612-1656), Aniello Falcone (1607-1656), Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) and Luca Giordano (c.1632-1705) and his work directly inspired many others.

We are grateful to Professor Nicola Spinosa, who has confirmed the attribution to Ribera, and states that "...because of its dimensions [it] may be the original that was part of the series painted for Alcala when he was the Viceroy in Naples."

Jusepe de Ribera, Democritus, c. 1630, The Prado, Madrid (Figure 4) meet the viewer’s eye, whereas others, such as Crates, see figure 5, appear stern and severe, as he glares at the viewer from the gloom. In contrast Thales comes across as an appealing figure, as he invites the viewer to share in his thoughts. Such is the quality of execution, that the present painting is a valuable and exciting addition to the series. As Felton has said ‘Through his creative and technical genius, Ribera has realised in this series of Philosophers, images of great power and individuality’.²² The famed Ribera was born the second son of a shoemaker in Valencia.

He may have studied with the city’s leading artist, Francisco Ribalta (c.15651628), but the documentation of his early life is sketchy and imprecise. By 1611 his presence was recorded in Parma, two years later, at the age of twentyone, he was in Rome attending the Accademia di S. Luca. So precocious was his talent, that an early biographer, Giulio Mancini, suggests that it was the jealously of the local artists which prompted him to leave Parma for Rome.

Here he encountered the paintings of Carravagio, the most important artist working in that city, whose naturalism and dramatic lighting had a clear and significant impact on the Spaniard’s style. ²² Felton, p. 789.

Jusepe de Ribera, Crates, 1636, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (Figure 5)

FRANz ALEKSEEVICH ROUBAUD (Odessa 1856 - Munich 1928)

Lone Cossack Horseman signed and dated ‘F Roubaud/93’ (lower right) oil on board 18 x 13.5 cm (7 x 5¼ in)

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his poignant and evocative painting shows a centrally positioned Cossack horseman facing directly towards the viewer, as if formally posing for his portrait. In his right hand he holds a long staff whilst he grips the reins of the horse with the other, a weapon tucked neatly into his tunic, showing a proud and commanding stance. Franz Alekseevich Roubaud chooses to focus entirely on the horseman and leaves the surrounding landscape unfinished with sketchy brushstrokes, whilst the features of the horse and rider are finer and more detailed. The weather-beaten face of the rider suggests a lifetime of hard commitment, while the horse appears weary, his head bowed in rest.

The rider wears a blue tunic with yellow shoulder straps, possibly identifying him as an Astrakhan Cossack. The Astrakhan Cossacks were established in 1750 to patrol the lower banks of the Volga from Astrakhan to Cherniy Yar. Ashtrakan lies on the Volga River in southern Russia and the city is the administrative centre of Astrakhan Oblast, a federal subject or oblast of Russia.

Astrakhan Cossacks such as the one in Lone Cossack Horseman took part in both the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Russo-Turkish conflicts throughout the nineteenth century. They were frequently portrayed in paintings to epitomise the successes of Russian Imperialism on her closest frontiers.

The Cossack horses, though smaller than their regular cavalry counterparts, were frequently used by the regular cavalry due to their robustness. The saddle was attached to the horses back by two large girths and the Cossacks’ possessions were stored in the saddle bag. However, the harness had no bit, thereby allowing the horse to eat whenever it wanted to.

Roubaud was born in Odessa in 1856. At the age of twenty one he moved to Munich to study under the genre painters Carl von Piloty (1826-1886) and Otto Seitz (1846-1912). In 1881, after having travelled to Paris and the South of France, Roubaud began his studies at a private school run by the famous Polish battle painter Josef von Brandt (1841-1915). Von Brandt particularly

Josef von Brandt, Cossack on Duty, Private Collection (Figure 1) favoured historical Cossack subject-matter, and no doubt this made a lasting impression on the young Roubaud (fig. 1).

Only two years later Roubaud received a commission from the Russian government to travel through the Caucasus and in 1885 he executed a series of history paintings for the Hall of Fame in Tiflis. It was during this period working in the Caucasus that Roubaud would have completed Lone Cossack Horseman. Besides monumental history paintings, Roubaud also produced a number of works depicting the people of the Caucasus region hunting, fighting and travelling. In 1913 he left Russia for Munich, where he died on 13 March, 1928.

OTTO MARSEUS VAN SCHRIECK (Nijnegen 1619/20? - Amsterdam 1678)

A Sottobosco with an Aspic Viper, Sand Lizard, Tree Frog, Moths and Fungi signed and dated ‘O/MARSEUS. 1660’ (lower centre) oil on canvas 51.5 x 42 cm (20¼ x 16½ in) Provenance: Private Collection, Germany.

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Sottobosco with an Aspic Viper, Sand Lizard, Tree Frog, Moths and Fungi is a particularly fine example of the forest floor still life (or sottobosco) which Otto Marseus van Schrieck pioneered. Van Schrieck depicts a dark, dank forest floor, and there is a sense of oppressive humidity.

It is a relatively forbidding scene due to the gloom, and the underlying threat associated with features such as the fungi, the viper, and the sand lizard. The snake, emerging from the shadows of the undergrowth, is about to attack the frog. Its mouth is open, prepared to bite, and its wide eyes are fixed on its prey, which has its back turned, unaware of the imminent danger. The rest of the work is populated by a range of fungi, thistles and moths.

The present painting is an early example of van Schrieck depicting snakes in his work. For example, the famous Sottobosco with Fungi, Toad and Snakes, in the Herzog Anton-Ulrich-Museum, was painted

Otto Marseus van Schrieck, A Sottobosco with an Aspic Viper, Sand Lizard, Tree Frog, Moths and Fungi (Detail)

Otto Marseus van Schrieck, Sottobosco with Fungi, Toad and Snakes, 1662, Herzog Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (Figure 1)

two years later in 1662 (fig. 1). His early works were flower pieces, in the manner of the Utrecht school, which, during the early part of his Roman period, evolved into depictions of fungi. During the latter parts of the 1650s he started to introduce creatures such as snakes and lizards into the compositions, and the creatures continued to become increasingly exotic throughout his career.¹ A Sottobosco with an Aspic Viper, Sand Lizard, Tree Frog, Moths and Fungi is comparable to much of his work during the 1660s, for example the Mauritshuis’ Plants and Insects (fig. 2). This work has a similar vertical format, with a focused and accurate depiction of a forest floor, and in both pieces the most eye-catching motif is the snake on the point of attack. The rest of the foregrounds are populated with motifs such as thistles, fungi and butterflies. However, despite their many similarities, A Sottobosco with an Aspic Viper, Sand Lizard, Tree Frog, Moths and Fungi feels more oppressive, as the background is given less prominence. ¹ See for example Sottobosco with Chameleon (Palazzo Pitti), which was purchased by Cosimo III de’Medici in 1681.

Otto Marseus van Schrieck, Plants and Insects, 1665, Mauritshuis, The Hague (Figure 2)

paint, and the scales of its dorsal side transferred directly onto it.⁶ This technique proved quite controversial, to the extent that van Schrieck’s follower Elias van den Broeck (1650-1708) was forced to leave Antwerp because of the indignation caused by it.

Van Schrieck is widely credited as inventing the genre of sottobosco painting. Although van der Willigen and Meijer slightly dispute this, ‘because it has not been clearly established whether other artists in Italy preceded him’, it is certain that the Dutch artist popularised the genre.⁷ These paintings ‘depict botanical and zoological life in dark underwoods or at the humid margins of pools’.⁸ Initially these works were created mainly in Rome, but in time Amsterdam became a centre for their production, as well as Naples, where it was adopted by Paolo Porpora (1617-1673), and Giuseppe (1634-1695) and Giovanni (c.1615-c.1660) Recco. They also found major interest in Florence, mainly because of the interest that the Medicis and their court had in the subject and artists such as van Schrieck and Matthias Withoos (1627-1703). The Medicis bought twelve paintings from van Schrieck between the early 1650s and his death in 1678, and Cosimo III (16421723) even visited him during a visit to the Netherlands. Douglas Hildebrecht has written that ‘The presence of such a large number of Marseus’ pictures in Florence made the Medici and visitors to the Granducal court the most important audience of the artist’s career’.⁹ Sottobosco paintings tapped into the widespread scientific interest in the natural world that existed in Italy during this period, and occupy an ‘intermediate position between nature and art’¹⁰. Artists who followed van Schrieck’s lead and explored the genre at length include van den Broeck, Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Abraham Begeyn (c. 1637-1697) and Franz de Hamilton (fl. 1661-1695).

Looking at his work as a whole it is clear that van Schrieck was fascinated by the animals which he painted and their behaviour.

According to his widow, as recorded by Arnold Houbraken, the author of De groote schouburgh der nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen (The great Theatre of Dutch Painters), van Schrieck knew the habits of these creatures very well and is known to have bred snakes, lizards

It cannot be said for certain whether the present work was painted in Italy or Amsterdam. Van der Willigen and Meijer believe that van Schrieck left Italy c. 1657, returning to the Netherlands perhaps via France and England.² Karin Leonhard, however, believes he was still in Italy as late as 1662.³ In any case he was certainly back in Amsterdam in 1664, when he married.

A Sottobosco with an Aspic Viper, Sand Lizard, Tree Frog, Moths and Fungi demonstrates the inventiveness of van Schrieck’s technique. In the lower left hand corner is a patch of moss, which van Schrieck conveyed by applying oil paint onto a tool, which he pressed onto the canvas and removed rapidly, leaving a ridged surface. This area would then be painted again with a different colour to create the remarkable imitation of moss that can be seen.⁴ Van Schrieck is also known for a technique that is not in evidence in the present work, where real butterflies were pasted directly onto the canvas, rather than painting them.⁵ An example of this is Thistles, Reptiles and Butterflies in Grenoble, see figure 3, where the lower right of the three butterflies is a common nymphalid butterfly. The area of canvas is covered by a thick layer of white lead

Otto Marseus van Schrieck, A Forest Floor Still-Life with Various Fungi, Thistles, an Aspic Viper, a Sand Lizard, a Snail, a Tree Frog and Two Moths (Detail)

² Van der Willigen, A. & Meijer, F. G., A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils 1525-1725 (Leiden, 2003), p. 139. ³ Leonhard, K., ‘Pictura’s Fertile Field: Otto Marseus van Schrieck and the Genre of Sottobosco Painting’, in Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art (vol. 34, no. 2, 2009/2010), p. 102. ⁴ Steensma, S., Otto Marseus van Schrieck: Leben und Werk (Hildesheim, 1999) pp.

71-75. ⁵ For more on butterfly imprints see Weber, G.J.M., Stilleben alter Meister in der Kasseler Gemäldegalerie (Melsungen, 1989), p. 36.

⁶ Berthier, S., Boulenguez, J., Menu, M. & Mottin, B., ‘Butterfly Inclusions in Van Schrieck Masterpieces. Techniques and Optical Properties’ in Applied Physics A (July 2008, vol. 92, issue 1, p. 51. ⁷ Van der Willigen & Meijer, p.139. ⁸ Leonhard, p. 95. ⁹ Hildebrecht, D. R., Otto Marseus van Schrieck (1619/20-1678) and the Nature Piece: Art, Science, Religion and the Seventeenth-Century Pursuit of Natural Knowledge (Ann Arbor, 2005), p.58. ¹⁰ Leonhard, p. 95.

Otto Marseus van Schrieck, Thistles, Reptiles and Butterflies, Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble (Figure 3) and insects himself. It therefore seems that many of the detailed flora and fauna contained in his paintings were based on careful study of the various animals, insects and plants he discovered and kept in his own garden, a ‘watery’ domain near Diemen.¹¹ Early on in his career, when he lived in Italy, van Schrieck was a member of the Schildersbent.

This was a fraternal organisation dedicated to social fellowship and mutual assistance, founded in about 1620 by a number of Dutch and Flemish artists living in Rome. Although the society may not have contributed much to his scientific development, it is interesting to note that, according to Houbraken, it was here that van Schrieck received the nickname snuffelaer. He was given the name, meaning a ferreter or scrounger, ‘omdat hij allerwegen naar vreemd gekleurde of gespikkelde slangen, hagedissen, rupsen, spinnen, flintertjes en vreemde gewassen en kruiden omsnuffelde’ (‘because he was all about after strangely coloured and speckled snakes, lizards, caterpillars, spiders, butterflies and strange plants and herbs’).¹² This early interest in the smaller forms of nature was to dominate his painting throughout his career.

Although his subject matter may have been unusual in its specialist nature, van Schrieck’s work does reflect Dutch artistic culture in the seventeenth century, in that it is significantly informed by science. The practice of observing and then recording and registering results through pictures and texts, was fostered in even the most basic of schools, and ¹¹ Van der Willigen & Meijer, p.139. ¹² Houbraken, A., De groote schouburgh der nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen..., The Hague 1753, vol. I, p. 358.

consequently this culture was reflected in art. Several artists did engage in their own scientific experiments, and their interest is evident in their work, one such example being Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1629). De Gheyn was known for his delicate watercolour studies of insects and flowers, which he often produced for private study and specific patrons, such as the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612). Equally, many institutions, such as the botanical gardens at Leiden and Amsterdam, and the East and West Indies Companies, published scientific texts which were often illustrated by talented artists, such as Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). Published in 1705 her Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium presented her keen researches into plants and insects.

The impressive plates were based on painstaking observations, many of them made with a magnifying glass. She published them with detailed descriptions, which were written with help from the director of the botanical gardens in Amsterdam. It is not difficult to imagine how the work of van Schrieck, with its acute study of animal interaction and the decay of nature, both developed from and influenced this scientific cultural backdrop.

Details of van Schrieck’s training and early career are scarce. In 1648 he was one of a number of young artists left the Low Countries for Rome, a group that also included Withoos. It is not clear whether Willem van Aelst (1627-1683) was also part of this trip, or whether they became friends in Rome. As already mentioned, in Rome he became a member of the Schildersbent, and clearly had great success there, not only in respect of the patrons he attracted, but also in terms of his artistic influence. It was in Rome that he invented and developed the genre of sottobosco, before returning to the Netherlands. Here he established his Waterrijk, where he cultivated and studied plant and insect life, and continued to paint the forest floor still lifes, with which he made his name. Through the work of illustrious pupils such as Ruysch his artistic influence continued to be felt thorough Europe, and with works such as A Sottobosco with an Aspic Viper, Sand Lizard, Tree Frog, Moths and Fungi he ‘defined and promoted a new sub-genre in the rich variety of 17 th-cent. [sic] still lifes’.¹³

Otto Marseus van Schrieck, A Forest Floor Still-Life with Various Fungi, Thistles, an Aspic Viper, a Sand Lizard, a Snail, a Tree Frog and Two Moths (Detail) ¹³ Van der Willigen & Meijer, p.139.

Spanish school, seventeenth century The Crucifixion oil on canvas 88.8 x 60.5 cm (35 x 23⅞ in) Provenance: Property of an Austrian noble family.

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n this highly atmospheric and powerful image of The Crucifixion, night has fallen on Golgotha and the figures of Christ and two criminals are illuminated by the ghostly light of the moon. Christ is depicted in the centre of the composition, His pale quiescent body and upturned face glow in the moonlight, giving Him a serene and ethereal air. Behind Him to the right and left are two other crucified men, fully naked, writhing in agony. Their facial expressions and contorted bodies express the gruesomeness of their torture; one figure struggling to break free has lifted himself up and slung his arms over the horizontal beam of the cross. Christ maintains a stoic disregard for His suffering, and in his pose and straightened body, gives the impression of already having transcended the physical pain and humiliation of His punishment.

The desolate site of the crucifixion is called Golgotha, an Aramaic word meaning ‘the skull’ the Latin form of which is Calvary. The appropriately named execution ground is littered with human remains. According to biblical accounts, Golgotha, although not precisely located, was supposed to be on high ground outside the city walls of Jerusalem (Mark 15:40). The area just visible in the left background, and seemingly full of tombs, may be the garden where Christ was buried, which was recorded as being near the place of crucifixion (John 19:41).

The physicality of The Crucifixion is overtly signalled and the naked limbs of the two criminals, while agonising to look at, draw attention to the sensuality of the image. The figure on the right, who appears to be in the last throws of death, evidenced by his clenched fist and the strained backward thrust of his body, appears to have reached a state of rapturous abandon through the intensity of his pain. As common criminals, crucified for their thievery, they are representative of worldly sin in contrast to Christ’s divine nature. This is signified, in part, by the loincloth, which differentiates Christ’s nudity from the criminals’ nakedness, as well as the distinction in lighting on the three figures, which has a celestial quality where it falls on Christ and a more terrestrial normality throughout the rest of the composition. ‘The nude image of the crucified Christ in art is usually kept from being overloaded with erotic suggestion by the force of its devotional meaning’ writes Ann Hollander in Seeing Through Clothes, ‘In crucifixion scenes the nudity of the two thieves, however, is often startlingly erotic by contrast, since they do not need to assume the ritual pose’.¹ This difference in presentation, exemplified in the present work, heightens the dramatic force of the image and emphasises the fundamentals of the narrative. Such a result would have satisfied CounterReformation doctrine regarding art, which demanded images that were instructive through their emotional content and ability to move the public.

Although the painter of the present work and its exact date are unknown, its dramatic tension, intensity of expression and highly developed form bring to mind a range of influences. In the slightly elongated forms of the figures of the two criminals flanking Christ, there can be detected hints of Mannerism.

Christ’s figure however is painted with a greater degree of naturalism, however, that suggests that the artist was receptive to the Baroque style. The theatricality and religious fervour of the composition and tenebrist lighting are further hallmarks of Baroque painting, examples of which would have been available in Spain by the early 1600s through the Spanish rule of the Neapolitan kingdom, as well as through the many Spanish practitioners of the movement. The spirited brushwork and colour palette is reminiscent of El Greco’s (c.1541-1614) paintings of an earlier period, or those of his pupil Luis Tristán de Escamilla (c.1585-1624). While the artistic precedents for The Crucifixion are open to interpretation, it is evident that the spiritual fervour, emotional intensity and visual impact of the work distinguish it from other Spanish School paintings of its type.

¹ Anne Hollander, Seeing through Clothes, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993. p.182

Spanish School, Seventeenth Century, The Crucifixion (Detail)

MAERTEN STOOP (Rotterdam 1620 - Utrecht 1647)

A Card Game in a Courtyard signed ‘MStoop’ (lower left) oil on panel, oval, stamped on the reverse with the panel maker’s mark ‘SvM’ (in monogram) 46 x 62.6 cm (18⅛ x 24¼ in) Provenance: M. & G. Segal, Basel, 1980.

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his finely detailed and engaging painting is a rare work by Maerten Stoop, an artist whose surviving works are sadly limited by the brevity of his career. Stoop specialised in genre painting and in particular guardroom subjects, portraying off-duty officers in scenes of relaxation and merriment, of which A Card Game in a Courtyard is an exceptionally fine example.

Guardroom subjects were initially popularised in German prints of the sixteenth century and in the large-scale figure scenes of Utrecht painters in the beginning of the seventeenth century.¹ In 1621, the Twelve Year Truce ended and fighting between the Dutch and Spanish resumed until the Treaty of Münster in 1648, when the Dutch gained their independence.

The eighty year struggle made soldiers, mercenaries and members of the civic guard, male citizens who paid dues and had the right to carry firearms, rcognisable figures in Dutch seventeenth-century life and consequently the subject of paintings by Stoop and a number of his contemporaries.

The buyers of guardroom paintings would have been predominantly from prosperous northern cities, which had not been directly affected by the warfare gripping the rest of the Netherlands, but would nevertheless have been interested in depictions of military life.

A Card Game in a Courtyard presents a scene in which a conspicuously well dressed woman plays a game of cards with two soldiers in a courtyard.

The figures are bathed in an intensely bright light, in contrast to their surroundings, which reflects off the woman’s white dress and pale skin.

The company are assembled in a makeshift fashion, seated around a drum instead of a card table, and strewn about them, amongst the dirt and hay of the ground, are garments and pieces of armour that have been casually cast aside. They sit on a platform raised above the rest of the courtyard floor, on the edge of which a small dog stands alert. He faces towards a large archway on the left, through which a soldier in a brown cloak, plumed hat, blue breeches and floppy boots pensively strolls. His face is downcast in shadow and he is seemingly oblivious to the rollicking entertainment being had by

¹ Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting, New Haven and London 2004, pp.60-63.

Maerten Stoop, A Card Game in a Courtyard (Detail) the card players. Behind him, two other soldiers, clad in blue and brown, are shown relaxing and whiling away the afternoon.

The three card players in the centre of the scene are shown reacting to the arrival of a gentleman who enters the courtyard from a side door.

One of the seated soldiers flamboyantly doffs his hat while the other one peeks at the lady’s cards, as she exposes in a moment of distraction. Not only the presence of the female, but also her inviting gaze, casual pose and revealing body language, with one arm outstretched, dangling a locket on a chain as if to lure the visitor into the game, suggests that she is likely to be of dubious virtue. It would appear that her jewellery is being used as the stakes for the game, and the locket will soon join the pearl necklace that has already been surrendered and lies on the drum. Luxuriously clad in a white silk

Maerten Stoop, An Interior Scene with an Officer and a Seated Woman Smoking a Pipe, Private Collection (Figure 1)

Maerten Stoop, A Card Game in a Courtyard (Detail)

dress, embroidered with gold and tied at the waist with a peach coloured sash, the lady appears not to mind risking her valuables. The man seated across from her is dressed in a dishevelled, cavalier manner, with his bare knee showing from between his breeches and hose and his coat carelessly flung behind him.

He wears a buff doublet with slashed sleeves, and a shirt with a large soft collar.

His relaxed and informal appearance suggests he has been off duty for a length of time, in contrast to his comrade who is entering from outside, dressed in a voluminous blue cloak with boots pulled up well above the knee for warmth.

The low vantage point from which Stoop depicts A Card Game in a Courtyard shortens and exaggerates the already rotund bodies of his subjects.

Their plump faces are portrayed tilted either up or down, emphasising the folds under their chins and the roundness of their cheeks, giving them a jovial and naturalistic appearance. These techniques are used repeatedly by Stoop to portray soldiers and their companions thus lending them an unpretentious charm and approachability. In another painting by Stoop, An Interior Scene with an Officer and a Seated Woman Smoking a Pipe, the figures are grouped in a corner of a room by the fireplace (fig. 1). A large part of the composition, as in the present painting, is taken up detailing the spartan interior with its plain brown walls. The depiction of the ceiling’s rafters stretching across the room suggests that the artist is painting the scene from a seated position on the floor much like the figures in the present painting. In Stoop’s pictures, there is a noticeable lack of furniture and the figures are resourceful with the objects around them.

In An Interior Scene with an Officer and a Seated Woman Smoking a Pipe, the swaggering officer figures most prominently, wearing a pink doublet and breeches and matching cloak, with a buff jerkin jauntily tied at his waist with a sash. He stands with one arm on his hip and the other raised behind his head.

He has a pleasantly jovial demeanour and appears to joke with the woman seated near him. She stares vacantly out of the window while holding a pipe. Similarly, in the present picture, the subjects are shown passing the time and whether in their quarters or camped in a courtyard, they are trying to divert themselves while off duty.

A combination of cheerfully rotund figures and meticulous attention to detail defines Stoop’s work. In A Card Game in a Courtyard, his depiction of even the smallest item is exact and the play of light on each one gives it added dimension, from the locket held out in the woman’s hand to the locks on the open trunk at her side. Stoop’s ability to render the textures of different surfaces makes the objects appear tangible. The sartorial detail is equally impressive, with each fold of the lady’s dress and each button and loop of the soldier’s coat convincingly painted so as to immediately engage the viewer’s eye.

Stoop’s powers of observation are matched by his sense of humour, which is evident in his painting An Officer in Billeted Quarters, in the Rijksmuseum (fig.

2). The officer, revealed in a state of undress, smoking a pipe, is nonchalant and self-absorbed. He absent-mindedly lifts one of his legs so that a boy can remove his boot and in the meantime fails to notice the woman in the corner of the room rifling through his belongings. She glances cursorily towards him while leaning

Maerten Stoop, An Officer in Billeted Quarters, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Figure 2)

Maerten Stoop, A Card Game in a Courtyard (Detail)

over the open trunk but the officer is turned away, seemingly lost in contemplation of the curls of smoke swirling from his pipe. His surroundings are in a state of neglect, with the rough wooden beams of the ceiling and the brickwork of the walls exposed, and his clothing and personal belongings flung carelessly about. The disarray and chaos of the soldier’s quarters, like that of the courtyard in the present painting, clearly delighted Stoop and he portrayed his subjects’ surroundings as vividly as he did their dress and character. Interior views also gave Stoop an opportunity to demonstrate his handling of perspective, which was clearly of particular importance in A Card Game in a Courtyard, as the doorways to the right and left of the central group and the vista through to a secondary room give the composition a greater depth and enhance the illusion of space.

Stoop was a contemporary of Nicolaes Knupfer (c.1609-1655), a German painter who depicted genre and narrative scenes set in Utrecht, and Jacob Duck (c.1600-1667) who, like Stoop, specialised in guardroom pictures. Duck’s painting, Interior with Soldiers and Women, exemplifies the subject matter that characterised his work (fig. 3). Like Stoop, Duck employed a relatively monotone palette, heightened only by the addition of a brightly coloured sash or garment, in this case the vivid pink of one on the soldier’s hose, casually unrolled. The soldiers wear buff jerkins or doublets from which their white shirt sleeves show, and plumed hats. They present themselves in a confidently casual manner similar to that of the men in A Card Game in a Courtyard or An Interior Scene with an Officer and a Seated Woman Smoking a Pipe. Discarded guns and pieces of armour are scattered around the room, as well as a bass viol, which is propped up against the wall. The inclusion of a musical instrument as a motif in painting, could be interpreted as a commentary on the harmonies of sexual attraction.

The teasing tension and flirtatiousness between the sexes is evident, as in A Card Game in a Courtyard.

Stoop was the son of the stained-glass artist Willem Jansz. Stoop (fl.

1633-44) and the brother of Dirck Stoop (1610-1686), who specialised in Italianate landscapes with hunting parties, views of ports, cavalry scenes and history paintings. It is thought that Maerten was an apprentice in the Utrecht Guild of St. Luke in 1638, which explains thesimilarities between his oeuvre and that of Knupfer and Duck. Biographical details about the artist, however, are even more scarce than examples of his work.

Jacob Duck, Interior with Soldiers and Women, c.1650, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Figure 3)

attributed to

ANTONIO TEMPESTA (Florence 1555 - Rome 1630)

The Stoning of Saint Stephen oil on marble 37.4 x 53 cm (14¾ x 20⅞ in) Provenance: Galerie Reynald Liron-Péan, Deauville.

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he sumptuous golden, jewel-like colour scheme of The Stoning of Saint Stephen is superbly complemented by the marble upon which it is painted. The natural colour variations, patterns and veins found in the marble are picked out in the walls of the architecture, craggy landscape and heavenly sky, providing a unique ocular experience for the viewer.

The present work, attributed to Antonio Tempesta, shows the stoning, or martyrdom, of Saint Stephen. The Acts of the Apostles (6:1-8:2) tells how Stephen was tried for blasphemy for spreading the word of Jesus and was stoned to death in c.34/35 AD by an enraged mob whose actions were encouraged by Saul of Tarsus (later to become St. Paul). In the centre of the composition, the kneeling figure of St. Stephen can be seen; his palms facing upward in serene protestation.¹ Surrounding him are three male figures in the process of hurling stones, while other figures nearby casually watch the activity unfold. In the sky above, the resplendent figure of Christ wears a billowing red cloak and clutches a crucifix, while to his right the delicately sketched figure of God holding a large orb is visible.

The technique of painting on stone was fashionable in Italy from the early sixteenth century until the middle of the seventeenth century. The prevalence of quarried marble on the Italian coast made it a readily available, though unusual, surface for paint. By the 1590s paintings on copper, stone, lapis lazuli and alabaster amongst other materials had gained prominent positions in Italian collections as they displayed refinement, delicacy and an exceptional artistic skill. Tempesta was one of the artists at the forefront of this varied media experimentation and his works were distributed amongst connoisseurs in Rome, often encased in elaborate enamel frames. Another example of Tempesta’s delicate works on stone is now held in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin (fig. 1).

Tempesta was an Italian painter and engraver whose oeuvre fused the styles of Baroque Rome and the artistic culture of Antwerp.² He enrolled in the Accademia del Disegno in Florence on 8 December 1576 where he was a pupil of Santi di Tito (1536-1602) and Joannes Stradanus (1523-1605).

¹ St. Stephen was the first deacon and the first martyr and, as in the present work, is usually depicted wearing a dalmatic (a wide sleeved tunic) - a recognisable attribute of his office. ² Silvia Danesi Squarzina, “The Collections of Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani. Part II” The Burlington Magazine 140 (February 1998: 102-118) particularly p. 110, note 43.

Antonio Tempesta, The Death of Adonis, c.1593, oil on stone, Galleria Sabauda, Turin (Figure 1) It was with Stradanus that Tempesta worked under Giorgio Vasari (15111574) on the interior decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. He later relocated to Rome where, alongside Matthijs Bril (1550-1583), he was commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII to produce the Transfer of the Relics of St Gregory of Nazianzus (1572) and other religious scenes in the loggias on the third floor of the Vatican Palace. He received other papal fresco commissions, notably for the interior of the chapel at S.S. Primus Felicianus in Rome.

He also produced over one thousand engraved prints and book illustrations which were widely circulated during his lifetime and which were used as models by other artists.³ Tempesta became a member of the Accademia dei Virtuosi al Pantheon in Rome in 1611 and of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome by 1623. ³ Tempesta’s engraving of the French King Henry IV on horseback (1593) served as a model for portraits of Henry by numerous artists, including Jacques Callot (15921635), Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Diego Velázquez (1599-1660).

Helmich von Tweenhuysen II (Amsterdam c.1604 - Gdańsk 1673)

Portrait of a Bearded Cleric oil on canvas 74 x 58.7 cm (29⅛ x 23⅛ in) Provenance: American Art Galleries, New York, 1903, no. 148. with Dowdeswell and Dowdeswells, London, 1899; with Eugene Fischhof, Paris; his sale, New York, Chickering Hall, 9th March 1900, no. 102; his sale, Paris, 16th May 1904, no. 24, (for Fr.1250); Jos. Monchen et al sale, Amsterdam, Frederk Muller & Cie, 30th April 1907, no. 114 (for fl. 1000). (All the above as by Jan Lievens) Literature: Hans Schneider, Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und Seine Werke (Bohn, 1932), p. 180, no. LXIX. Salomon Lilian: Old Masters 2013, (Amsterdam 2013), p.76, fig. 1.

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his intriguing half-portrait is a new addition to the small extant ouevre of Helmich van Tweenhuysen II. A bearded cleric of Eastern-European appearance looks directly out at the viewer with a penetrating gaze. He is dressed in a tall soft cap and dark robes, augmented by thick sash and a crucifix on a chain. Although his dress is relatively sober, the rich velvet of his cap, glinting colours of the chains around his neck and cap suggest that the sitter is a figure of wealth and importance.

Currently the sitter’s identity remains elusive. He appears in another very similar portrait by van Tweenhuysen in the Muzeum Narodowe in Wroclaw, Poland. In the Wroclaw portrait, the sitter turns in the opposite direction, and his right hand rests upon a book, but he is dressed in the identical restrained but luxurious costume. It has been suggested that the soft cap would indicate the sitter to be a member of the Orthodox Church,¹ although it must also be considered that such caps were often used as decorative accessories in portraits by artists working under the influence of Rembrandt (1606-1669) (fig. 2). It does, however, seem likely that the sitter is cleric of some importance due to the fact that two portraits of him were commissioned from van Tweenhuysen.

Van Tweenhuysen was active in Gdańsk, and for a number of reasons the city was one of the centres of theological discussion in Europe during the seventeenth-century. Gdańsk and its neighbours had a reputation, not only for religious tolerance since the Warsaw Confederation of 1573, but also for academia,² and so was a natural place for Theologians to converge to discuss the merits of religious ¹ Steinborn, B., Catalogue of the Collection of Netherlandish Painting, Muzeum Narodowe we Wroclawiu (Wroclaw, 2006),, p. 341. ² See Müller, M. G., ‘Science and Religion in Royal Prussia’ in Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Helm, J. & Winkelmann, A. (Leiden, 2001) pp37-43.

Helmich van Tweenhuysen II, Portrait of an Orthodox Priest, Muzeum Narodowe, Wroclaw (Figure 1)

Workshop of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Bust of an Old Man Wearing a Cross, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel (Figure 2) syncretism. Perhaps the most notable demonstration of this was the Colloquium Charitativum at Toruń in 1645. Although this particular meeting was between Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists, representatives of the Orthodox Church, the Socinians and the Greek Catholics were also actively involved in discussions throughout this period. It seem likely that the sitter in the present work is one of these representatives, and it is noteworthy that in the Wroclaw version he holds a book, perhaps a reference to his being a theologian.

Very little is known of van Tweenhuysen’s life and work. The Wroclaw painting is signed with a monogram ‘HvT’, and so the portrait was traditionally ascribed to the anonymous Monogrammist HVT.³ Lech Brusewicz first connected the Wroclaw work to van Tweenhuysen, in addition to two religious works.⁴ A similar portrait of a man wearing a similar fur hat and decorative chains (although without the pendant) has recently appeared on the European art market, and this work bears 3 Sumowski, W. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler (Landau/Pfalz 1983), vol. Vi, p.

4004, cat. no. 1389.

4 Brusewicz, L., ‘Zagadka tzw. Ecce Homo z kościola św. Piotra na Helu: studium recepcji sztuki Rembrandta w siedemnastowiecznej Rzeczypospolitej’ in Zabytkoznawstwo i Konserwatorstwo, XXV (Toruń, 1994), pp.59-83.

van Tweenhuysen’s monogram.⁵ The attribution of the present work to van Tweenhuysen has been made on the basis of the clear stylistic similarities between it and the two monogrammed portraits.

Van Tweenhuysen was from a prominent merchant family, who had originally come from Zwolle. His uncle was Lambert van Tweenhuysen who had settled in Amsterdam at the age of twenty five. He was one of the most significant traders of the period, with business links all over Europe, but perhaps most importantly with the Baltic harbours including Gdańsk. As a founder of the New Netherland Company, he was also a pioneering figure in exploring new trading ventures with Native Americans in the Dutch colony New Netherland. Lambert’s brother was Helmich van Tweenhuysen I who was also in Amsterdam by 1596, when he married Maria van Ceulen. Two of their sons, Arent and Helmich II were to become painters. Although archival records are slightly fragmentary, it is clear the family spent time in both Amsterdam and Zwolle, where Helmich I was burgomaster, during the first two decades of the seventeenth century.

Helmich II clearly spent a considerable portion of his life living and working in Gdańsk. It is notable that his brother Arent applied for citizenship of the city. Additionally two prints by Jeremias Falck (1610-1677), engraved after works by van Tweenhuysen, depict the famed astronomer Johannes Hevelius, as well as a self portrait. These serve as testament to van Tweenhuysen’s artistic standing in Gdańsk.

However, the impact of Rembrandt’s work on van Tweenhuysen is overt, and so it seems that he must have been aware artistic developments in Amsterdam. This could have been due to familial ties to the city, but Brusewicz has hypothesised that the link may have be through the artist brothers Hendrick (c.1587-1661) and Rombout (c. 1583-1628) van Uylenburgh.6 From 1625 Hendrick lived in Amsterdam, and in the 1630s Rembrandt first moved into his house, before taking over his studio. Whilst Hendrick had moved to the Netherlands, Rombout had established a successful career in Krakow and Gdańsk, and presumably knew van Tweenhuysen. Both the van Uylenburgh travelled to and forth from Amsterdam to Gdańsk, and so it seems very plausible that van Tweenhuysen could keep abreast with Netherlandish artistic developments. In any case van Tweenhuysen’s work certainly made its way to Amsterdam. The only seventeenth century record of his work is in the 1699 inventory of the Dutch trader David d’Orville which lists ten paintings in his collection.

Whilst both the artist and the sitter of this remarkable portrait remain somewhat mysterious, the work of van Tweenhuysen is now being examined by scholars, having lain unrecognised for centuries. It is to be hoped that this continuing scholarship can shed more light on the circumstances surrounding the commissioning of the present portrait, as well as well as providing more details about van Tweenhuysen’s life and work.

5 Salomon Lilian: Old Masters 2013, (Amsterdam 2013), cat no. 19.

6 Brusewicz, p. 80-81.

RICHARD KARLOVICH ZOMMER (Munich 1866 - Russia 1939)

Kirghiz on a Camel signed in Cyrillic (lower right) oil on canvas laid on board 30 x 20.5 cm (11 x 8 in)

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n Kirghiz on a Camel, Richard Karlovich Zommer cleverly immerses the viewer into the scene. Unlike many Orientalist painters, we do not feel like a foreigner or a detached observer in Zommer’s work, rather we become the Kirghiz rider, experiencing at first-hand this arid landscape and its unrelenting heat, the small shadow cast indicating the sun is near its highest point in the sky. Fully in command of his camel, the rider steadily encourages the animal on, his calm composure reminding us that, this journey is a routine part of his life.

For the Kirghiz, the camel was used both for the transport of goods and for their own personal use, such as transporting their house, or yurt, for which they would use two or three camels. The animals were fundamental to their nomadic lifestyle and their concept of ‘All I have, I carry with myself.’ The term Kirghiz comes from the legendary chief, Kirghiz, ninth in descent from Japheth. The Kirghiz are a large and widespread division of the Turkish family, of which there are two main branches, the KaraKirghiz of the uplands and the Kirghiz-Kazakhs of the steppe, which jointly occupy an area stretching westwards from Kulja to the lower Volga, and south from the head of the Ob towards the Pamir and the Turkoman country. Ethnically they are close to the Mongolians, while in language they are close to the Tatars.

Essentially nomads, the Kara-Kirghiz are mainly breeders of horses, and sheep as livestock, oxen for riding and, goats and camels as pack animals. The principle crops grown are wheat, rye, barley, oats and millet, from the last of which a coarse vodka or brandy is distilled. Trade is conducted chiefly by bartering, with cattle being taken by dealers from China, Turkestan and Russia, in exchange for manufactured goods.

The Kirghiz-Kazakhs, simply referred to as Kazakhs, are also predominately nomadic. Their dress consists of the chapan, a flowing robe of which one or two are worn in summer and several in the winter, fastened with a silk or leather girdle, in which are stuck a knife, tobacco pouch, seal and a few other trinkets. Broad silk or cloth pantaloons

Richard Karlovich Zommer, Kirghiz on a Camel (Detail) are often worn over the chapan, which is made of velvet, silk, cotton or felt, according to the rank of the wearer. Large black or red leather boots, with round white felt pointed caps, complete the costume. The domestic animals, daily pursuits and toils of the Kazakhs are in most respects similar to those of the Kara-Kirghiz. Some of the wealthy steppe nomads own as many as 20,000 large fat-tailed sheep. Goats are kept mainly as guides for these flocks, and their horses are hardy and capable of covering from 50 to 60 miles at a stretch. Amongst the Kazakhs a few are skilled in silver, copper and iron work, which are the chief arts besides skin dressing, wool spinning and dyeing, and carpet and felt weaving.

However, trade mainly consists of exchanging their livestock for woven and other goods from Russia, China and Turkestan.