A Park landscape with Women and Children beside a Fountain

Best known for his watercolors and handcolored prints depicting scenes from the Grand Tour, Ducros painted this rare oil in Italy where he stayed, based in Rome, from 1776 until 1807 when he returned to Switzerland. He travelled extensively with a number of Italian and Swiss artists including Giovanni Volpato, Antonio Canova, Pierre-Louis De La Rive and Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours. His enthusiasm and the popularity of his views of Italy and its ancient monuments is witnessed by the large quantity of works on paper produced during his lifetime. His collaboration with Volpato on a series of views of Rome, monuments, and local environs around 1780 brought him widespread fame and considerable wealth. Their success lead to subsequent series of prints and watercolors of Naples, Sicily, and Malta. Only two works on canvas are recorded of Roman views, these forming part of a collection including ninety-eight watercolors in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (see D. Agassiz, A.L. Du Cros: peintre et graveur, 1927). A further oil of a dungeon, signed and dated 1780, was offered at Christie's, London, July 5, 1985, lot 8.

The present composition, which was executed circa 1782-4, probably depicts a fountain in the gardens of the villa Montalto-Negroni. Originally one of the homes of Pope Sixtus V and latterly that of the Negroni family, the Villa was sold to a speculator in 1784 and parts of the gardens were parcelled off. A watercolor by Ducros, and a handcolored etching by Ducros and Volpato depict the villa and the gardens showing the configuration of the poplars in the distance (see Images of the Grand Tour, The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, 1985-6, no. 66; and the painting sold at Sotheby's, Monaco, June 19, 1992, lot 213).