Lot Essay
Cipriani was one of the first painters to have worked in the neoclassical style in England. Born in Florence, he was brought to London from Rome by Sir William Chambers and Joseph Wilton in 1756, eleven years before the arrival of Angelica Kauffman. He remained here for the rest of his life, providing decorative schemes for buildings by Chambers and occasionally Robert Adam and attracting the patronage of King George III and Lords Charlemont, Tylney and Anson. He gained a considerable reputation, being elected a Foundation Member of the Royal Academy in 1768 and in the following year being presented by the Academy with a silver cup in acknowledgement of the assistance it had 'received from his great abilities in his profession'. Edward Edwards remarked that Francis Hayman 'was unquestionably the best historical painter in the Kingdom, before the arrival of Cipriani' (in Anecdotes of Painters... 'intended as a continuation to the Anecdotes of Painting by the late Horace, Earl of Orford', London, 1808). Cipriani's influence was further spread by his teaching at the Royal Academy Schools, his pupils including John Hamilton Mortimer, and by the numerous engravings after his work made by his close friend Bartolozzi.
The present picture is of similar date to one of Cipriani's most important decorative cycles, painted for William, 2nd Earl of Shelburne for Lansdowne House, London and now in large part in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (see E. Waterhouse, The Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters in oils and crayons, London, 1981, p. 81, for illustrations of two of the canvases). George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford, was also a significant patron of the artist. Apart from the present picture, he commissioned or acquired a series of three paintings measuring 108½ x 125¾in. depicting Philoctetes on Lemnos (dated 1781), Castor and Pollux (dated 1783) and Oedipus on Colonus, and a seperate vertical picture of Dido grieving over the Departure of Aeneas (dated 1783), all of which were sold from Houghton in these Rooms, 20 April 1990, lots 53-56; the 1792 inventory records all the paintings by Cipriani hanging together in the Saloon
The present picture is of similar date to one of Cipriani's most important decorative cycles, painted for William, 2nd Earl of Shelburne for Lansdowne House, London and now in large part in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (see E. Waterhouse, The Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters in oils and crayons, London, 1981, p. 81, for illustrations of two of the canvases). George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford, was also a significant patron of the artist. Apart from the present picture, he commissioned or acquired a series of three paintings measuring 108½ x 125¾in. depicting Philoctetes on Lemnos (dated 1781), Castor and Pollux (dated 1783) and Oedipus on Colonus, and a seperate vertical picture of Dido grieving over the Departure of Aeneas (dated 1783), all of which were sold from Houghton in these Rooms, 20 April 1990, lots 53-56; the 1792 inventory records all the paintings by Cipriani hanging together in the Saloon