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Lot Essay
This drawing is an important rediscovery for Murillo’s graphic corpus. Indeed, although scholars have known the sheet for a long time, from when it was with the book dealer James Tregaskis in London at the beginning of the 20th Century, until now it was only known from an old black and white photograph.
As noted by Jonthan Brown, genre scenes like the present one are rarely the subject of Murillo’s drawings and they reveal the artist’s debt towards themes and compositions painted by the Bamboccianti (Brown, op. cit., 2012, p. 223). In 1977 Diego Angulo Íñiguez connected the drawn composition to a painting of a Traveling family then in the Stanley Jernow collection in Verona, New Jersey (fig. 1; Angulo Íñiguez, op. cit., 1981, p. 340). The painted composition - probably a work of one of Murillo’s pupils - was inspired by the master’s drawing, but presents important differences when compared to it. A striking feature of the drawing, missing in the painting, is the depiction of the monumental city gate in ruins. The representation of ruins and antiquities in Murillo’s work has been the subject of several recent scholarly investigations (see Loffredo, op. cit., pp. 47-63 and P. Leon, ‘Murillo y el antiguo’, in J. Palomero Páramo, Murillo y Sevilla (1618-2018). Conferencias en la Facultad de Geografía e Historia Paramo, Seville, 2018, pp. 259-275). From these studies we learn that Murillo rather than portraying real features in the landscape surrounding him, more probably derived motifs of ruins from works by Northern artists known to him through prints.
The sheet is signed at the bottom in pen and ink by a distinctive hand. Similar inscriptions in the same handwriting appear in many other drawings securely ascribed to Murillo. While Jonathan Brown interpreted the signature as an inscription left by an early collector contemporary with Murillo (op. cit., 2012, pp. 29-36), more recently Manuela B. Mena Marqués has argued that the inscriptions should be considered autograph signatures by the artist (op. cit., pp. 680-681).
Fig. 1. Follower of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Traveling family. Formerly Stanley Jernow Collection, Verona, NJ.
As noted by Jonthan Brown, genre scenes like the present one are rarely the subject of Murillo’s drawings and they reveal the artist’s debt towards themes and compositions painted by the Bamboccianti (Brown, op. cit., 2012, p. 223). In 1977 Diego Angulo Íñiguez connected the drawn composition to a painting of a Traveling family then in the Stanley Jernow collection in Verona, New Jersey (fig. 1; Angulo Íñiguez, op. cit., 1981, p. 340). The painted composition - probably a work of one of Murillo’s pupils - was inspired by the master’s drawing, but presents important differences when compared to it. A striking feature of the drawing, missing in the painting, is the depiction of the monumental city gate in ruins. The representation of ruins and antiquities in Murillo’s work has been the subject of several recent scholarly investigations (see Loffredo, op. cit., pp. 47-63 and P. Leon, ‘Murillo y el antiguo’, in J. Palomero Páramo, Murillo y Sevilla (1618-2018). Conferencias en la Facultad de Geografía e Historia Paramo, Seville, 2018, pp. 259-275). From these studies we learn that Murillo rather than portraying real features in the landscape surrounding him, more probably derived motifs of ruins from works by Northern artists known to him through prints.
The sheet is signed at the bottom in pen and ink by a distinctive hand. Similar inscriptions in the same handwriting appear in many other drawings securely ascribed to Murillo. While Jonathan Brown interpreted the signature as an inscription left by an early collector contemporary with Murillo (op. cit., 2012, pp. 29-36), more recently Manuela B. Mena Marqués has argued that the inscriptions should be considered autograph signatures by the artist (op. cit., pp. 680-681).
Fig. 1. Follower of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Traveling family. Formerly Stanley Jernow Collection, Verona, NJ.