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拍品专文
This is the largest and most ambitious treatment of the subject in the oeuvre associated with Canaletto. Recorded as by Canaletto when in the Morice collection by Horace Walpole in 1781, the picture was considered to be a collaborative work by Constable who pointed to its near correspondence in viewpoint with a drawing at Windsor (inv. 7454, his no. 579) and with a series of studies in the sketch book in the Accademia, Venice (41r, 40v, 42r, 41v, 43r, 42v, 44r, 43v, 45r, 44v, 46r, Constable, pl. 167), which Constable considered to date in the main from circa 1730. Links' subsequent view that the picture is entirely by Canaletto was evidently influenced by its provenance and the fact that Humphrey Morice's other Canalettos - the pair on copper sold in these Rooms, 4 July 1986, lot 63 - were sold to his uncle Sir William Morice, 3rd Bt., through the agency of Owen McSwiny, probably in 1730. Links' opinion is rejected by Charles Beddington. More recently, on the basis of photographs, Dario Succi (letter of 5 April 2001) has proposed that the picture is an early work, datable to 1740, by Bellotto, comparing it with pictures at Darmstadt and elsewhere. Among other pictures of related composition are a smaller panorama formerly in the Michaelis collection, a view with the Salute on the left and extending further to the right at Princeton (Constable, no. 141, pl. 33 as Studio of Canaletto) and a picture once with the Corsini Gallery in New York (D. Succi, catalogue of the exhibition, Bernardo Bellotto detto il Canaletto, Mirano, 1999, p. 26, as Bellotto, circa 1741).
The English collector and politician, Sir Humphrey Morice, inherited from his cousin, Sir William Morice, 3rd Bt., the estate of Werrington and control of four parliamentary seats in Cornwall. From 1750 until 1780 he was M.P. for the boroughs of Launceston and Newport, holding a number of sinecures including the Lord Wardenship of the Stannaries from 1763 until 1783. His inheritance also contained the nucleus of a picture collection that William Morice had bought from Owen McSwiny, including most of the series of allegorical paintings commemorating British worthies that McSwiny had commissioned from Giambattista Piazzetta, Marco Ricci, Canaletto and various other Venetian and Bolognese artists. He considerably expanded this collection. Landscapes were a particular interest, and works by Salvator Rosa - such as his pendants The Preaching of the Baptist (c. 1650; St Louis, Art Museum) and The Baptism of the Eunuch (c. 1645; Private Collection, New York) - Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Canaletto and others were kept at his villa, The Grove, near Chiswick, London. In 1762 he acquired Pompeo Batoni's Diana and Cupid (1761; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and that year sat to Batoni for a portrait of corresponding dimensions: this is Batoni's only Grand Tour portrait of a sitter in a reclining pose. A year after Morice's death his collection was sold to John, 2nd Earl of Ashburnham.
The Ashburnham family accumulated what was by any standards a remarkable collection, and the 2nd Earl was unquestionably a collector on a very considerable scale, acquiring works of the calibre of two of Poussin's Richelieu Bacchanals (at the Delmé sale, 1790). His interest in Venetian views is demonstrated by his acquisition of Carlevarijs' View of the Piazzetta sold in these Rooms, 13 December 2000, lot 98. Two notebooks, respectively begun in 1760 and 1793, record the development of Ashburnham's collection, and establish that he was an active purchaser in the London saleroom from 1754, making acquisitions at many of the major sales of the period, including the Dundas sale of 1794 and the Orléans sale in 1798.
The English collector and politician, Sir Humphrey Morice, inherited from his cousin, Sir William Morice, 3rd Bt., the estate of Werrington and control of four parliamentary seats in Cornwall. From 1750 until 1780 he was M.P. for the boroughs of Launceston and Newport, holding a number of sinecures including the Lord Wardenship of the Stannaries from 1763 until 1783. His inheritance also contained the nucleus of a picture collection that William Morice had bought from Owen McSwiny, including most of the series of allegorical paintings commemorating British worthies that McSwiny had commissioned from Giambattista Piazzetta, Marco Ricci, Canaletto and various other Venetian and Bolognese artists. He considerably expanded this collection. Landscapes were a particular interest, and works by Salvator Rosa - such as his pendants The Preaching of the Baptist (c. 1650; St Louis, Art Museum) and The Baptism of the Eunuch (c. 1645; Private Collection, New York) - Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Canaletto and others were kept at his villa, The Grove, near Chiswick, London. In 1762 he acquired Pompeo Batoni's Diana and Cupid (1761; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and that year sat to Batoni for a portrait of corresponding dimensions: this is Batoni's only Grand Tour portrait of a sitter in a reclining pose. A year after Morice's death his collection was sold to John, 2nd Earl of Ashburnham.
The Ashburnham family accumulated what was by any standards a remarkable collection, and the 2nd Earl was unquestionably a collector on a very considerable scale, acquiring works of the calibre of two of Poussin's Richelieu Bacchanals (at the Delmé sale, 1790). His interest in Venetian views is demonstrated by his acquisition of Carlevarijs' View of the Piazzetta sold in these Rooms, 13 December 2000, lot 98. Two notebooks, respectively begun in 1760 and 1793, record the development of Ashburnham's collection, and establish that he was an active purchaser in the London saleroom from 1754, making acquisitions at many of the major sales of the period, including the Dundas sale of 1794 and the Orléans sale in 1798.