Lot Essay
Pierre-Athanase Chauvin trained in the Neoclassical style under Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, exhibiting at the 1793 Salon exhibition at only nineteen years of age. Shortly after 1800, the artist moved to Rome where he was to spend most of his life. He quickly became a celebrated member of the city’s thriving international artistic community and was a popular source of souvenirs for European travelers on the Grand Tour. For a time he shared a studio with the painter François-Marius Granet, who introduced him to Pierre-Narcisse Guerin and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the latter of whom painted portraits of Chauvin and his wife in 1814 (Musée Bonnat, Bayonne). In 1813, he was named a member of the Accademia di San Luca, and his works could be found in major collections both in Rome and Paris.
Like the majority of Rome’s expatriate artistic circle, Chauvin was drawn to the atmospheric hilly landscapes in the environs of Naples, Florence and particularly Rome itself, and set himself to mastering their depiction. He may not have inherited Valenciennes’ aspirations to history painting, but owes him a significant debt in his command of warm, Mediterranean light and atmospheric recession, both of which are appreciable here, along with a keen sense of fresh, open air. Chauvin heightens this sense of recession using the diminishing scale of the pines surrounding the Villa Borghese, the foremost tree’s canopy extending above the horizon.
Early in its history, this painting belonged to Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine (1762-1853), one of the most important architects of the 19th century and one of the leading practitioners of the late Neo-Classical, Empire style.