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Lot Essay
This atmospheric capriccio is a fine example of Francesco Guardi's later career, probably dating to the 1770s or 1780s, when the artist produced numerous small-scale imaginary landscapes on panel for collectors and tourists drawn to Venice on the Grand Tour. The composition centers on a monumental classical arch, its weathered stones overgrown with vegetation, which rises dramatically against a sky of pale blue punctuated by soft, luminous clouds. To the left, slender cypresses and clusters of foliage establish a poetic counterpoint to the architectural mass, while in the foreground a fisherman crouches at the water's edge, his figure deftly suggested with a few swift touches of pigment. Beyond the arch, the distant forms of buildings—perhaps the atrium of a villa—are rendered with Guardi's characteristic economy, dissolving into the silvery haze of the horizon.
Guardi produced many such capricci, developing the genre into a vehicle for his distinctive pictorial poetry. Unlike his more documentary vedute of Venice, these imaginary scenes allowed the artist to combine freely invented motifs with elements drawn from observation, including architectural features reminiscent of the arcades of the Doge's Palace or the ruined structures he would have encountered in the Veneto. The National Gallery, London, preserves a group of comparable small panels depicting similar subjects (classical ruins animated by diminutive figures) several of which came from the artist's studio stock and were sold by his son Giacomo after Francesco's death (see M. Levey, National Gallery Catalogues: Italian Schools, The 17th and 18th Century, London, 1971, pp. 123-126). The present panel conforms closely to the scale of these works and displays the fluid brushwork, thin paint layers, and pen-like delineation of architectural details that are hallmarks of Guardi's technique in this format.
This capriccio was formerly in the celebrated collection of Jean Dollfus (1823-1911), one of the most important French collectors of the late nineteenth century. An Alsatian industrialist who devoted himself entirely to collecting after 1863, Dollfus assembled a remarkable and encyclopedic collection—encompassing Old Masters, nineteenth-century French painting, and Asian decorative arts—in his purpose-built hôtel particulier on the rue Pierre-Charron in Paris. He was an early supporter of the Impressionists, lending two paintings by Renoir to the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876, and his collection included paintings now in major museums: Manet's The Barricade (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), Renoir's copy after Delacroix's Jewish Wedding in Morocco (Worcester Art Museum), and panels by Sano di Pietro (Art Institute of Chicago) and Vittore Crivelli (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Following Dollfus's death in August 1911, his collections were dispersed in a series of sales at the Galerie Georges Petit in the spring of 1912.
Guardi produced many such capricci, developing the genre into a vehicle for his distinctive pictorial poetry. Unlike his more documentary vedute of Venice, these imaginary scenes allowed the artist to combine freely invented motifs with elements drawn from observation, including architectural features reminiscent of the arcades of the Doge's Palace or the ruined structures he would have encountered in the Veneto. The National Gallery, London, preserves a group of comparable small panels depicting similar subjects (classical ruins animated by diminutive figures) several of which came from the artist's studio stock and were sold by his son Giacomo after Francesco's death (see M. Levey, National Gallery Catalogues: Italian Schools, The 17th and 18th Century, London, 1971, pp. 123-126). The present panel conforms closely to the scale of these works and displays the fluid brushwork, thin paint layers, and pen-like delineation of architectural details that are hallmarks of Guardi's technique in this format.
This capriccio was formerly in the celebrated collection of Jean Dollfus (1823-1911), one of the most important French collectors of the late nineteenth century. An Alsatian industrialist who devoted himself entirely to collecting after 1863, Dollfus assembled a remarkable and encyclopedic collection—encompassing Old Masters, nineteenth-century French painting, and Asian decorative arts—in his purpose-built hôtel particulier on the rue Pierre-Charron in Paris. He was an early supporter of the Impressionists, lending two paintings by Renoir to the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876, and his collection included paintings now in major museums: Manet's The Barricade (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), Renoir's copy after Delacroix's Jewish Wedding in Morocco (Worcester Art Museum), and panels by Sano di Pietro (Art Institute of Chicago) and Vittore Crivelli (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Following Dollfus's death in August 1911, his collections were dispersed in a series of sales at the Galerie Georges Petit in the spring of 1912.