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Lot Essay
Oil paintings by Louis Ducros are extremely rare. He is known primarily for his large, hand-coloured outline-prints, a technique that he developed with the engraver Giovanni Volpato. Laid down on canvas and framed behind glass these prints closely resembled oil paintings and rapidly became popular with English travellers. In addition to that staple clientele, his work was also sought after by important patrons visiting Rome, for example the Empress Catherine II of Russia and King Gustaf III of Sweden.
The present pair of paintings were almost certainly painted early in Ducros' career in Rome, shortly after his return there from a six-month journey in the company of a group of Grand Tourists (one English, three Dutch) to Southern Italy, Sicily and Malta in 1778.
That date is supported by the fact that the two dancing Maltese sailors in the second painting are based on a drawing - Danse de nos Matelots Maltois - the artist made in Malta whilst delayed there unexpectedly for nine days waiting for a favourable wind to return the group to Sicily (Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, inv. no. 00:492-494; see J.W. Niemeijer and J.Th. de Booy, Voyage en Italie, en Sicile et à Malte, Ghent, 1994, II, no. 286); also, a drawing of a Smirnoise que nous vîmes à Malte (ibid., no. 263) served as a model for the costumed lady. Although no such drawing by Ducros is known of a Maltese merchant of the type represented in the picture, he might have well made one: an example survives of a man in the typical Maltese costume of red and white hat, red vest, large white trousers and red slippers, the Cadi des Esclaves Turcs à Malte (ibid., no. 262). It has always been presumed that this journey provided the artist with a range of subjects that he was to adapt during his extremely successful career in Rome. However, this is the first example through which a clear relation between drawings from the tour can be established with a picture.
More than three hundred watercolours survive by Ducros from his trip, mostly made for Nicolaas Ten Hove (1732-1782), the young travellers' leader. Whenever opportunity presented itself he made a few drawings, mostly executed in pen and brown ink with watercolour over a sketch in black chalk: a vedute, or a scene that characterised the country in which they were travelling. Together with the diaries of the two young Dutch travellers, Willem Carel Dierkens (The Hague 1753-1778) and Willem Hendrik van Nieuwerkerke (1750-821), they give the rare insight of an eighteenth-century Grand Tour that went off the beaten track (for example they travelled to then largely untravelled-to region of Apulia). Unlike many Grand Tourists they did not focus exclusively on archaeological sites, but also on the daily life of southern Italy. Ducros' drawing of the dancing and music-making Maltese sailors was probably made at the behest of Dierkens, who, his diary reveals, had a great passion for music (his portrait by Jean Humbert shows him behind a desk writing music; ibid., I, p. 14, illustrated).
On 10 April 1778 the three Dutchmen and Ducros left Rome for Naples. The itinerary along the Appian Way - the Roman Via Appia - by the sea passes through Terracina, Monte Circeo, Gaeta and Formia. Gaeta is particularly picturesque: built on a promontory off Mount Orlando, it had occupied an important strategic position since Roman times. The part of the Appian Way represented here, between Gaeta and Formia, was of particular interest to the eighteenth-century tourist because of the archaeological sites of the villas of rich Romans, built during the reign of the Roman Emperors. Aeneas was said to have stayed at Formia during voyage to the Lavinian coast, and, more reliably, Cicero had died there (Ducros made two drawings of his tomb: ibid., nos. 9-10). Dierkens writes in his diary that along the road the axle of the carriage broke, this 'Donna occasion à Mr Ducros (le peintre qui accompagne Ten Hove) de faire plusieurs jolis desseins des antiquités et des beaux points de vue qui se trouvoient sur la route. Nous passâmes le tombeau de Cicéron, etc., et fûmes voir Gaette don't la situation est délicieuse' (ibid., I, pp. 110-1).
Although none of the drawings in the albums in the Rijksprentenkabinet show exactly this view, the albums do contain fifteen drawings of this part of the coastal region. It would not be unlikely for Ducros to have drawn the group of foreign travellers while they stopped on the Appian Way to admire the view and to ask a peasant for directions. In the same way that he used drawings from his trip for the second painting, one of the landscape sketches might well have been the basis for the first painting. Even though it remains hypothetical, the man in the red overcoat could well be Van Nieuwerkerke, while Ten Hove's felt hat is visible behind the white horse. Dierkens was suffering from an illness that would prove fatal at the end of the journey.
The present pair of paintings were almost certainly painted early in Ducros' career in Rome, shortly after his return there from a six-month journey in the company of a group of Grand Tourists (one English, three Dutch) to Southern Italy, Sicily and Malta in 1778.
That date is supported by the fact that the two dancing Maltese sailors in the second painting are based on a drawing - Danse de nos Matelots Maltois - the artist made in Malta whilst delayed there unexpectedly for nine days waiting for a favourable wind to return the group to Sicily (Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, inv. no. 00:492-494; see J.W. Niemeijer and J.Th. de Booy, Voyage en Italie, en Sicile et à Malte, Ghent, 1994, II, no. 286); also, a drawing of a Smirnoise que nous vîmes à Malte (ibid., no. 263) served as a model for the costumed lady. Although no such drawing by Ducros is known of a Maltese merchant of the type represented in the picture, he might have well made one: an example survives of a man in the typical Maltese costume of red and white hat, red vest, large white trousers and red slippers, the Cadi des Esclaves Turcs à Malte (ibid., no. 262). It has always been presumed that this journey provided the artist with a range of subjects that he was to adapt during his extremely successful career in Rome. However, this is the first example through which a clear relation between drawings from the tour can be established with a picture.
More than three hundred watercolours survive by Ducros from his trip, mostly made for Nicolaas Ten Hove (1732-1782), the young travellers' leader. Whenever opportunity presented itself he made a few drawings, mostly executed in pen and brown ink with watercolour over a sketch in black chalk: a vedute, or a scene that characterised the country in which they were travelling. Together with the diaries of the two young Dutch travellers, Willem Carel Dierkens (The Hague 1753-1778) and Willem Hendrik van Nieuwerkerke (1750-821), they give the rare insight of an eighteenth-century Grand Tour that went off the beaten track (for example they travelled to then largely untravelled-to region of Apulia). Unlike many Grand Tourists they did not focus exclusively on archaeological sites, but also on the daily life of southern Italy. Ducros' drawing of the dancing and music-making Maltese sailors was probably made at the behest of Dierkens, who, his diary reveals, had a great passion for music (his portrait by Jean Humbert shows him behind a desk writing music; ibid., I, p. 14, illustrated).
On 10 April 1778 the three Dutchmen and Ducros left Rome for Naples. The itinerary along the Appian Way - the Roman Via Appia - by the sea passes through Terracina, Monte Circeo, Gaeta and Formia. Gaeta is particularly picturesque: built on a promontory off Mount Orlando, it had occupied an important strategic position since Roman times. The part of the Appian Way represented here, between Gaeta and Formia, was of particular interest to the eighteenth-century tourist because of the archaeological sites of the villas of rich Romans, built during the reign of the Roman Emperors. Aeneas was said to have stayed at Formia during voyage to the Lavinian coast, and, more reliably, Cicero had died there (Ducros made two drawings of his tomb: ibid., nos. 9-10). Dierkens writes in his diary that along the road the axle of the carriage broke, this 'Donna occasion à Mr Ducros (le peintre qui accompagne Ten Hove) de faire plusieurs jolis desseins des antiquités et des beaux points de vue qui se trouvoient sur la route. Nous passâmes le tombeau de Cicéron, etc., et fûmes voir Gaette don't la situation est délicieuse' (ibid., I, pp. 110-1).
Although none of the drawings in the albums in the Rijksprentenkabinet show exactly this view, the albums do contain fifteen drawings of this part of the coastal region. It would not be unlikely for Ducros to have drawn the group of foreign travellers while they stopped on the Appian Way to admire the view and to ask a peasant for directions. In the same way that he used drawings from his trip for the second painting, one of the landscape sketches might well have been the basis for the first painting. Even though it remains hypothetical, the man in the red overcoat could well be Van Nieuwerkerke, while Ten Hove's felt hat is visible behind the white horse. Dierkens was suffering from an illness that would prove fatal at the end of the journey.