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拍品專文
Bernardo Bellotto’s views of Dresden and its environs constitute one of the most comprehensive portrayals of any city in the eighteenth century and are often seen as the apogee of the art of view painting. Bellotto had moved in 1747 at the age of twenty-five to Dresden, lured by the highest salary ever given to an artist at the Saxon court. In the following year he was appointed Court Painter to Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. Remarkably precocious, he had already established himself as one of the great painters of views of Italy, mainly of Venice but also Florence, Rome, Verona and Turin, even connoisseurs finding it difficult to differentiate his paintings at the age of sixteen from those of his already famous uncle, Canaletto. In fact, Bellotto’s career in Northern Europe was to help to make his uncle’s name even more famous throughout Europe, as Bellotto also used it, with no justification, and he is still to this day better known as ‘Canaletto’ in German- and Russian-speaking countries.
In the north Bellotto found a clientele keen to record for posterity the appearances of their surroundings, in striking contrast with the inhabitants of Venice. He also found fortuitously the cold light which he had always favoured, less appropriately, in his early years in Venice. He remained in Dresden until 1766, although the Seven Years War forced him to work elsewhere, in Vienna and Munich, in the years 1759-61. For the Elector he painted seventeen views of Dresden, eleven of the village of Pirna and five of the Fortress of Königstein, all of impressive size, all but three measuring approximately 53 x 92 in. (134.6 x 233.7 cm.), one of Sonnenstein even 80 ¼ x 130 ¼ in. (204 x 331 cm.). Most of those, notably except the Königstein views, are among the thirty-five paintings by the artist which remain in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. He painted a second series of twenty variants of the Dresden and Pirna views, on equally large canvases, for Count Heinrich Brühl, the plenipotentiary Prime Minister, of which fifteen are now in Russia. In this period of intense activity he also produced capricci and allegories, as well as small versions and etchings of his compositions. This was, however, by no means an easy period in his life. On his return to Dresden in 1762, he found that his house and exceptional library had been destroyed in the Prussian bombardment. Both his patrons, Augustus and Brühl, died in 1763, the latter without having paid him for the twenty large canvases delivered. In 1766, he left to travel North and in the following year became court painter at the court of Augustus’s successor as King of Poland, Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski, in Warsaw, where he settled definitively.
Bellotto’s views of Northern Europe have always been praised for their topographical accuracy. The views of Warsaw from the last phase of his career were, indeed, famously used in the reconstruction of the city after the Second World War. By 1753, Bellotto had completed fourteen views of Dresden, most in more than one version. He turned his attention to Pirna, a small town of three or four thousand inhabitants seventeen kilometers up the River Elbe, with a considerable strategic importance for the Electorate of Saxony. Evidently at least in part to ensure topographical accuracy, the local magistrate Johann Christlieb Crusius was instructed by a decree certified by Count Brühl on 23 April 1753 ‘not to in any way obstruct’ the court painter ‘who has been charged with making drawings of the surroundings of Pirna and further afield’. Bellotto delivered four views of Pirna before mid-1754 and all eleven by the beginning of 1756.
This painting, a version of the large canvas painted for Augustus (Kozakiewicz, op. cit, no. 217; no. 58 in the 2001 exhibition, op. cit.), shows the village of the fishermen and boatmen on a backwater of the Elbe which served as a small harbour to project barges during the winter. The Customs House, the furthest building to the right, still survives, as do many of the houses in Pirna. As with all but one of the views of Pirna, the scene is dominated by the Fortress of Sonnenstein, medieval in origin but brought up to date with bastions for artillery. How literal is the depiction is shown by a comparison with another painting by Bellotto showing the same buildings, Pirna from the Right Bank of the Elbe with the Main Road at Posta (Kozakiewicz, op. cit., no. 193). As Gregor Weber has pointed out, ‘In contrast to the Dresden paintings, the setting for the views of Pirna and Königstein is more bucolic with river valleys and vineyards, meadows and pastures. We encounter more peasants, travellers, carts, and river boats; we come across shepherds with their flocks at the edge of the road, in shallow water and in the fields’ (2001 exhibition, op. cit., p. 23). The artist’s delight in the run-down cottages is evident here, recalling as it does Dutch paintings of the previous century, and his empathy with the peasantry anticipates that in three of his views of Königstein and later many of Poland. It is appropriate that the three cows standing in the water and their herdsman are borrowed, in reverse, from a Dutch pastoral landscape, an engraving by Joseph Wagner after Nicolaes Berchem, entitled Senza pensier sol della Mandra ho cura (‘Untroubled by thought, I only look after my flock’; 2001 exhibition, op. cit., p. 25, fig. 16). The serene atmosphere which pervades this painting was to be shattered soon after by the advent of the Seven Years’ War.
The small versions of Bellotto’s views of Dresden and Pirna are all dated by Kozakiewicz on stylistic grounds to the years 1760-5. A number of them are known in several versions and they vary widely in quality. This painting is exceptional in being the only version apart from the large canvas executed for Augustus. It is one of two Pirna compositions of which no version was made for Count Brühl, who may have found its rustic character not to his taste. It was one of only two small versions of Dresden or Pirna compositions selected on account of their indisputable quality for inclusion in the 2001 monographic exhibition.
Charles Beddington
In the north Bellotto found a clientele keen to record for posterity the appearances of their surroundings, in striking contrast with the inhabitants of Venice. He also found fortuitously the cold light which he had always favoured, less appropriately, in his early years in Venice. He remained in Dresden until 1766, although the Seven Years War forced him to work elsewhere, in Vienna and Munich, in the years 1759-61. For the Elector he painted seventeen views of Dresden, eleven of the village of Pirna and five of the Fortress of Königstein, all of impressive size, all but three measuring approximately 53 x 92 in. (134.6 x 233.7 cm.), one of Sonnenstein even 80 ¼ x 130 ¼ in. (204 x 331 cm.). Most of those, notably except the Königstein views, are among the thirty-five paintings by the artist which remain in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. He painted a second series of twenty variants of the Dresden and Pirna views, on equally large canvases, for Count Heinrich Brühl, the plenipotentiary Prime Minister, of which fifteen are now in Russia. In this period of intense activity he also produced capricci and allegories, as well as small versions and etchings of his compositions. This was, however, by no means an easy period in his life. On his return to Dresden in 1762, he found that his house and exceptional library had been destroyed in the Prussian bombardment. Both his patrons, Augustus and Brühl, died in 1763, the latter without having paid him for the twenty large canvases delivered. In 1766, he left to travel North and in the following year became court painter at the court of Augustus’s successor as King of Poland, Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski, in Warsaw, where he settled definitively.
Bellotto’s views of Northern Europe have always been praised for their topographical accuracy. The views of Warsaw from the last phase of his career were, indeed, famously used in the reconstruction of the city after the Second World War. By 1753, Bellotto had completed fourteen views of Dresden, most in more than one version. He turned his attention to Pirna, a small town of three or four thousand inhabitants seventeen kilometers up the River Elbe, with a considerable strategic importance for the Electorate of Saxony. Evidently at least in part to ensure topographical accuracy, the local magistrate Johann Christlieb Crusius was instructed by a decree certified by Count Brühl on 23 April 1753 ‘not to in any way obstruct’ the court painter ‘who has been charged with making drawings of the surroundings of Pirna and further afield’. Bellotto delivered four views of Pirna before mid-1754 and all eleven by the beginning of 1756.
This painting, a version of the large canvas painted for Augustus (Kozakiewicz, op. cit, no. 217; no. 58 in the 2001 exhibition, op. cit.), shows the village of the fishermen and boatmen on a backwater of the Elbe which served as a small harbour to project barges during the winter. The Customs House, the furthest building to the right, still survives, as do many of the houses in Pirna. As with all but one of the views of Pirna, the scene is dominated by the Fortress of Sonnenstein, medieval in origin but brought up to date with bastions for artillery. How literal is the depiction is shown by a comparison with another painting by Bellotto showing the same buildings, Pirna from the Right Bank of the Elbe with the Main Road at Posta (Kozakiewicz, op. cit., no. 193). As Gregor Weber has pointed out, ‘In contrast to the Dresden paintings, the setting for the views of Pirna and Königstein is more bucolic with river valleys and vineyards, meadows and pastures. We encounter more peasants, travellers, carts, and river boats; we come across shepherds with their flocks at the edge of the road, in shallow water and in the fields’ (2001 exhibition, op. cit., p. 23). The artist’s delight in the run-down cottages is evident here, recalling as it does Dutch paintings of the previous century, and his empathy with the peasantry anticipates that in three of his views of Königstein and later many of Poland. It is appropriate that the three cows standing in the water and their herdsman are borrowed, in reverse, from a Dutch pastoral landscape, an engraving by Joseph Wagner after Nicolaes Berchem, entitled Senza pensier sol della Mandra ho cura (‘Untroubled by thought, I only look after my flock’; 2001 exhibition, op. cit., p. 25, fig. 16). The serene atmosphere which pervades this painting was to be shattered soon after by the advent of the Seven Years’ War.
The small versions of Bellotto’s views of Dresden and Pirna are all dated by Kozakiewicz on stylistic grounds to the years 1760-5. A number of them are known in several versions and they vary widely in quality. This painting is exceptional in being the only version apart from the large canvas executed for Augustus. It is one of two Pirna compositions of which no version was made for Count Brühl, who may have found its rustic character not to his taste. It was one of only two small versions of Dresden or Pirna compositions selected on account of their indisputable quality for inclusion in the 2001 monographic exhibition.
Charles Beddington