mid-1800s? Anon, Study after Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) "The Cascade of Tivoli and the villa of Maecenas (1750)
Anonymous, after an engraving after Claude-Joseph Vernet's (1714-1789) landscape Cascades of Tivoli and the Villa of Maecenas
watercolor, pencil and ink on wove paper
12.6 x 16.5 cm drawing
13.6 x 19 cm sheet
At top: "J. VERNET" in Roman letters and "École Française" in cursive script
At bottom: "La cascade" in cursive script and below that "B." All annotations are in pencil.
On reverse is erased text that may be the drawing's dimensions.
See the other watercolor, after "Landscape with Broken Rocks / Paisaje Quebrado / Vues des Environs de Rome: Le Torrent" Same format and on same paper but of somewhat different technique.
Provenance: Noordermarkt flea market, Amsterdam, about 2011.
The artist is anonymous. These are not in Vernet's style and are smaller than the watercolors he did as studies and preparatory sketches. Also, wove paper didn't exist until the 1759, well after Vernet did this landscape. It wasn't widely available until the 1780s, Vernet's final years. The same artist may have also done the other watercolor (next one over), after "Landscape With Broken Rocks" / "Paisaje Quebrado" / "Le Torrent")." It's in a different drawing style but is the same size, on same type of paper, and has a letter at the bottom ("B" under "Cascatelles").
This a copy after Plate #58, "La Cascade," in Galerie du Musée Napoléon Vol.3 (of 11), published 1804-1813 by Antoine Michel Filhol. The plate is an etching and engraving by Jean Desaulx and Jean Baptiste Lienard after a drawing by Albert Gregorius. On the engraving, which is the same size as the watercolor, "J. VERNET" and "École Française" appear above the image and "La Cascade" appears below it.
The work on which the engraving is based is "Cascades of Tivoli and the Villa of Maecenas." It is in the Mauritshuis in The Hague but from about 1795 to 1815, it stood in the Louvre, which was then known as the Musée Napoléon.
During the Revolution and under the Directorate, the Louvre became one of Europe's first public museums, displaying the treasures of France's vanquished foes were publicly displayed for the glory of the country and the cultural edification of the people. Emperor Napoleon expanded both policies, systematically looting the best art of Europe, apointing special military squads to collect and convey the works to Paris in Roman-style triumphs. High on the list were the treasurs of antiquity and the Renaissance, as well as German and Flemish artists. Evidently, important French works were also sought, in order to recover them from private collections scattered throughout Europe. The palace of the Louvre, mostly neglected since the building of Versailles, became the new home of all this plunder, carried into Paris in Roman-style triumphs.
Napoleon's first advisor, Jean-Baptiste Wicar, oversaw the looting of the Netherlands and Italy, including also the Papal States. Thus in 1795, during the invasion of the Netherlands, France carried off the collection of Willem V, some 10,000 works, among them The Cascatelles of Tivoli. Ingersoll-Smouse places it in the Louvre until 1815.
Source: "Joseph Vernet Peintre De Marine 1714 - 1789 - Etude Critique Suivie D'Un Catalogue Raisonné De Son Oeuvre Peint Avec Trois Cent Cinquante-Sept Reproductions" by Florence Ingersoll-Smouse (1926) (shout-out to The Rijksmuseum Library!). This work appears in the catalogue as #199 (Fig 41).
[Extra notes]
Of at least two versions of the work, this drawing most closely resembles the one hanging in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands.
Another version, from 1760, is in the Dayton Art Institute, Dayton Ohio, USA.
A copy after the work in The Hague, by an unknown follower, possibly in the 1820s, was sold at auction by Christie's on 25 November 2003, and a smaller version before that on 4 July 1997
www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/after-claude-joseph-verne...
Artfact lists a version from 1754 that looks like the one in the Mauritshuis, and gives a detailed description of the commission, but cites a Christies auction from 2004 that doesn't turn up in the Christie's archive.
***
Before I found out that the watercolor is based on the Napoleon Museum catalog engraving and not on the original painting, I spent a lot of time trying to work out how the watercolorist could have had access to both paintings, preferably without having to travel between Madrid and The Hague. Given the sheer volume of art looted by France post-Revolution and and under Napoleon, I figured the two paintings could have both been in the Louvre until 1815, Cascatelles in French hands since 1795 and Paisaje since about 1811. That would have given my anonymous artist a 4-year window to paint both watercolors, in Paris.
I could never back up my theory, which the existence of the Napoleon catalog renders unnecessary anyway, but I may have been right about the paintings. If Spain only got Paisaje in 1815, as compensation for the other paintings lost to plunder--and Paisaje does have a Louvre inventory number--then it and Cascatelles were both in Paris for Gregorius to have sketched them for engraving, sometime between 1803 and 1815. The possibility that these watercolors are Gregorius's sketches for the engravings is unlikely, since no other such sketches have turned up, at least online, and he is better known for portraits of notables.
mid-1800s? Anon, Study after Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) "The Cascade of Tivoli and the villa of Maecenas (1750)
Anonymous, after an engraving after Claude-Joseph Vernet's (1714-1789) landscape Cascades of Tivoli and the Villa of Maecenas
watercolor, pencil and ink on wove paper
12.6 x 16.5 cm drawing
13.6 x 19 cm sheet
At top: "J. VERNET" in Roman letters and "École Française" in cursive script
At bottom: "La cascade" in cursive script and below that "B." All annotations are in pencil.
On reverse is erased text that may be the drawing's dimensions.
See the other watercolor, after "Landscape with Broken Rocks / Paisaje Quebrado / Vues des Environs de Rome: Le Torrent" Same format and on same paper but of somewhat different technique.
Provenance: Noordermarkt flea market, Amsterdam, about 2011.
The artist is anonymous. These are not in Vernet's style and are smaller than the watercolors he did as studies and preparatory sketches. Also, wove paper didn't exist until the 1759, well after Vernet did this landscape. It wasn't widely available until the 1780s, Vernet's final years. The same artist may have also done the other watercolor (next one over), after "Landscape With Broken Rocks" / "Paisaje Quebrado" / "Le Torrent")." It's in a different drawing style but is the same size, on same type of paper, and has a letter at the bottom ("B" under "Cascatelles").
This a copy after Plate #58, "La Cascade," in Galerie du Musée Napoléon Vol.3 (of 11), published 1804-1813 by Antoine Michel Filhol. The plate is an etching and engraving by Jean Desaulx and Jean Baptiste Lienard after a drawing by Albert Gregorius. On the engraving, which is the same size as the watercolor, "J. VERNET" and "École Française" appear above the image and "La Cascade" appears below it.
The work on which the engraving is based is "Cascades of Tivoli and the Villa of Maecenas." It is in the Mauritshuis in The Hague but from about 1795 to 1815, it stood in the Louvre, which was then known as the Musée Napoléon.
During the Revolution and under the Directorate, the Louvre became one of Europe's first public museums, displaying the treasures of France's vanquished foes were publicly displayed for the glory of the country and the cultural edification of the people. Emperor Napoleon expanded both policies, systematically looting the best art of Europe, apointing special military squads to collect and convey the works to Paris in Roman-style triumphs. High on the list were the treasurs of antiquity and the Renaissance, as well as German and Flemish artists. Evidently, important French works were also sought, in order to recover them from private collections scattered throughout Europe. The palace of the Louvre, mostly neglected since the building of Versailles, became the new home of all this plunder, carried into Paris in Roman-style triumphs.
Napoleon's first advisor, Jean-Baptiste Wicar, oversaw the looting of the Netherlands and Italy, including also the Papal States. Thus in 1795, during the invasion of the Netherlands, France carried off the collection of Willem V, some 10,000 works, among them The Cascatelles of Tivoli. Ingersoll-Smouse places it in the Louvre until 1815.
Source: "Joseph Vernet Peintre De Marine 1714 - 1789 - Etude Critique Suivie D'Un Catalogue Raisonné De Son Oeuvre Peint Avec Trois Cent Cinquante-Sept Reproductions" by Florence Ingersoll-Smouse (1926) (shout-out to The Rijksmuseum Library!). This work appears in the catalogue as #199 (Fig 41).
[Extra notes]
Of at least two versions of the work, this drawing most closely resembles the one hanging in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands.
Another version, from 1760, is in the Dayton Art Institute, Dayton Ohio, USA.
A copy after the work in The Hague, by an unknown follower, possibly in the 1820s, was sold at auction by Christie's on 25 November 2003, and a smaller version before that on 4 July 1997
www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/after-claude-joseph-verne...
Artfact lists a version from 1754 that looks like the one in the Mauritshuis, and gives a detailed description of the commission, but cites a Christies auction from 2004 that doesn't turn up in the Christie's archive.
***
Before I found out that the watercolor is based on the Napoleon Museum catalog engraving and not on the original painting, I spent a lot of time trying to work out how the watercolorist could have had access to both paintings, preferably without having to travel between Madrid and The Hague. Given the sheer volume of art looted by France post-Revolution and and under Napoleon, I figured the two paintings could have both been in the Louvre until 1815, Cascatelles in French hands since 1795 and Paisaje since about 1811. That would have given my anonymous artist a 4-year window to paint both watercolors, in Paris.
I could never back up my theory, which the existence of the Napoleon catalog renders unnecessary anyway, but I may have been right about the paintings. If Spain only got Paisaje in 1815, as compensation for the other paintings lost to plunder--and Paisaje does have a Louvre inventory number--then it and Cascatelles were both in Paris for Gregorius to have sketched them for engraving, sometime between 1803 and 1815. The possibility that these watercolors are Gregorius's sketches for the engravings is unlikely, since no other such sketches have turned up, at least online, and he is better known for portraits of notables.