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Presented here is a selection of 18th century drawings in stock. Please click on a thumbnail to view further information on the work, as well as an enlarged image of the entire drawing. Six thumbnail images are shown per page; click on the red page number at the lower right to view another page.
GIUSEPPE BERNARDINO BISON Palmanova 1762-1844 Milan A Venetian Shipping Scene Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over a black chalk underdrawing. Signed Bison in brown ink at the lower right. 141 x 217 mm. (5 1/2 x 8 3/8 in.) One of the last and most delightful exponents of the 18th century Venetian vedute tradition, Giuseppe Bernardino Bison worked as a decorative fresco painter at villas and palaces around the Veneto. Around 1800 he settled in Trieste, where among his more important works were the decoration of the Palazzo Carciotti and the Palazzo della Vecchia Borsa. In 1831 Bison moved to Milan, where he worked for the remainder of his career, and where he was particularly active as a scenographer, producing stage designs for the Teatro alla Scala and other theatres. Although his career lasted well into the 19th century, his style invariably retains something of the flavour of the previous century.
Bison was an accomplished and prolific draughtsman, whose earliest works show the influence of Giambattista Tiepolo and Francesco Guardi, while his later drawings tend towards Neoclassicism. His preferred medium was pen and ink, and his drawings encompass a wide and varied range of subjects, from religious narratives to genre scenes, capricci, and stage and ornament designs. Few of Bison’s many drawings, however, were done as preparatory studies for paintings, and he seems to have produced a large number of his drawings as independent works of art for sale.
ANTOINE-JEAN DUCLOS Paris 1742-1795 Paris Figures Seated at a Table in an Interior Pen and black ink and grey wash, with framing lines in black ink. Signed and dated A.J. Duclos inv. et del. 1770 in the lower left margin. 175 x 101 mm. (6 7/8 x 4 in.) Antoine-Jean Duclos was a pupil of the draughtsman and engraver Augustin de Saint-Aubin, whose designs he often reproduced as prints. Adept at the art of engraving and etching on a small scale, Duclos is perhaps best known as a book illustrator, his first efforts in this field coming around 1765. Much of his work was in the form of engravings after drawings by other artists, notably Cochin, Gravelot, Eisen, Marillier and Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard. Duclos is recorded as exhibiting at the Salon just once, in 1795.
Drawings by Duclos—‘quelques dessins à la facture petite et gentillette’, in the words of the Goncourts—are rare. This charming drawing illustrates a scene from the opera Lucile by André Grétry from a story by Jean François Marmontel, and served as a preparatory drawing for an engraving. The engraving, an impression of which is in the New York Public Library, is in the same direction as the drawing, and is captioned ‘Ils s’asseyent autour d’une table ou l’on sert le dejeuner.’
GAETANO GANDOLFI San Matteo della Decima 1734-1802 Bologna The Head of a Young Woman in Profile Pen and brown ink. 145 x 103 mm. (5 3/4 x 4 in.) This drawing may be included among a number of elaborate pen and ink studies of heads—mainly of young women, but also depicting boys, old men, and children, and often with several heads on one sheet—that are among Gaetano Gandolfi’s most appealing works. These beautiful, highly finished drawings by Gandolfi were probably made as autonomous works of art for sale to collectors. At the same time, however, the precise nature of the artist’s penwork made them particularly suitable for reproduction as prints, and this is true of the present sheet. A splendid and charming example of the artist’s confident draughtsmanship, this drawing is a preparatory study, in reverse and of identical size, for one of Gaetano Gandolfi’s etchings, depicting The Head of a Woman in Profile to the Right. The small etching, one of Gaetano’s rare forays into the medium, has been dated to the late 1770s or 1780s.
MAURO GANDOLFI Bologna 1764-1834 Bologna Head of a Man in Profile to the Left Pen and brown ink, with touches of brown wash. 144 x 108 mm. (5 5/8 x 4 1/4 in.) Unlike his father Gaetano and uncle Ubaldo, Mauro Gandolfi enjoyed a relatively brief career as a painter, and it is as a draughtsman that he is best known. By 1794 he had been elected to the Accademia Clementina in Bologna, where he was later appointed to the post of professor of figure drawing. Mauro seems to have largely abandoned painting around the turn of the century in favour of working as a reproductive engraver. He also produced a number of highly finished drawings and watercolours for sale to collectors. Stylistically comparable heads appear in a sheet of studies of heads by Mauro Gandolfi in the collection of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice.
UBALDO GANDOLFI San Matteo della Decima 1728-1781 Ravenna Design for a Monument or Frontispiece, With a Male and Female Figure Flanking a Cartouche, Three Putti Holding a Garland Above Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over an extensive underdrawing in red chalk. Laid down on an 18th century Italian mount. 300 x 210 mm. (11 3/4 x 8 1/4 in.)
Judging by his annotation on a photograph of the present sheet in the Witt Library, James Byam Shaw may have been the first scholar to attribute this drawing to Ubaldo Gandolfi. The drawing may be compared stylistically with a handful of decorative designs by Ubaldo, such as two drawings of fountains; one in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa and the other in a private collection. Also comparable is a rather fantastical drawing of Figures Watching a Man Spout Water from his Mouth, probably also a design for a fountain, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
Attributed to HILAIRE LEDRU Oppy 1769-1840 Paris A Young Man Playing a Violin Black chalk and pencil, circular. Inscribed L. David del. on the verso. 198 mm. (7 7/8 in.) diameter.
Hilaire Ledru (or Le Dru) seems to have been largely self-taught. He studied in Douai (and probably also in Antwerp in 1789) and made his Salon debut in 1795. He soon achieved a measure of success with his highly finished portrait drawings—in a technique known as manière noire; drawing in pencil and black chalk in imitation of mezzotint engravings—of military and political figures These included portraits of Generals Bonaparte and Beurnonville, exhibited at the Salon of 1796, and drawings of Marshal Bernadotte and General Scherer, shown at the Salon of 1798. Ledru continued to exhibit both portraits and genre scenes at the Salons until 1824, and also took part in exhibitions in Lille and Douai.
While the traditional attribution of the present sheet to Jacques-Louis David may be discounted, the drawing may nevertheless be compared—in style, technique, medium and overall effect—with a signed circular portrait drawing of a young woman by David in the Louvre. Of similar dimensions and drawn with an equally precise handling of black chalk and pencil, both drawings reveal the particular influence of the draughtsmanship of Charles-Nicolas Cochin, who made a speciality of drawn and engraved portraits in this medallion format.
HUBERT ROBERT Paris 1733-1808 Paris Landscape with the Temple of Saturn, Rome Watercolour, pen and grey ink and grey wash, over a counterproof in red chalk. Signed H. Robert. in brown ink at the lower left. 368 x 291 mm. (14 1/2 x 11 1/2 in.) Like Fragonard, Hubert Robert often made counterproofs of his red chalk drawings. This was an essential task, since by making a counterproof any excess red chalk dust—which otherwise might easily smear—would be removed from the original drawing. Often, the artist would then extensively rework the counterproof, adding pen, ink and wash and watercolour to create a second finished, albeit reversed, version of the original composition; such is the case with the present sheet. The original red chalk drawing for the present composition, executed in 1775, is today in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Valence, and is dated ‘du merc. 4 janvier 1775’, and was thus drawn a decade after the artist’s departure from Rome.
Located at the northwest corner of the Forum, the Temple of Saturn (also known as the Temple of Concord) was a favourite subject of Robert’s, and was treated by him in several drawings and paintings. Among other drawings by Robert of the Temple of Saturn, all in red chalk, are a pair of studies—one dated 1762—in the collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Lyon, as well as another drawing, also dated 1762, in Valence and a drawing of Washerwomen in the Ruins of the Temple of Saturn in the Louvre. A capriccio watercolour view of the interior of the Temple of Saturn, dated 1774, is in the Cleveland Museum of Art and, like the present sheet, was drawn over a counterproof of a chalk drawing.
GIOVANNI DOMENICO TIEPOLO Venice 1727-1804 Venice God the Father in Glory Pen and brown ink and brown wash, backed. Signed Domo. Tiepolo in brown ink at the lower right. 287 x 200 mm. (11 3/8 x 7 7/8 in.) The present sheet may be included among a large series of drawings by Domenico Tiepolo on the theme of God the Father in clouds, supported by angels and cherubs. The artist drew several such series of drawings—depicting both religious and secular subjects—characterized by variations on a single theme. As James Byam Shaw has noted of such drawings, ‘Sometimes the theme itself derives from some great work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, sometimes it is apparently Domenico’s own. In either case, he takes an evident pride and pleasure in ringing the changes, devising new pictorial patterns, new relationships of figure to figure, while the essential material remains the same: and all within a limited scope—for, as always in Domenico’s work, whether painting or drawing, there is little attempt at composition in depth; it is on one plane, in two dimensions, whether the scene is on terra ferma or in the clouds.’ Byam Shaw noted that he knew more than sixty drawings by Domenico Tiepolo on the theme of God the Father, but that there must have been many more. Many of the drawings are numbered—the highest known number being 140—and they exist in both vertical and horizontal formats. It has also been noted that Domenico seems to have drawn inspiration for these drawings from the figure of the Almighty in the upper part of Giambattista Tiepolo’s large altarpiece of Saint Thecla Freeing Este from the Plague, painted for the Duomo in Este and installed in the church in December 1759.
GIOVANNI DOMENICO TIEPOLO Venice 1727-1804 Venice Hercules and Antaeus Pen and brown ink and brown and grey wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk. Signed Dom. Tiepolo f at the lower right and numbered 77 at the upper left. 203 x 162 mm. (8 x 6 3/8 in.)
This drawing may be added to a series of drawings of Hercules and Antaeus by Domenico Tiepolo that have been dated to the latter part of the artist’s career. The largest single group of drawings of this subject, numbering thirty-eight sheets, were once in a small album formerly in the Henri Bordes collection and purchased by Colnaghi’s from Paul Prouté in 1936. The album was broken up and the drawings dispersed among public and private collections between 1936 and 1941, and examples are today in the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, MA. (According to James Byam Shaw, however, none of the Bordes drawings were numbered, and as such the present sheet is unlikely to have been part of the album.) Byam Shaw has suggested that these Hercules and Antaeus drawings may have been related to the decoration of the Tiepolo villa at Zianigo, since many of the drawings depict the figures of Hercules and Antaeus on the same sort of ledge that appears in other drawings by Domenico—mostly of animals— that are thought to have been intended for the Zianigo villa. As he notes, ‘It seems possible, therefore, that the subject was at least conceived as a suitable one for the decoration of that villa, and that the series was drawn at a relatively late date in Domenico’s career.’
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