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.

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.

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.

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.

Lyon 1728-1808 Lyon

Chinoiserie Design, with a Seated Oriental Musician

Black and red chalk, with touches of blue, yellow, red, brown and grey watercolour.

Signed and dated Jean: Pillement. 1764 at the lower left centre.

348 x 235 mm. (13 3/4 x 9 1/4 in.)

This vibrant drawing, signed in full and dated 1764, is likely to have been produced as a collector’s drawing in its own right. A very similar arrangement, with Oriental musicians seated on platforms beneath canopies hung with bells and surmounted by a blue cloth, is found in Pillement’s painted chinoiserie decoration of a room in the palace of Schloss Niederweiden in Austria, commissioned by the Empress Maria Theresa around 1764. As one recent scholar has described the room, "Between the windows, surrounded with flower covered trellis work, four large chinoiserie figures appear on each side of the room seated on ornate platforms within a frame of draperies adorned with bells and surmounted by canopies."

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.

GABRIEL-JACQUES DE SAINT-AUBIN

Paris 1724-1780 Paris

The Rape of the Sabine Women

Graphite and stumping on paper laid down onto another sheet.

Signed and dated G. de S^t. Aubin del. 1763 in the lower margin.

Inscribed Composé par gabriel d. S aubin 17[63?] on the verso, laid down.

187 x 135 mm. (7 3/8 x 5 1/4 in.)

This splendid drawing is a preparatory study by Saint-Aubin for an engraving used to illustrate Philippe de Prétot’s monumental history of ancient Rome, the Spectacle de l’histoire romaine, published in 1776 and 1777. The drawing appears, in reverse, as the second plate in the book; reproduced in an engraving by the printmaker Pierre Aveline. Philippe de Prétot commissioned Saint-Aubin to provide drawings or painted designs for twenty-nine of the forty-four illustrations for the Spectacle de l’histoire romaine. Given by far the largest share of the commission, Saint-Aubin worked on the project for much of the 1760’s. It was not until 1776, however, that the first volume, illustrated with a set of twenty reproductive engravings of scenes from ancient Roman history, including one after the present sheet, was published. A further twenty prints – devoted to Roman battles, military triumphs, ceremonies, public games and so forth – were issued with the second volume the following year. Plans to publish a third set of engravings were abandoned with the death of Philippe de Prétot in 1787. The complete set of engravings was then acquired by the publisher Nyon and used to illustrate the Abbé Millot's Abrégé de l’histoire romaine, published in Paris in 1789. All of Saint-Aubin’s final preparatory drawings for the Spectacle de l’histoire romaine remained together in a private collection until being dispersed in 2004.

JACOB VAN STRIJ

Dordrecht 1756-1815 Dordrecht

A Rhine Landscape with Peasants at Work, after Herman Saftleven

Watercolour, pen and brown and grey ink.

Signed, dated and inscribed Roelofseck: / Herman Saftleven. f. A: Utrecht / Anno 1664. / na het orgeneele het welk berust by den / wel edele Heer M^r Barthout van Slingelandt, vryheer van Slingeland / en Goidschalxoord te dordrecht. door Jacob van Stry 1784 on the verso.

187 x 235 mm. (7 3/8 x 9 1/4 in.)

This watercolour is a fine example of a type of highly finished drawing that Jacob van Strij produced throughout his career. Among the relatively few signed and dated drawings by the artist, it was almost certainly executed as an independent work of art. The drawing is a faithful copy of a small oil painting on panel, dated 1664, by the 17th century Dutch artist Herman Saftleven (1609-1685). As the inscription on the verso of the sheet notes, van Strij made the drawing in 1784 from Saftleven’s painting, which was at the time in the collection of M. Barthout van Slingeland, lord of Slingeland and Goidschalxoord, near Dordrecht. Saftleven’s small painting, one of a pair of Rhineland compositions of 1664, appeared with its pendant on the art market in 1999, and is today in a private collection. Saftleven’s painting is signed, dated and inscribed ‘Roelofseck’ on the reverse, and it has been suggested that this may refer to the town of Rolandseck, on the Rhine south of Bonn.

Like many Dutch artists of the 18th century, Jacob van Strij made a number of elaborate watercolour drawings after the work of earlier Dutch masters. Often, as in the case of the present sheet, van Strij would base his watercolour copies on paintings to be found in local Dordrecht collections.

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