Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola)

Study for « Paysage de Fribourg » - 1943 a drawing by Balthus (1908 - 2001)

This very modern drawing presents a view of Ariccia, a small town 25 kilometres south-east of Rome. The Palazzo Chigi (in which the film-maker Luchino Visconti would film a large part of The Leopard a century later) and the adjoining church are seen from the bottom of the ravine that surrounds the town. This drawing is a moving testimony to the attraction of the city for artists of the Romantic period, who established in Ariccia a vivid artists' colony. 1. Achille Bénouville...

This landscape, masterfully executed in pen and wash by Louis-Jean Desprez around 1779, probably represents a view of the Roman countryside. The treatment of the trees is very similar to that of two engravings which Desprez executed in Rome, The Island of Cythera and The Temple of Love. 1. Louis-Jean Desprez, a cosmopolitan life between Italy and Sweden Born in Auxerre in 1743, Louis-Jean Desprez probably began his apprenticeship with the engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin...

This study presents a typical Roman countryside landscape: an ancient mausoleum in front of which a cart is passing by followed by two peasants. If the technique (a pen drawing on graphite lines, completed with a wash of brown and grey inks) and the signature inevitably evoke the art of Lorrain, we find on the verso of this drawing additional evidences that lead us to consider this unpublished drawing as a work by the master. The motif of the mausoleum has been taken up in pen on the verso in a technique that can be found in several other drawings by Lorrain. There is also a study of three characters, which can be considered as preparatory to Lorrain’s painting entitled The Port of Ostia with the Embarkation of Saint Paula, leading us to claim this attribution with a dating of around 1629. 1. Claude Lorrain or the perfection of classical landscape in Rome in the 17th century Claude Gellée was born in 1600 in Chamagne in Lorraine. Orphaned at the age of twelve, he spent a year with his brother in Freiburg, where the latter was a woodcarver. Claude Gellée then probably arrived in Rome in 1613, where he joined the workshop of Agostino Tassi (1580 - 1644) in 1617. Between 1619 and 1620 he studied for two years in Naples in the workshop of Goffredi Wals (who was himself a former pupil of Tassi). In 1625 he returned to Lorraine for two years where he worked alongside Claude Deruet. He then returned to Rome, a city he never left for the rest of his life (except for short trips to the surrounding countryside). From 1627 to 1650 he lived in Via Margutta. From 1635 onwards he became a renowned painter and commissions started to pour in. Considered during his lifetime as the most accomplished of the classical landscape painters, his reputation never faded. Between 1629 and 1635 Le Lorrain often went to the Roman countryside to draw with his friend Joachim von Sandrart (1606 - 1686). He became a member of the Academy of Saint Luke in 1633, while being closely acquainted with the Bentvueghels, this guild which brought together the young Nordic painters active in Rome. In 1643 he joined the Congregation of the Virtuosi. In 1650 he moved to Via Paolina where he lived until his death. Little is known of his intimate life. He seems to have had a daughter, Agnes, from an ancillary love affair. In 1657/ 1658 she moved in with him. Stricken with gout in 1663, he died in 1682. 2. Description of the drawing; the technique of nature studies Two peasants are walking behind a horse-drawn cart on a road that winds through ancient tombs. While a rectangular tomb with a columned facade can be seen in the distance, the cart passes an important ancient building. It has a circular shape and its partially ruined façade is decorated with columns. The start of a second floor can...

Neapolitan gouaches appeared in the eighteenth century when tourism in the Naples area was developing: the discoveries of Herculaneum and Pompeii made this city a mandatory stop on the Grand Tour, the journey made by wealthy Europeans to complete their education. Generally small in size for ease of transport and affordable in price, these gouaches were the ideal travel souvenir that these tourists of the early days were bringing back to capture the idyllic landscapes they had discovered during their journey and to share them with family and friends upon their return at home. The Bay of Naples and the eruptions of Vesuvius are the favourite themes of these views. Here we have a view of the Ovo Castle, which was rebuilt on the island of Partenope, in the middle of the Bay of Naples and about a hundred metres from the shore by the Normans in the 12th century on antique ruins...

No Dutch draughtsman ever captured the atmosphere of the rural countryside of Holland with the same atmospheric and engaging simplicity that Van Goyen achieved in drawings such as this. Indeed, his landscapes were seminal in the development of the genre. The present sketch conveys a striking sense of movement within the natural landscape, conveyed by the deftly applied strokes of chalk, from which the artist’s hand can be sensed. The composition is characteristic of his work, with the low horizon affording significance to the broad sky and the soaring birds within. This feeling of windswept motion powerfully evokes the expansive Dutch farmland with which he was evidently preoccupied. 1. Jan van Goyen...

The attribution to Jan de Bisschop has been confirmed by the RKD with the following comment: "We base this attribution on the dark washes, the subject represented and the monogram". ...

Reginald Marsh Tugboat at Dock, circa 1937 Signed lower right Watercolor and pencil on paper 13 3/4 x 20 inches Housed in a Lowy frame. Provenance: Sotheby'...

Gift, 2020, watercolor, oil pastel, pink, orange, ink, fantasy, rabbit.

Anthemusa, 2020, watercolor, oil pastel, green, landscape, ink, fantasy.

Hopeful Spring, 2020, watercolor, oil pastel, green, landscape, fantasy, trees.

Watercolor on paper, framed. Dark Night, 2020, watercolor, oil pastel, black, frame, landscape, fantasy, blue, creature. Framed and matted, frame size measures 24" x 35.75" x 1.25" ...

A very attractive rural scene of a fisherman and his dog on a riverbank, in very good colour and an appealing composition. Claude Hayes (1852-1922) A fisherman and his dog by a riverbank Signed Watercolour with touches of pencil 6½ x 10 inches, image only 13 x 16 inches with the frame Claude Hayes was a Dublin born painter who to avoid his father's wish to make a businessman of him ran away to sea and served on the Golden Fleece, one of the transports used in the Abyssinian expedition of 1867-68, and also spent a year in the United States. Returning to London, he studied art at Heatherley's and the Royal Academy Schools, and then in Antwerp, under Charles Verlat. He worked in Hampshire with James Aumonier and also in Surrey with William Charles Estall, whose sister he married. Hayes exhibited widely in London and provincial centres, and was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1886, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1883, and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, 1902. He also showed at the RA, RBSA, Brook Street Art Gallery, Dudley Gallery, FAS, GI, Grosvenor Gallery, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, MAFA, RBA, RHA, Ridley Art Club, RSW and Walker's Gallery, London. In 1912, Claude Hayes represented England at the Venice Biennale. His work is in various public collections in England and Ireland including the Ulster Museum, Museums Sheffield, Torre Abbey Museum and the Leeds City Art Gallery. His father was the artist Edwin Hayes.