Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
OLD MASTERS
Encompassing centuries of change in Europe between 1300 and 1800, from booms of prosperity to bloody revolutions, Old Masters describes a wide range of artists. The informal term was derived from the title of an artist who trained in a guild long enough to become a master, such as Leonardo da Vinci, who studied in a Florence painters’ guild. However, Old Masters paintings, prints and other art is now used to refer to work made by any artist with a high level of skill in painting, drawing, sculpture or printmaking who worked during this era.
The 15th century’s expansive trade and commerce spread culture across borders. A vibrant period of art emerged, bolstered by studies of anatomy and nature that influenced a new visual realism. From Raphael and Michelangelo in the Renaissance to Rembrandt van Rijn and Johannes Vermeer in the Dutch Golden Age, artists expressed emotion, naturalism, color and light in new ways. El Greco and Paolo Veronese were leaders in the dramatic style of Mannerism, while Caravaggio and Peter Paul Rubens demonstrated the movement and meticulous detail of Baroque art.
Historically, most attention was concentrated on male artists, but recent research and exhibitions have elevated the impactful work of women such as Rachel Ruysch and Artemisia Gentileschi. In late-18th-century France, female artists like Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun were prominent names. Nevertheless, access to the academies and guilds was highly restricted for women, and even those able to establish practices were expected to adhere to portraits and still lifes rather than the grand history paintings being created by men.
Find a collection of Old Masters prints, paintings, drawings and watercolors and other art on 1stDibs.
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Style: Old Masters
FINE 18th CENTURY OLD MASTER CHALK DRAWING - ROMANESQUE FIGURES INTERIOR SCENE
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Artist/ School: French School, 18th century
Title: Classical figures within an interior.
Medium: chalk on paper, mounted.
Size: drawing: 11.5 x 13.5 inches
Provenance:...
Category
Early 18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk
Jan Lutma, Goldsmith by Rembrandt van Rijn
Located in New Orleans, LA
Rembrandt van Rijn
1606-1669 Dutch
Jan Lutma, The Goldsmith
Etching, engraving, and drypoint on paper
New Hollstein’s second state of five
Signed and dated “Rembrandt / F. 1656” (...
Category
17th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Engraving, Drypoint, Etching
Landscape - Drawing by Jan Peter Verdussen - 1745 ca
Located in Roma, IT
Landscape is a beautiful drawing in pencil and watercolor on paper realized by Jan Peter Verdussen in 1745 ca.
In good condition, excpet for some foxing on the right.
The artwork r...
Category
1740s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor, Pencil
$582 Sale Price
25% Off
Baptism of Christ - Ink Drawing by Anonymous XIX Century
Located in Roma, IT
Baptism of Christ is a beautiful original drawing (pen and ink on paper) by an anonymous of the Neoclassical school of the beginning of the 19th century.
A ...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink
$811 Sale Price
25% Off
Roman Charity (Cimon and Pero)
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
Michel CORNEILLE the Younger (Paris, 1642 – 1708)
Roman Charity (Cimon and Pero)
Black chalk with white highlights on beige paper
Height: 28 cm – Width: 20 cm
Unsigned
France, cir...
Category
Late 17th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Charcoal, Chalk
French School Of The 18th century, An Ancient Shipyard, Drawing
Located in Paris, FR
French school of the 18th century
An ancient shipyard or building site (?)
Ink and ink wash on paper
17.5 x 23 cm
In a modern frame 32 x 37 cm
Category
1780s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink
$432 Sale Price
25% Off
France 18th Century, The Surprised Lovers, original drawing
Located in Paris, FR
France circa 1770
Two lovers surprised in bed
Black chalk on paper
13 x 17 cm
Modern frame : 34 x 38 cm
This drawing had been attributed to Gabriel de Saint Aubin (1724-1780). It's...
Category
1760s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk
Landscape - Pencil and Watercolor by Jan Pieter Verdussen - 1750
Located in Roma, IT
Landscape is a beautiful drawing in watercolor and pencil on ivory-colored paper realized by Jan Peter Verdussen.
In good condition; only a smallspots at the edges of the drawing an...
Category
1750s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Ink, Watercolor
Man on Horseback Abducting a Woman
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
Jean-Robert ANGO (Active 1759 – 1773)
Man on Horseback Abducting a Woman
Red chalk and white chalk
26.1 x 25.9 cm
Provenance
Libert-Castor sale, November 19, 1993 (lot no. 23, ill...
Category
1760s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk
Tarantella - Watercolor by M. De Vito - 19th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Tarantella is an original watercolor on ivory-colored paper, realized by Michela De Vito in the first half of XIX century.
Good conditions except for shading and light stains along...
Category
1820s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor
$671 Sale Price
25% Off
View of a Mansion in the South of France, a drawing by Claude-Joseph Vernet
By Claude-Joseph Vernet
Located in PARIS, FR
We would like to thank Madame Beck-Saiello for confirming the autograph nature of this drawing after an in-person examination.
It was probably during an excursion in the countryside near Avignon that Claude-Joseph Vernet executed this drawing, enhanced with pen and brown ink, depicting a mansion on a hilltop overlooking a small village with geometric shapes.
1. Joseph Vernet, a painter influenced by Italy
Claude-Joseph Vernet was born in Avignon in 1714, the son of Antoine Vernet (1689-1753), an artisan painter of architectural decorations, coach panels, and the like. He moved to the studio of Philippe Sauvan (1697-1792), a leading history painter in Avignon, and then worked with Jacques Viali (active 1681-1745), a decorative, landscape, and marine painter in Aix-en-Provence. Vernet's first recorded paintings were decorative overdoors executed in 1731 in the Aix townhouse of the marquise de Simiane. In 1734, Joseph de Seytres, marquis de Caumont, a leading amateur in Avignon, sponsored Vernet to make a study trip to Italy to complete his artistic education and to draw antiquities for his patron.
As Avignon was a papal territory in Vernet's day, he also had a number of useful introductions among influential churchmen when he arrived in Rome. Vernet was soon at home in the French community there, and he was encouraged by Nicolas Vleughels (1668-1737), director of the Académie de France in Rome, even though the young painter had no official affiliation with the royal institution. He likely entered the studio of the French marine painter Adrien Manglard...
Category
1730s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Laid Paper, Pen, Carbon Pencil
18th century English scene of a groom with a horse in a landscape
Located in Woodbury, CT
Wonderful 18th century English gouache on paper of a 18th century English scene of a groom with a horse in a landscape.
One of a set of five all framed in Hogarth frames.
L.Green ...
Category
1780s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Gouache
$2,360 Sale Price
20% Off
Three drawings by François Boucher in a mounting by Jean-Baptiste Glomy
Located in PARIS, FR
We would like to thank Juliette Parmentier-Courreau of the Custodia Foundation for her welcome and support during the consultation of Glomy’s Journal des Ouvrages.
This spectacularly large "feuille de desseins ajustés" commissioned by François Boucher from Jean-Baptiste Glomy is emblematic of the painter's art and mastery of rocaille. It is also fully representative of the taste of this period in the field of decorative arts. The largest of these three drawings, placed at the bottom of the composition, is particularly interesting: dating from around 1756, it constitutes a modello (apparently unpublished) for the frontispiece of the "Catalogue des tableaux de Monsieur de Julienne"), preserved in the Morgan Library in New York.
1. François Boucher, the master of French rocaille
The extraordinary career of Francois Boucher was unmatched by his contemporaries in versatility, consistency and output. For many, particularly the writers and collectors who led the revival of interest in the French rococo during the last century, his sensuous beauties and plump cupids represent the French eighteenth century at its most typical. His facility with the brush, even when betraying the occasional superficiality of his art, enabled him to master every aspect of painting – history and mythology, portraiture, landscape, ordinary life and, as part of larger compositions, even still life. He had been trained as an engraver, and the skills of a draftsman, which he imbued in the studio of Jean-Francois Cars (1661 – 1738), stood him in good stead throughout his career; his delightful drawings are one of the most sought-after aspects of his oeuvre.
As a student of Francois Lemoyne (1688 - 1737), he mastered the art of composition. The four years he spent in Italy, from 1727-1731, educated him in the works of the masters, classics and history, that his modest upbringing had denied him.
On his return to Paris in 1734, he gained full membership of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture with his splendid Rinaldo and Armida (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Although, throughout his career, he occasionally painted subjects taken from the Bible, and would always have considered himself first as a history painter, his own repertoire of heroines, seductresses, flirtatious peasant girls and erotic beauties was better suited to a lighter, more decorative subject matter. His mastery of technique and composition enabled him to move from large scale tapestry...
Category
1750s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk, Ink
Early 19th century French School, Portrait of a man in profile, oval drawing
Located in Paris, FR
Early 19th century French School,
Portrait of a young man in profile
charcoal on cut paper applied to pink tinted paper
Oval 58 x 47 cm (overall size) the portrait itself 41.5 x 28...
Category
Early 1800s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Charcoal
18th Century Old Master pencil study of cows by French artist Jean Baptiste Huet
Located in Petworth, West Sussex
A rare and charming study of cows by 18th Century French painter, engraver and designer Jean-Baptiste Huet.
The details are:
Jean Baptiste Huet (French, 1745 – 1811)
Study of cows
P...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pencil
Portraits of the Hon. Mary Shuttleworth and Anna Maria, 9th Baroness Forrester
Located in London, GB
THE HON. MARY SHUTTLEWORTH, NÉE COCKBURN (D. 1777)
and her sister
ANNA MARIA, 9TH BARONESS FORRESTER (D. 1808)
Pastel and gouache on paper laid on canvas, on their original backb...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pastel, Gouache
Double-sided Horse Studies by Théodore Géricault
Located in PARIS, FR
Recto: two horses, preparatory study for the lithograph "Les Boueux" ("The Muddy Ones")
Verso: four studies of horse heads (including two preparatory studies for the watercolor "Plowing in England"), a study of a life guard with the rump of his horse (preparatory to the lithograph "A Party of Life...
Category
1820s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Carbon Pencil
Turin Countryside - Original Ink and Watercolor by Jan Pieter Verdussen - 1744
Located in Roma, IT
China ink and Watercolour. With handwritten notes, indicating the place and date of the artwork in lower margin: "Fait proche de Turin, ce 13 Juin 1744". Numbered on the lower right ...
Category
1740s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Ink, Watercolor
Madonna della Scodella
Located in Roma, IT
Madonna della Scodella is an original drawing (black pencil, pen and ink on laid paper) by an exponent of the Italian school of the eighteenth century.
In excellent conditions: almo...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink
$1,791 Sale Price
25% Off
Rome/Tevere - Pencil and Watercolor Drawing - 1741
Located in Roma, IT
Rome is a beautiful artwork realized by Jan Peter Verdussen in 1741.
In good condition except for some pencil marks and traces of sealing wax on the back and some diffused foxings.
...
Category
1740s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor, Pencil
$851 Sale Price
25% Off
Battle, Knights on Horses - China Ink and Watercolor by T. Fort - 1840s
Located in Roma, IT
Typical battle scene by T. Fort, in very good conditions and signed by the artist.
A very interesting artwork for a connoisseur of the militaria genre!
Theodore Géricaul Fort (1810 - 1896), Simeone Fort's son, belonged to the French school of the XIX century; Théodore Fort...
Category
1840s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor, Ink
$3,763 Sale Price
25% Off
Member of the Military Band - Drawing - 19th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Member of the military band is a beautiful pencil drawing on cream-colored paper, realized during the XIX century by an Italian Master.
Hand-signed on the right side of the artwork....
Category
19th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pencil
$180 Sale Price
25% Off
Girolamo Tubino After Raffaello, Sanzio Da Urbino La Velata
Located in Cheltenham, GB
This fine mid-19th-century watercolour by Italian artist Girolamo Tubino (1805-1879) is after ‘La Velata’ (Woman with a Veil) by Raphael (1483-1520),...
Category
1840s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor, Paper
Study for a standing man
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
Sir Anthony van Dyck
(Antwerp 1599 - 1641 London)
STUDY FOR A PORTRAIT OF A STANDING MAN
Black and white chalk on blue-green paper
25,4 by 13,5 cm
Provenance
Prof. Julius S. Held (...
Category
17th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk
Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew - Drawing - 17th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew is a precious original drawing (black and red chalk, pen and China ink on laid paper, laid down on canvas) realized by...
Category
17th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Charcoal, Ink, Watercolor
$2,254 Sale Price
25% Off
Study of horse and ox bones
Located in Middletown, NY
Graphite, ink wash and watercolor on handmade laid paper with a large, indistinguishable ovoid watermark with a bunch of grapes, 8 7/16 x 12 5/8 inches (225 x 320 mm), signed in brown ink in the lower left. With the Henry Scipio Reitlinger oval stamp in brown ink on the verso (Lugt 2274a).
The condition of the image and paper is consistent with age, there is minor toning on the recto and some attenuation of the green pigment. The drawing is laid down to an 18th century laid paper support and has a small pencil notation in the lower right corner (modern), and scattered notations in pencil on the verso of the support (also modern, perhaps auction/accession notes). On the paper support is an ink drawing in red and black of what appears to be the floor plan for the wing of a large building. The drawing is top-up, adhered facing the verso of the drawing. The architectural drawing on the support is visible through to the recto of the composition when the sheets are viewed through raking light. There is a small area of stipple point spotting in brown ink on the verso of the support. Examination under black light shows no indication of repairs or additions, expert or otherwise.
Provenance:
Henry Scipio Reitlinger was born in either 1882 or 1885, attended Kings College...
Category
Mid-17th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Handmade Paper, Laid Paper, Graphite
19th century watercolour of a Girl at her Dressing Table
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Muir Hetherington;
Sir John and Lady Witt, acquired 1974;
By descent to 2015.
Literature:
Tom Jones (ed.), William Henry Hunt 1790-1864, exh. cat., 1981, no. 145 (Girl in a bedroom);
John Witt, William Henry Hunt (1790-1864) Life and Work, London, 1982, no. 553, p. 194, colour pl. 16.
Exhibited:
Wolverhampton, Central Art Gallery, Preston, Harris Museum and Art Gallery and Hastings, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, William Henry Hunt 1790-1864, 1981, no. 145 as Girl in a bedroom (Lent by Sir John & Lady Witt)
Framed dimensions: 20 x 20.75 inches
This unusually charming and well-preserved watercolour was painted by William Henry Hunt in around 1833. Almost certainly depicting his young wife, Sarah, possibly in the interior of her family home at Bramley in Hampshire. This work shows Hunt’s remarkable virtuosity as a watercolourist, Hunt, for example, articulates the profile of his young wife, by leaving a reserve of white paper to suggest the light modelling her features. Throughout the 1830s Hunt made a sequence of richly painted interior views of both domestic and agricultural spaces which pay scrupulous attention to detail.
Hunt was born in London, the son of a tin-plate worker and japanner. J. L. Roget recorded the observation of Hunt’s uncle: ‘nervy, little Billy Hunt… was always a poor cripple, and as he was fit for nothing, they made an artist of him.’ At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to the landscape painter John Varley for seven years, moving to live with Varley at 18 Broad Street, Golden Square, London. There he made close friends with both John Linnell and William Mulready. Hunt worked at the ‘Monro Academy’, at 8 Adelphi Terrace, London, the house of Dr Thomas Monro, an enthusiastic patron of landscape watercolourists. Through Monro, Hunt was introduced to the 5th Earl of Essex...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor, Pencil
Brigante - Watercolor 1820 ca.
Located in Roma, IT
Watercolour on ivory colored paper, 1820 c.a.. Hand titled and signed. Representing brigand. Very good conditions.
Very beautiful and good quality watercolour both for the drawing a...
Category
1820s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor
$806 Sale Price
25% Off
Rocky Landscape with Trees and Temple Ruins a drawing by Giulio Parigi (ca 1615)
Located in PARIS, FR
This Rocky Landscape with Trees and the Ruins of a Temple is a drawing by Giulio Parigi, an eclectic and prolific artist of the Medici court. An engraver, architect, furniture and je...
Category
1610s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Laid Paper, Pen
Morning Glory and Poppy Floral - British art Old Master flower painting W/C
Located in London, GB
This charming Old Master circa 1800 water colour painting is of morning glory flowers and tendrils entwined with a poppy. The foliage has a metallic green tone and the white morning ...
Category
Early 1800s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor
$1,790 Sale Price
20% Off
France 18th Century, Pastorale (Arcadian Landscape), original drawing
Located in Paris, FR
France 18th Century,
Pastorale (Arcadian Landscape)
Black chalk and heightenings of white gouache on blue-grey paper
19 x 31 cm
Framed : 34.5 x 46.5 cm
The atmosphere and the subje...
Category
1760s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk
Louis-Félix de La Rue (1730-1777) A Mythological scene, drawing
Located in Paris, FR
Louis-Félix de La Rue (1730-1777)
A Mythological scene
Pen and black ink on paper
Bears an old inscription with the name of the artist on the lower left bo...
Category
1770s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink
Hercules vanquishing a drakaina (half‑woman, half‑serpent)
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
Circle of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727 – Madrid 1804)
Hercules vanquishing a drakaina (half‑woman, half‑serpent) – interpreted either as Echidna or a personified Hydra
c. ...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink
17th Century French sanguine drawing of maiden's harvesting flowers
By (Circle of) Nicolas Poussin
Located in Petworth, West Sussex
Circle of Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594-1665)
Maiden’s harvesting flowers
Sanguine on paper
8. ¾ in. (22 cm.) tondo
Category
17th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper
Italian Old Master Ink & Wash Drawing St. Anne & The Virgin Mary with Cherubs
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Pietro Fancelli (Italian 1764 - 1850)
bio details attached to the frame
'St. Anne & The Virgin'
ink with watercolor wash on paper, framed
framed: 22 x 16 inches
image: 11 x 6.5 inche...
Category
Late 18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Watercolor
$1,356 Sale Price
30% Off
Study for a fresco
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
Attributed to Francesco PENNI (1488 – 1528)
Study for a fresco
Pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with white on prepared paper
14 x 12 cm
Unsigned
On the mount, handwriting ...
Category
16th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink
$11,946
Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
Salvatore Rosa
(Naples 1615 - 1673 Rome)
Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy
Pen and brown ink, brown wash over black chalk, on paper
7 x 5 cm
Bears the stamps of collections on the...
Category
17th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink
Saint Jerome Praying, with a Landscape in the Background
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
STEFANO DALL’ARZERE
(Padua, circa 1520 – 1570)
Saint Jerome Praying, with a Landscape in the Background
Pen and brown ink, heightened with white over black chalk lines
15.5 x 12 cm...
Category
16th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink
Jean-Henri Cless (1774-1812) Portrait of a young woman, signed drawing
Located in Paris, FR
Jean-Henri Cless (1774-1812)
Portrait of a young woman in a landscape
signed "Cless fec" for fecit on the lower left
Brown ink and brown ink wash on paper
Size of the sheet : 31.5 x 22 cm
Size of the motive : 24.5 x 17 cm
very simply framed under glass without actual frame 32 x 22.5 cm
This pre...
Category
Early 1800s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Pencil
The Death of Coresus
By Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE
(Tournus 1725 - 1805 Paris)
The Death of Coresus, circa 1750
Pen and brown ink, black ink tips, gray wash on black chalk, 455 x 385 cm
Bears on the reverse in ...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Watercolor
Italian School, late 16th century - Head of a Man and Écorché Studies of Arms
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
Italian School, late 16th century
Head of a Man and Écorché Studies of Arms
Red chalk on laid paper,
21 x 11 cm
Provenance:
Collection of Michael Jaffé CBE (1923–1997), English art historian and Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Private collection, France
This drawing, attributed to the Italian School of the late 16th century, demonstrates the influence of Michelangelo’s approach to anatomy and expression. The sheet combines two distinct studies: an anatomical rendering of arms in the écorché technique, focusing on the musculature and skeletal details, and a head of a man, drawn with careful attention to light and shadow. The use of red chalk lends the work warmth and immediacy, qualities often associated with Renaissance studies of the human form.
The écorché studies reflect the Renaissance fascination with anatomy as both an artistic and scientific pursuit. The detailed depiction of the musculature suggests the artist’s interest in understanding the mechanics of the body, a practice heavily influenced by Michelangelo’s drawings...
Category
16th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk
Georg Philipp I RUGENDAS (1666-1742) - Frederick I of Prussia
By Georg Philipp Rugendas the Elder
Located in Paris, Île-de-France
Georg Philipp I RUGENDAS (1666-1742)
Frederick I of Prussia
Red chalk, ink and brown wash on paper
45x42 cm
This drawing has been long considered representative of Charles VI. In r...
Category
Early 1700s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Watercolor
Studies for the Judgment of Solomon, a double-sided drawing by Simone Cantarini
Located in PARIS, FR
In this double-sided red chalk study, Simone Cantarini offers us a double reflection on the theme of the Judgment of Solomon. This sheet reveals his precise style and his sense of de...
Category
1640s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk, Laid Paper
Three studies executed in the Pitti Palace in 1761 by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Located in PARIS, FR
This brilliant study sheet, of which we present here a counterproof, is a souvenir of Fragonard's return journey from Italy. Between April and September 1761, he accompanied the abbot of Saint-Non on his way back to France. Three studies after the masters taken from the Pitti Palace’s gallery in Florence are gathered on this sheet. Although The Ecstasy of Saint Margaret...
Category
1760s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Carbon Pencil
View of an Antique City, a wash landscape by Jan de Bisschop (1628 - 1671)
Located in PARIS, FR
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".
...
Category
17th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pen, Ink
18th century pastel portrait of Lady Augusta Corbett and her son, Stuart
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Commissioned by Andrew Corbett, husband of the sitter;
The Venerable Stuart Corbett;
Sir Stuart Corbett;
By descent to 2002;
Sotheby’s, London 21 March 2002, lot.104;
Lowell Libson...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pastel, Gouache
A landscape drawing by Claude Lorrain, with a preliminary sketch on the verso
Located in PARIS, FR
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 1639.
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...
Category
1630s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Pen, Graphite
The Flight into Egypt
Located in New York, NY
Inscribed: 3. una Madonna che va in Egitto, verso, and Madonna che va in Egitto, recto
Provenance:
Private Collection, UK, since 1999
This expressive and boldly executed drawing is the work of Luca...
Category
16th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk, Ink, Pen, Paper
The Assumption of Mary Magdalene, Italian School, 16th Century
Located in Middletown, NY
Brownish ink and grayish ink wash with white heightening on handmade cream laid paper, 10 5/8 x 8 1/4 inches (267 x 208 mm)(matrix). Scattered minor losses to top sheet edge (outside...
Category
16th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Handmade Paper, Laid Paper
18th century portrait drawing of the Rev. William Atkinson
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Henry Scipio Reitlinger (1882-1950);
Private collection, UK to 2019
Framed dimensions: 14.50 x 15.38 inches
This drawing is one of only two known portrait drawings by Romney (as opposed to preliminary studies for portraits) and is dated by Alex Kidson as being executed no later than 1769. It is likely that the present drawing was originally part of a sketchbook, now largely dismembered (Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal), which Kidson notes, contained some of Romney’s most beautiful early drawings. This drawing, and a second sheet formerly with Andrew Wyld, have been identifying as depicting the Rev. William Atkinson...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pencil
Imaginary View of an Italian Port, a signed and dated drawing by Jacobus Storck
Located in PARIS, FR
In this finely executed pen and wash drawing, Jacobus Storck presents us with an imaginary view in an Italian port. The splendor of the buildings (the large sculpted fountain surmoun...
Category
1680s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Pencil, Pen, Ink
Portrait of a Slave Ship: 'Le Negrito à l’ancre. Dans le port de la havanne'
Located in Amsterdam, NL
FRANÇOIS MATHURIN ADALBERT, BARON DE COURCY (1805-1839)
'Le Negrito à l’ancre. Dans le port de la havanne'
Indistinctly signed lower left
Titled on the mount
Pencil and watercolour, heightened with white, on paper, 24.8 x 34.6 cm
Literature:
The present watercolour will be illustrated in:
- Prof. Manuel Garcia’s projected book on the disease and the slave trade provisionally titled “Fighting the Yellow Demon of Fever: The Struggle against Disease in the Illegal Slave Trade”.
- Prof. Micael Zeuske’s forthcoming Global history of slave trade.
Exhibited:
Mexico City, 1998, Palacio Virreinal, El Barón de Courcy, illustrationes de un viaje, 1831-1833, no. 108
Note:
Baron de Courcy was in the Caribbean in late 1832 and early 1833, following his tour of Mexico in 1832, on the last leg of his “Grand Voyage...
Category
Mid-19th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Watercolor, Gouache, Pencil
French School, Academic Study (Male Nude)
Located in London, GB
Charcoal on paper, 60cm x 42cm, (74cm x 60cm framed). The picture is framed behind museum quality non-reflective UV glass.
Drawings and paintings of the nude were central to academ...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Carbon Pencil
Study after Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment”
By Michelangelo Buonarroti
Located in New York, NY
Italian School, 16th Century
Provenance:
Private Collection, New York
This intriguing drawing is a study by an anonymous 16th-century Italian artist after a vignette in Michelangelo’s fresco of The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. The altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was already richly decorated when Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint his Last Judgment...
Category
16th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Gouache
Animal painting of a 'Tamanuâguacû (Ant-eater)' late 17th/18th century, Brazil
Located in Amsterdam, NL
Follower of Zacharias Wagener (1614-1688)
Tamanuâguasû (Giant Anteater)
On Italian 17th or 18th-century paper, H. 28 x W. 43.5 cm
The present painting is a copy after Wagener’s painting of the anteater, Tamanduá-bandeira, which is illustrated in his “Thier Buch”, with 109 drawings of Brazilian fish, birds and mammals, published in Amsterdam c. 1641, in German.
Zacharias Wagener, or Wagenaer in Dutch, (Dresden 1614 – Amsterdam 1668) was a real adventurer who became Opperhoofd on Deshima and Governor of the Cape of Good Hope in the service of the VOC. During the Thirty-Year War in Germany Wagener tried his luck in Amsterdam where he worked for the map-maker Willem Blaeu. In 1634 he joined the WIC and left for Dutch Brazil where he worked as writer and painter, together with Frans Post...
Category
Early 18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, India Ink, Gouache
Bunny Rabbit Couchant
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated
Category
2010s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, India Ink
Bust-length study of a fashionable lady, c. 1760s
Located in Maidenhead, GB
Robert Healy (1743-1771) (attrib.)
Bust-length study of a fashionable lady, c. 1760s
Black chalk on prepared laid blue paper, heightened with white
15.6 x 24.4 cm.; (within frame) 5...
Category
1760s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Chalk
1600’s Flemish Old Master Ink Wash Drawing Biblical Figures Group on paper
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Figure Studies
Attriubted to Cornelis Schut
(1597 - 1655) Flemish
ink drawing on paper, inscribed on mount
size: 4.75 x 7 inches
private collection, France
The painting is in overa...
Category
Early 17th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Watercolor
$926 Sale Price
30% Off
18th century portrait of the Royal Academy model George White
By John Russell
Located in London, GB
Collections:
Russell sale, Christie’s, 14 February, 1807: ‘John Russell, Esq., R.A. deceased, crayon painter to His Majesty, the Prince of Wales, and Duke of York; and brought from his late Dwelling in Newman Street’, lot 92, ‘St Peter’, bt. Thompson (£1.13s);
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 25th September 1980, lot 113;
Private collection, UK, 2016.
Literature:
Martin Postle, 'Patriarchs, prophets and paviours: Reynolds's images of old age', The Burlington Magazine, vol. cxxx, no. 1027, October 1988, pp. 739-40, fig. 9;
Martin Postle, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Subject Pictures, Cambridge, 1995, p.136, repr.;
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition, J.64.2928.
Signed and dated: J Russell/ fecit 1772 (lower right)
Framed dimensions: 25 x 31 inches
John Russell was admitted to the Royal Academy in March 1770, at the same time as Daniel Gardner. The nascent Academy Schools were still establishing their teaching structures, but central to the syllabus were the twin components of drawing after the antique and from life models. By 1772 Russell had already been awarded a silver medal and progressed to the life academy, where he produced this remarkable pastel study of George White. White was the most famous model employed by the Royal Academy and prominent artists in the second half of the eighteenth century. A paviour – or street mender –by profession White had been discovered by Joshua Reynolds, who in turn introduced him to the Academy. Russell’s striking head study demonstrates his abilities as a portraitist and pastellist, at the same time showing his interest in the Academy’s preoccupation with promoting history painting.
George White was one of the most celebrated models in eighteenth-century London. According to the painter Joseph Moser:
'Old George…owed the ease in which he passed his latter days, in a great measure to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who found him exerting himself in the laborious employment of thumping down stones in the street; and observing not only the grand and majestic traits of his countenance, but the dignity of his muscular figure, took him out of a situation to which his strength was by no means equal, clothed, fed, and had him, first as a model in his own painting room, then introduced him as a subject for the students of the Royal Academy.'
As Martin Postle has pointed out, whilst characterful studies of old men posed as biblical figures, prophets or saints by Continental old masters were readily available on the art market – Reynolds himself had copied a head of Joab by Federico Bencovich in the collection of his friend and patron, Lord Palmerston - finding a model in Britain from whom to execute a painting was more difficult.
White therefore offered a rare opportunity for artists to combine portraiture and history painting, by painting a model in the guise of an historical or literary character. In 1771 Reynolds showed at the Royal Academy a picture of White entitled Resignation. It was engraved in 1772 and accompanied by a stanza from Oliver Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, implying a literary context to what is essentially a portrait. In his annotated Royal Academy catalogue, Horace Walpole noted: ‘This was an old beggar, who had so fine a head that Sir Joshua chose him for the father in his picture from Dante, and painted him several times, as did others in imitation of Reynolds. There were even cameos and busts of him.’ White sat to, amongst others Johan Zoffany, John Sanders, Nathaniel Hone and the sculptor John Bacon...
Category
18th Century Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pastel
La Campagne de Rome - Roman Countryside - Drawing by J. P. Verdussen - 1740ca
Located in Roma, IT
China ink and watercolour on paper.
Realized in 1740 ca.
Very good conditions.
Includes passepartout.
Category
1740s Old Masters Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Ink, Watercolor
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