Thomas Gainsborough (circle)

Wooded Landscape - British art 18thC Old Master oil painting trees figures

circa 1770

Thomas Wyck or Wijck (Bewerwyck 1616- Haarlem 1677) Signed lower left: TWyck (under the floating barrel) Mediterranean coastal view ca. 1660 Oil on canvas, 43 x 52 cm in frame ...

Pair of views of Rotterdam: The Stock Exchange building / View of the canal with the old port Eighteenth-century Vedutist painter oils on canvas 47 x 66 cm. - with frame 56 x 75 cm. This pleasant pair of paintings depict two glimpses of the city of Rotterdam, investigated here as vivid documentaries of the habits and customs from the public life of the wealthy Dutch port city, as well as one of the founders of the Dutch East India Company, is an excellent example of 18th century Vedutism We see, in particular, in the first work the monumental Palazzo della Borsa (defined as Il Beurs), designed by the architect Adriaen van der Werff in Westnieuwland, initially a place destined for legislation on trade, where merchant-bankers met periodically to exchange securities credit and enter into sales; it is located on the bank of the Nordblaak River and shot with the Gaapers Bridge in the foreground. The second work immortalizes the docking of the ancient port of Rotterdam, with the foreground view of the two city gates (the Wester Old Hoofdpoort on the left and the Ooster Oude Hoofdpoort on the right); in the background on the left the St. Laurenskerk (Church of San Lorenzo), also called the Great Church of Rotterdam, is the only medieval structure, while on the right the English Church. Very well executed, characterized by a marked brightness and a chromatic range with bright colors and highlighted by the contrast between lights and shadows, our canvases are a very interesting testimony of eighteenth-century Rotterdam, portraying two of the views that have historically influenced a lot on economic history of the city. We can attribute the authorship to an author of the full eighteenth century, inspired by the pictorial style of the Italian landscape painters and whose iconography was presumably drawn from the numerous prints with perspective views made through the optical cameras. In particular, these views of Rotterdam draw their iconographic origin from a collection of perspective prints of the most influential European cities, made by the engraver Johann Balthasar Probst (1732-1801), characterized by a remarkable refinement in the line, at the service of a sense of perspective of undoubted value, and above all characterized by a strong Nordic taste. Descendant of a large family of Augsburg engravers, Probst contributed to making his workshop an important European publishing center between the 17th and 18th centuries, among the major German print publishers in the first half of the 18th century. Despite his travels, including in Italy, between Venice, Rome and Naples, not all the cities he portrayed were drawn from life but taken from earlier prints and drawings and filtered through northern European clichés. Many of these engravings have been lost and are now difficult to find on the antiques market.

Flemish painter active in Italy in the eighteenth century Coastal landscape of the Mediterranean with architectures and figures Oil painting on canvas (69 x 88 cm., in frame 80 x 100 cm.) The suggestive view proposed depicts a coastal view with a bay and the ruins of an ancient building, probably a monastery or a church, and in the background another building with a garden surrounded by high walls close to the shore. The type of landscape, typical of the southern Italian environment, and the intimate atmosphere that welcomes the scene, attributes the authorship of the work to a landscape painter active in the eighteenth century, presumably in Italy in this period, with immediate references to the Dutch school , and in particular to the production of Jacob de Heusch and above all of Gaspar van Wittel, considered the progenitor of Italian landscape painting. In fact, in the rendering of the architectural details, in the purity with which the buildings have been reconstructed, as well as in the atmosphere that encompasses the entire landscape, a marked correspondence to the so-called "Vanvitellian realism" can be seen: in fact, a comparison with a certain series of views which the Dutchman...

Aeneas and Dido Attributed to Pseudo-Caroselli (Rome, active c. 1630/1650) Oil on canvas 148 × 93 cm. framed 162 × 107 cm. The episode depicted in the superb canvas illustra...

Flemish painter of the 18th century - Follower of Jan van der Meer, called Vermeer d'Utrecht (Schoonhoven, verses 1630 - 1692) Courtship scene at the entrance of an inn oil on canvas, 70 x 62 cm. (with frame 80 x 72 cm.) This pleasant genre scene, depicting a young innkeeper conversing amiably with a gentleman as she prepares to serve him wine in a glass goblet that she still holds in her hand, is inspired by the painting made in 1653 by the Dutch painter Jan van der Meer, known as Vermeer d'Utrecht, and today kept in Paris at the Louvre Museum. Set outside an inn or a post station, the scene illustrates the theme of seduction, with the young waitress being courted by the client, a charming traveler with a changing red cloak, who tries to charm her. Yes, it is a work that harmoniously combines the painter's Dutch origins, with the stylistic characters learned during his training in his homeland, with the Italian-like characters learned during his trip to Italy around 1655. In Rome, in particular, he met and collaborated with various authors of the Bamboccianti school, first of all Jan Miel...

Hans de Jode (The Hague, 1630 - Vienna, 1663) Fantasy winter landscape with bridge and tower About 1650 Oils on canvas (62 x 93, in frames 82 x 112) The work is accompanied by an expertise of Dr. Fred G...

Jan Van der Straet, known as Giovanni Stradano (Bruges 1523 - Florence 1605), Workshop of The Adoration of the Magi late 16th century - early 17th century oil painting on canvas Mea...

Quality work attributed to the painter Peter Van Der Velde (Antwerp 1634 - c.1714) - Monogrammed Coastal view with vessels and perched castle Oil painti...

Hans de Jode (The Hague, 1630 - Vienna, 1663) Fantasy winter landscape with lake and city on the banks About 1650 Oils on canvas (62 x 93, in frames 82 x 112) The work is accompanied by an expertise of Dr. Fred G...

Provenance: Robert Hollberton, Antigua, ca. 1841 Private Collection, New York The present painting depicts Old St. John’s Cathedral on the island of Antigua. The church was erected in the 1720s on the designs of the architect Robert Cullen. It measured 130 feet by 50 feet with north and south porches 23 x 20 ½ feet. The tower, 50 feet high with its cupola, was added in 1789. The church was elevated to the status of a cathedral, but disaster struck in the form of an earthquake that destroyed the building on 8 February 1843. A memorandum of that date relates the event: “On Wednesday, 8th February, 1843, this island was visited by a most terrific and destructive earthquake. At twenty minutes before eleven o’clock in the forenoon, while the bell was ringing for prayers, and the venerable Robert Holberton was in the vestry-room, awaiting the arrival of persons to have their marriage solemnized, before the commencement of the morning service, the whole edifice, from one end to the other, was suddenly and violently agitated. Every one within the church, after the first shock, was compelled to escape for his life. The tower was rent from the top to the bottom; the north dial of the clock precipitated to the ground with a dreadful crash; the east parapet wall of the tower thrown upon the roof of the church; almost the whole of the north-west wall by the north gallery fell out in a mass; the north-east wall was protruded beyond the perpendicular; the altar-piece, the public monument erected to the memory of lord Lavington, and the private monuments, hearing the names of Kelsick, Warner, Otley, and Atkinson, fell down piecemeal inside; a large portion of the top of the east wall fell, and the whole of the south-east wall was precipitated into the churchyard, carrying along with it two of the cast-iron windows, while the other six remained projecting from the walls in which they had been originally inserted; a large pile of heavy cut stones and masses of brick fell down at the south and at the north doors; seven of the large frontpipes of the organ were thrown out by the violence of the shock, and many of the metal and wooden pipes within displaced; the massive basin of the font was tossed from the pedestal on which it rested, and pitched upon the pavement beneath uninjured. Thus, within the space of three minutes, this church was reduced to a pile of crumbling ruins; the walls that were left standing being rent in every part, the main roof only remaining sound, being supported by the hard wood pillars.” The entrance from the southern side into the cathedral, which was erected in 1789, included two imposing statues, one of Saint John the Divine and the other of Saint John the Baptist in flowing robes. It is said that these statues were confiscated by the British Navy from the French ship HMS Temple in Martinique waters in 1756 during the Seven Years’ War and moved to the church. The statues are still in situ and can be seen today, much as they appeared in Bisbee’s painting, but with the new cathedral in the background (Fig. 1). Little is known of the career of Ezra Bisbee. He was born in Sag Harbor, New York in 1808 and appears to have had a career as a political cartoonist and a printmaker. His handsome Portrait of President Andrew Jackson is dated 1833, and several political lithographs...