Old Masters Paintings

Circle of Paul van Somer (Antwerp c. 1577-1621 London) Portrait of a gentleman, traditionally identified as Thomas Carey (1597-1634), youngest son of Thomas, 1st Earl of Monmouth Oil...

John Ferneley Jnr Stabled horses Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 20 x 24 in Framed Size - 27 x 31 in Born in about 1815 at Melton Mowbray, he was the eldest son of the important sporting artist John E Ferneley. The latters other two children, Claude Lorraine and Sarah, were also artists. He spent his early life at Elgin Lodge and his father was a major influence on his artistic development and was in all probability his sole teacher. His father took him on trips to London and in 1832 to Durham and York where the younger Ferneley later settled in about 1839, probably because of the large number of patrons in the area. His first work, of a Whipping-in, was engraved and published in the New Sporting Magazine in May 1833 and was followed in the next year by an engraving of a Hunter. John E Ferneley had established a significant career as an equestrian artist in the old English tradition largely due to being a pupil of Ben...

Thomas Buttersworth (1768-1842) Shipping in choppy coastal waters signed and dated lower left Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 9 x 12 1/2 in Framed Size - 13 x 16 1/2 Immerse yourself in...

John Rathbone (1750-1807) View at Tivoli Signed lower right Oil on Canvas Canvas size - 18 x 24 in Framed size - 24 x 30 in John Rathbone was born in Cheshire in 1750 and worked as ...

Thomas Smith of Derby (c. 1710-1767) View of Shipping on the River Avon from Durdham Down, near Bristol, 1756 Oil on canvas Canvas size - 20 x 47 in Framed size - 26 x 53 in Provena...

Francis Sartorius (1734-1804) A horse and groom with a dog signed 'F.Sartorius.Pinxt' (lower right) Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 14 1/4 x 18 in Framed Size - 16 1/2 x 19 1/2 in Franc...

Francis Sartorius (1734-1804) A horse and groom with a dog signed and dated 'F.Sartorius.Pinxt.1777' (lower right) Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 14 1/4 x 18 in Framed Size - 16 1/2 x 1...

William Jones (c.1798-1860) Two spaniels working with a huntsman beyond Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 16 x 21 in Framed Size - 21 x 26 in William Jones’s work is well-known, emanating...

John Thomas Serres (1759-1825) Fisherfolk unloading the days catch Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 17 x 25 in Framed Size - 22 x 30 in John Thomas Serres, a luminary in the realm of mar...

Francis Sartorius (1734-1804) A bay horse with groom and dog Signed and dated 'F.Sartorius.Pinxt.1788' (lower right) Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 14 1/4 x 18 in Framed Size - 19 1/2 x...

John Nost Sartorius (London 1759-1828) Gimcrack with jockey up, wearing the colours of Richard Grosvenor, 1st Earl Grosvenor Inscribed and signed 'Gi...

John Ferneley Snr (1782-1860 Melton Mowbray) Sir Richard Sutton's foxhounds signed J. Ferneley lower right Oil on canvas Canvas Size 16 1/8 x 20 1/2 in Framed Size 21 x 25 in Proven...

James Stark (1794-1859) Herding cattle through a wooded river landscape Oil on canvas Canvas Size 18 x 24 in Framed Size 23 x 29 in James Stark (1794-1859): A Pioneer in Landscape P...

Charles Towne (1763-1840) A bay hunter in a landscape signed and dated 'Charles Towne Pinxit 1816' lower left Oil on canvas Painting Size - 20 x 26 Framed Size - 25 x 31 in Provena...

Sawrey Gilpin (1733-1807) Study of a hound in a landscape Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 14 x 17 in Framed Size - 17 x 20 in Provenance: Victor Brockbank Fine Art, London; Private Collection, London. Sawrey Gilpin was a member of an old Cumberland family who chose a career in sporting painting, at which he was encouraged as a young man by the great Duke of Cumberland who had suppressed the Jacobite rising of 1745. Gilpin, though centred on London, always retained his Northern links, and had as patron many northern sportsman, like the sporting fanatic Colonel Thornton of Thornville Royal for whom he painted numerous pictures. Gilpin has suffered from being under the shadow of his incomparable contemporary George Stubbs, but he emerges as a leading horse and animal painter of a competence which is always reliable and occasionally inspired. He is an important link between the early English School of Wootton, Tillemans and the like, and the later painters exemplified by Ferneley and Herring. He was the president of the Society of Artists in 1773, and was elected RA in 1797. A clubbable man, he was popular with his fellow Royal Academicians. He frequently collaborated with them, adding portraits of favourite animals to numerous pictures by Barret, Walton, Romney, Zoffany, Reinagle and even the young Turner. He was the teacher of Thomas Gooch...

Pieter Frederick Van Os (1808-1892) A greyhound in a landscape Signed 'P. F: Van Os. f 1825' lower left Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 46 x 39 in Framed Size - 51 x 44 in Provenance: C...

Provenance: Private Collection, South America Antonio Tempesta began his career in Florence, working on the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio under the direction of Giorgio Vasari. He was a pupil first of Santi di Tito...

Unknown Russian Artist Russian Orthodox Church, Middle 19th century Unsigned Illuminated in red, yellow blue and green pigments and gold leaf on paper An Illuminated manuscript folio...

Richard Bankes Harraden (1778-1862) Italian landscape with Monte Socrate (after Jan Both) Signed and dated 1823 on the reverse Oil on canvas Canvas size - 29 x 41 in Framed Size - 37...

German School (18th century) A German Pointer with hunting Equipment Oil on canvas Canvas Size 42 x 35 in Framed Size 48 x 41 in

David Morier (1705-1770) Portrait of a gentleman in red military uniform Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 32 x 24 in Framed Size - 39 1/2 x 31 in Provenance: Sale, Christie's London, 21s...

Unknown French Art and Workshop, Middle 15th century Roundel depicting St. Catherine (?) Gouache, ink gold wash and gold burnishing on vellum Book of Hours folio attributed to the C...

Benjamin Barker of Bath (Pontypool 1776-1838) Figures resting by a fire with a wagon in a wooded landscape Oil on canvas 28 x 35 7/8 in 71.1 x 91.2 cm Benjamin Barker, the younger ...

Provenance: Alfred (1883-1961) and Hermine Stiassni (1889-1962), Brno, Czech Republic, by 1925; thence London, 1938-1940; thence Los Angeles, 1940-1962; thence by descent to: Susanne Stiassni Martin and Leonard Martin, San Francisco, until 2005; thence by descent to: Private Collection, California Exhibited: Künstlerhaus, Brünn (Brno), 1925, as by Ribera. “Art of Collecting,” Flint Institute of Art, Flint, Michigan, 23 November 2018 – 6 January 2019. Literature: Alte Meister...

Provenance: S. Spinelli Collection, Florence; their sale, Galleria Pesaro, Milan, July 11-14, 1928, lot 112 (unsold); reoffered Galleria Luigi Bellini, Florence, April 23-26, 1934, lot 132, as manner of Baldassare Peruzzi Dr. Giacomo Ancona, Florence, 1930s, and after 1939, San Francisco; thence by descent to his son: Mario Ancona, San Francisco; thence by descent to his children: Mario Ancona III and Victoria Ancona, San Francisco, until 1995; thence to: Phyllis Ancona Green, widow of Mario Ancona, Los Angeles (1995-2012) Literature: Donato Sanminiatelli, Domenico Beccafumi. Milan 1967, p. 170 (under paintings attributed to Beccafumi) Among the precious survivors of Renaissance secular paintings for domestic interiors are several unusual and particularly attractive panels painted in Siena at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. These paintings depict exemplary figures from antiquity—heroes or heroines, as well as allegorical, literary, and mythological figures. For the most part, these panels have survived in groups of three, although it is possible that some of these works were painted either as part of larger series or as individual projects. One such trio by Beccafumi consists of two paintings now at the National Gallery, London (Marcia and Tanaquil) and a third in the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome (Cornelia). These were commissioned around 1517–1519 for the bedroom of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci in Siena and were most likely placed together as elements in the wall decoration (spalliere) or installed above the back of a bench or cassapanca. Another, earlier (ca. 1495–1500), set of three—Guidoccio Cozzarelli’s Hippo, Camilla, and Lucretia (Private Collection, Siena) survives with its original wooden framework—a kind of secular triptych. Judith, Sophonisba, and Cleopatra in the collection of the Monte dei Paschi, Siena, are by an anonymous artist close to Beccafumi called the “Master of the Chigi-Saracini Heroines.” Girolamo di Benvenuto’s Cleopatra, Tuccia, and Portia are dispersed (homeless, Prague, Chambery), and Brescianino’s Faith, Hope, and Charity are in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena. The present painting first appeared in the Spinelli sale in Florence in 1934, at which time it was sold with two panels of identical size and format. Each was catalogued as being by the “manner of Baldassare Peruzzi” and of unidentified subject. Of these, the painting depicting a male figure turned to the right has recently reappeared in a private Italian collection, while the location of the third work, portraying a cloaked figure turned three-quarters left, remains unknown. Our panel depicts the allegorical figure of Fortune. Here she is represented in typical fashion as a nude female figure balanced on a wheel (sometimes called the Rota Fortunae), her billowing drapery indicating that she is as changeable as the wind. The appearance of the Virgin and Child in the cloud at the upper right is an unusual addition to the iconography. The subjects of the two pendant male...

Provenance: with “Mr. Scheer,” Vienna, by July 1918; where acquired by: Jindřich Waldes, Prague, 1918–1941; thence by descent to: Private Collection, New York Literature: Rudolf Kuchynka, “České obrazy tabulové ve Waldesově obrazárně,” Památky archeologické, vol. 31 (1919), pp. 62-64, fig. 5. Jaroslav Pešina, “K datování deskových obrazů ve Waldesově obrazárně,” Ročenka Kruhu pro Pěstování Dějin Umění: za rok (1934), pp. 131-137. Jaroslav Pešina, Pozdně gotické deskové malířství v Čechách, Prague, 1940, pp. 150-151, 220. Patrik Šimon, Jindřich Waldes: sběratel umění, Prague, 2001, pp. 166, 168, footnote 190. Ivo Hlobil, “Tři gotické obrazy ze sbírky Jindřicha Waldese,” Umění, vol. 52, no. 4 (2004), p. 369. Executed sometime in the 1380s or 1390s by a close associate of the Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece, this impressive panel is a rare work created at the royal court in Prague and a significant re-discovery for the corpus of early Bohemian painting. It has emerged from an American collection, descendants of the celebrated Czech industrialist and collector Jindřich Waldes, who died in Havana fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. The distinctive visual tradition of the Bohemian school first began to take shape in the middle of the fourteenth century after Charles IV—King of Bohemia and later Holy Roman Emperor—established Prague as a major artistic center. The influx of foreign artists and the importation of significant works of art from across Europe had a profound influence on the development of a local pictorial style. Early Italian paintings, especially those by Sienese painters and Tommaso da Modena (who worked at Charles IV’s court), had a considerable impact on the first generation of Bohemian painters. Although this influence is still felt in the brilliant gold ground and the delicate tooling of the present work, the author of this painting appears to be responding more to the paintings of his predecessors in Prague than to foreign influences. This Resurrection of Christ employs a compositional format that was popular throughout the late medieval period but was particularly pervasive in Bohemian painting. Christ is shown sitting atop a pink marble sarcophagus, stepping down onto the ground with one bare foot. He blesses the viewer with his right hand, while in his left he holds a triumphal cross with a fluttering banner, symbolizing his victory over death. Several Roman soldiers doze at the base of the tomb, except for one grotesque figure, who, beginning to wake, shields his eyes from the light and looks on with a face of bewilderment as Christ emerges from his tomb. Christ is wrapped in a striking red robe with a blue interior lining, the colors of which vary subtly in the changing light. He stands out prominently against the gold backdrop, which is interrupted only by the abstractly rendered landscape and trees on either side of him. The soldiers’ armor is rendered in exacting detail, the cool gray of the metal contrasting with the earth tones of the outer garments. The sleeping soldier set within a jumble of armor with neither face nor hands exposed, is covered with what appears to be a shield emblazoned with two flies on a white field, somewhat resembling a cartouche (Fig. 1). This may be a heraldic device of the altarpiece’s patron or it may signify evil, referencing either the Roman soldiers or death, over both of which Christ triumphs. This painting formed part of the collection assembled by the Czech industrialist and founder of the Waldes Koh-i-noor Company, Jindřich Waldes, in the early twentieth century. As a collector he is best remembered for establishing the Waldes Museum in Prague to house his collection of buttons (totaling nearly 70,000 items), as well as for being the primary patron of the modernist painter František Kupka. Waldes was also an avid collector of older art, and he approached his collecting activity with the goal of creating an encyclopedic collection of Czech art from the medieval period through to the then-present day. At the conclusion of two decades of collecting, his inventory counted 2331 paintings and drawings, 4764 prints, and 162 sculptures. This collection, which constituted the Waldesova Obrazárna (Waldes Picture Gallery), was first displayed in Waldes’ home in Prague at 44 Americká Street and later at his newly built Villa Marie at 12 Koperníkova Street. This Resurrection of Christ retains its frame from the Waldes Picture Gallery, including its original plaque “173 / Česky malíř z konce 14 stol.” (“Czech painter from the end of the 14th century”) and Waldes’ collection label on the reverse. The Resurrection of Christ was one of the most significant late medieval panel...

Anonymous 15th Century Italian, Probably Milan area The Nativity of Christ Pigments, ink and gold leaf on vellum Unsigned as is always the case with illum...

Provenance: Torres Family Collection, Asunción, Paraguay, ca. 1967-2017 While the genre of portraiture flourished in the New World, very few examples of early Spanish colonial portraits have survived to the present day. This remarkable painting is a rare example of female portraiture, depicting a member of the highest echelons of society in Cuzco during the last quarter of the 17th century. Its most distinctive feature is the false beauty mark (called a chiqueador) that the sitter wears on her left temple. Chiqueadores served both a cosmetic and medicinal function. In addition to beautifying their wearers, these silk or velvet pouches often contained medicinal herbs thought to cure headaches. This painting depicts an unidentified lady from the Creole elite in Cuzco. Her formal posture and black costume are both typical of the established conventions of period portraiture and in line with the severe fashion of the Spanish court under the reign of Charles II, which remained current until the 18th century. She is shown in three-quarter profile, her long braids tied with soft pink bows and decorated with quatrefoil flowers, likely made of silver. Her facial features are idealized and rendered with great subtly, particularly in the rosy cheeks. While this portrait lacks the conventional coat of arms or cartouche that identifies the sitter, her high status is made clear by the wealth of jewels and luxury materials present in the painting. She is placed in an interior, set off against the red velvet curtain tied in the middle with a knot on her right, and the table covered with gold-trimmed red velvet cloth at the left. The sitter wears a four-tier pearl necklace with a knot in the center with matching three-tiered pearl bracelets and a cross-shaped earing with three increasingly large pearls. She also has several gold and silver rings on both hands—one holds a pair of silver gloves with red lining and the other is posed on a golden metal box, possibly a jewelry box. The materials of her costume are also of the highest quality, particularly the white lace trim of her wide neckline and circular cuffs. The historical moment in which this painting was produced was particularly rich in commissions of this kind. Following his arrival in Cuzco from Spain in the early 1670’s, bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo actively promoted the emergence of a distinctive regional school of painting in the city. Additionally, with the increase of wealth and economic prosperity in the New World, portraits quickly became a way for the growing elite class to celebrate their place in society and to preserve their memory. Portraits like this one would have been prominently displayed in a family’s home, perhaps in a dynastic portrait gallery. We are grateful to Professor Luis Eduardo Wuffarden for his assistance cataloguing this painting on the basis of high-resolution images. He has written that “the sober palette of the canvas, the quality of the pigments, the degree of aging, and the craquelure pattern on the painting layer confirm it to be an authentic and representative work of the Cuzco school of painting...

Hendrick Jan Scholl (1717-1792) A hound and dead game in a woodland landscape Signed "H.J. Scholl pinx 1763" lower right Oil on canvas 46 1/2 x 36 1/4 in ...

Provenance: Bradley Collection. Private Collection, Upperville, Virginia. Literature: Katlijne van der Stighelen and Hans Vlieghe, Rubens: Portraits of Unidentified and Newly Identified Sitters painted in Antwerp, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 19, pt. 3, London and Turnhout, 2021, under cat. no. 189, p. 161, and fig. 75. This painting had previously been considered to be by an anonymous Tuscan painter of the sixteenth century in the orbit of Agnolo Bronzino. While the painting does in fact demonstrate a striking formal and compositional similarity to Bronzino’s portraits—compare the nearly identical pose of Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fig. 1)—its style is completely foreign to Italian works of the period. That it is painted on an oak panel is further indication of its non-Italian origin. This portrait can in fact be confidently attributed to the Antwerp artist Huybrecht Beuckelaer. Huybrecht, the brother of Joachim Beuckelaer, has only recently been identified as the author of a distinct body of work formerly grouped under the name of the “Monogrammist HB.” In recent studies by Kreidl, Wolters, and Bruyn his remarkable career has been delineated: from its beginnings with Joachim in the workshop of Pieter Aertsen; to his evident travels to Italy where, it has been suggested, he came into contact with Bronzino’s paintings; to his return to Antwerp, where he seems to have assisted Anthonis Mor in painting costume in portraits; to his independent work in Antwerp (where he entered the Guild of Saint Luke in 1579); and, later to his career in England where, known as “Master Hubberd,” he was patronized by the Earl of Leicester. Our painting was recently published by Dr. Katlijne van der Stighelen and Dr. Hans Vlieghe in a volume of the Corpus Rubenianum, in which they write that the painting “has a very Italian air about it and fits convincingly within [Beuckelaer’s] oeuvre.” Stighelen and Vlieghe compare the painting with Peter Paul Ruben’s early Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which the sitter holds a compass and wears a similarly styled doublet (Fig. 2). Huybrecht both outlived and travelled further afield than his brother Joachim, who made his career primarily in Antwerp. Whereas Joachim was the main artistic inheritor of their uncle and teacher, Pieter Aertson, working in similar style and format as a specialist in large-scale genre and still-life paintings, Huybrecht clearly specialized as a painter of portraits and was greatly influenced by the foreign artists and works he encountered on his travels. His peripatetic life and his distinctly individual hand undoubtedly contributed to the fact his career and artistic output have only recently been rediscovered and reconstructed. His periods abroad seem to have overlapped with the mature phase of his brother Joachim’s career, who enrolled in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke much earlier than his brother, establishing himself as an independent painter in 1560. Joachim’s activity was confined to the following decade and half, and his latest work dates from the last year of his life, 1574. Our portrait was likely produced in the late 1560s, a dating supported by the dendrochronological investigation performed by Dr. Peter Klein, which established that it is painted on an oak panel with an earliest felling date of 1558 and with a fabrication date of ca. 1566. This painting presents a portrait of an artist, almost certainly Huybrecht’s self-portrait. The young sitter is confidently posed in a striking patterned white doublet with a wide collar and an abundance of buttons. He stands with his right arm akimbo, his exaggerated hands both a trademark of Huybrecht and his brother Joachim’s art, as well as a possible reference to the “hand of the artist.” The figure peers out of the painting, interacting intimately and directly with the viewer, as we witness him posed in an interior, the tools and results of his craft visible nearby. He holds a square or ruler in his left hand, while a drawing compass...

Henry Bernard Chalon (London 1770-1849) 'Prime Minister' with jockey John Shepherd up, and owner Sir Mark Sykes Signed and dated 'H.B. Chalon pinxit 181...

"A Dune Landscape with Figures Resting and a Couple on Horseback, a View of Nijmegen Cathedral Beyond" is a painting by Dutch Old Master painter Salomon van Ruysdael...

Aniello Ascione (Naples, fl. 1680-1708) A still life of flowers in an urn with a parrot, melon, pomegranates and figs at its base, a view to an ornamental garden beyond Oil on canvas 59 3/4 x 39 3/4 in Provenance The Alexander Family Collection, Milford House, Co. Carlow, Ireland The latter half of the 17th century and earlier 18th century marked the golden age of Neapolitan still-life painting and Aniello Ascione was one of its most highly regarded exponents. His sumptuous paintings, brimming with fecund produce of the Mediterranean and painted in rich colours, were eagerly sought after by those who wished to decorate their palaces in that city. Naples in the seventeenth century had established a significant reputation and artistic tradition of producing flamboyant and technically excellent still-lifes which had largely been initiated by Caravaggio who, having stated that it required as much effort to paint a good flower piece as a figure subject, helped to revolutionise and eventually abolish the closed attitude to genres of painting. Caravaggio maintained that art was the mirror of nature and his superb Basket of Fruit, now in the Ambrosiana in Milan and painted in 1597, marked the birth of European still-life painting. Throughout the 17th century, Neapolitan still-life painting was founded on the principles demonstrated by Caravaggio and these artists seem to have been the only ones to correctly understand and utilise his ideas. These paintings were noted for their vibrant portrayals of flowers, often in great abundance, fruit and birds done in an elegant and decorative manner. Luca Forte (c.1615- c.1670) was one of the first Neapolitan artists to adopt the Caravaggesque naturalism in this genre of painting and with exceptional creativity sweeping through the city in the 1630s, he was soon followed by Paolo Porpora and Guiseppe and Giovanni Battista Recco and the Ruoppolo family. When Abraham Brueghel arrived in Naples in about 1670, his influence accelerated the transition of the portrayal of still-life to a more baroque style often epitomised by a mass of flowers, cascading over classical objects like water. This more baroque style was taken up by a new generation of painters and one of the first and most prominent of these was Andrea Belvedere (1652-c.1732). He taught Nicola Casissa and other artists working in a similar vein included Gasparo Lopez (called Gasparo di Fiori) d. circa 1732, Paolo Porpora (1617-1663) and Nicola Malinconico (1663-1721). The aforementioned Ruoppolo family were also eminent and Giovan Battista Ruoppolo (1619-1693) instructed the young Aniello Ascione. His pupil became one of the most celebrated representatives of Neapolitan Baroque which combined the traditional naturalism favoured by the city with the new 18th century decorative style. This style proved highly popular with the more secular Neapolitan middle classes as well as the aristocracy and royalty to furnish their grand homes. They loved the harmonious colouring and composition suffused with exuberance Ascione became the most prominent still-life painter in Naples at the transition from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His paintings, which are often of a significant size, utilise intense decorative colours with an abundance of flowers and piles of fruit such as pomegranates, grapes, peaches, pears, melons and plums. Sometimes these spill down stone steps or are draped or stacked with flowers among classical statuary and there is often a view to a landscape or ornamental garden beyond to give the composition depth. Accompanying the fruit and flowers, Ascione occasionally added parrots, dogs or rabbits and he often signed with a monogram comprised of interlocking As although there are some works signed in entirety. His smaller pieces tended to be more intimate in construction with one looking at just different fruits with some of its foliage so that the different hues and skin textures could interact and to some extent, these reflect the legacy of Abraham Brueghel. One very rare piece, now in the Castellino collection in Naples, is a kitchen interior with a skinned lamb which owes its influence to Guiseppe Recco. There is a fine set of the Four Seasons, which also incorporates putti into the compositions and which are believed to have been contributed by Nicola Vaccaro (1659-1720) the son of Andrea Vaccaro...

James Shaw (fl.1769-1784) Still life of fruit and nuts Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 13 1/2 x 17 3/4 in Framed Size - 16 1/4 x 20 1/2 in Born in Sedgley in Staffordshire, it is unclea...

Joseph Highmore (London 1692-1780 Canterbury) Portrait of a young boy holding his pet squirrel Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 30 x 25 in Provenance Sale, Sotheby's New York, Old Master...

Attributed to John Downman (1750-1824) Portrait of a young gentleman, seated beside a tree Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 30 x 25 in John Downman was a fashionable portrait painter in the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. He was born in Ruabon, North Wales, the son of Francis Downman, an attorney of Devonshire stock, and his wife Charlotte, daughter of Francis Goodsend, the private secretary to George I. In 1768 John became a pupil of Benjamin West and the following year attended the Royal Academy Schools. He showed his first portrait at the RA in 1770 and his first subject painting in 1773, exhibiting there until 1819. From 1773-4 Downman, by now married, studied in Rome in the company of Joseph Wright of Derby. By 1777 Downman was living in Cambridge, but the following year set up a studio at Bedford Street, Covent Garden. From 1779-1804 he lived at increasingly fashionable London addresses, including Bond Street, Jermyn Street and Piccadilly. Downman painted few large-scale oil portraits...

"River Landscape with a Windmill and Chapel" is a painting by Dutch Old Master Painter, Jan van Goyen. There are traces of a signature on the bow of the boat...

Painted in collaboration with Hendrick van Balen (Antwerp, 1575 – 1632). Provenance: Private Collection, Uruguay, since the 1930s. The eldest son of Jan Br...

Charles Martin Powell (Chichester 1775-1824) Dutch shipping in a choppy sea Signed 'CPowell' lower right Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 16 x 19 in Framed Size - 24 x 26 in Provenance: The Parker Gallery...

Inscribed, reverse: Fr Brina Provenance: Private Collection, New Jersey. Francesco Brina was one of the “Studiolo” painters, responsible for the panel of Neptune and Amphitrite in F...

Benjamin Barker of Bath (Pontypool 1776-1838) A wooded river landscape with drovers Signed and dated 'B.Barker pinxt/ 1807' lower right Oil on canvas 46 x 68 3/4 in (116.8 x 174.5 cm...

The panel has been attributed both to Joan de Joanes and his son Vicente Macip Comes (Valencia, ca. 1555 – 1623). Provenance: Private Collection, England, by 1886 (according to stencils on the reverse) Private Collection, New Jersey, until 2010 The Veil of Veronica, often called the Sudarium, is one of the most important and well-known relics of Christ. According to legend, Veronica offered Christ her veil as he carried the cross to his crucifixion. He wiped his face with the veil, which left the cloth miraculously imprinted with his image. Depictions of Christ’s face on a veil, or simply images that focused in on Christ’s face, were treasured objects of religious devotion. The popularity of this format also inspired similar images of the face of the Virgin. The iconographic type of the present painting is known as the Veronica of the Virgin, which was especially favored in late medieval and early Renaissance Spain. Distinct from the images of the suffering Christ, the Veronica of the Virgin is based on the legend that Saint Luke painted a portrait of Mary from life. Although scholars have sometimes mistaken them for portraits of Queen Isabella I of Castile (known as Isabel la Católica) or as a depiction of Saint Maria Toribia (known as María de la Cabeza, or, Mary of the Head), paintings like this one were clearly intended as images of the Virgin in the style of Saint Luke’s lost portrait. The Veronica of the Virgin was especially popular in Valencia, and depictions of this subject produced there all stem back to one visual prototype: a Byzantine image in the city’s cathedral (Fig. 1). This early treatment of the Veronica was given to the cathedral in 1437 by Martin the Humane, King of Aragon and Valencia, who promoted religious veneration of the Veronica of the Virgin as part of the celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This devotion spread throughout Martin’s kingdom and particularly took hold in Valencia, where the Byzantine image resided. The image, which is displayed in a gold reliquary...

Provenance: Cornelius Vanderbilt, New York; by whom gifted in 1880 to: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (80.3.673); deaccessioned and sold: Christie’s, New York, 12 June 19...

Benjamin Killingbeck (act. 1769-1783) A dark bay racehorse held by his trainer on a racecourse Oil on canvas Canvas Size - 40 x 50 in Framed Size ...

Signed and dated, lower left: Louise Hersent/ 1823 Provenance: Private Collection, Chicago, by 1996 Private Collection, Florida This charming portrait of a young boy is the work of Louise-Marie-Jeanne Hersent, a little-known woman artist of the French Restoration often identified by her maiden name, Mauduit. While Hersent—as we will call her here following the signature on the painting—has been understudied, the known details of her life and career reveal that she held a privileged position in artistic life in the early nineteenth century in Paris. She exhibited at the Salon from 1810 until 1824, and in 1821 she married the painter Louis Hersent, a successful pupil of Jacques-Louis David who was patronized by Louis XVIII and Charles X. It is likely through her husband’s royal patronage that Hersent’s Louis XIV Visits Peter the Great was purchased for the Royal Collection in Versailles. In 1806, while still Louise Mauduit, she painted a portrait of Napoleon’s youngest sister, Pauline Bonaparte...

Provenance: Achillito Chiesa, Milan Luigi Albrighi, Florence, by 1 July 1955 with Marcello and Carlo Sestieri, Rome, 1969 Private Collection, Connecticut Exhibited: Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts (on loan, 2012) Literature: Carlo Volpe, “Alcune restituzioni al Maestro dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta,” in Quaderni di Emblema 2: Miscellanea di Bonsanti, Fahy, Francisci, Gardner, Mortari, Sestieri, Volpe, Zeri, Bergamo, 1973, pp. 19-20, fig. 18, as by the Master of Saints Quiricus and Julitta (now identified as Borghese di Piero). This fine predella panel depicting the Baptism...

Provenance: Selma Herringman, New York, ca. 1955-2013; thence by descent to: Private Collection, New York, 2013-2020 This seventeenth century Spanish still-life of a laden table, known as a bodegón, stands out for its dramatic lighting and for the detailed description of each object. The artist’s confident use of chiaroscuro enables the sliced-open squash in the left foreground to appear as if emerging out of the darkness and projecting towards the viewer. The light source emanates from the upper left, illuminating the array, and its strength is made apparent by the reflections on the pitcher, pot, and the fruit in the basket. Visible brush strokes accentuate the vegetables’ rough surfaces and delicate interiors. Although the painter of this striking work remains unknown, it is a characteristic example of the pioneering Spanish still-lifes of the baroque period, which brought inanimate objects alive on canvas. In our painting, the knife and the large yellow squash boldly protrude off the table. Balancing objects on the edge of a table was a clever way for still-life painters to emphasize the three-dimensionality of the objects depicted, as well a way to lend a sense of drama to an otherwise static image. The knife here teeters on the edge, appearing as if it might fall off the table and out of the painting at any moment. The shape and consistency of the squash at left is brilliantly conveyed through the light brush strokes that define the vegetable’s fleshy and feathery interior. The smaller gourds—gathered together in a pile—are shrouded partly in darkness and stand out for their rugged, bumpy exterior. The stoneware has a brassy glaze, and the earthy tones of the vessels are carefully modulated by their interaction with the light and shadow that falls across them. The artist has cleverly arranged the still-life in a V-shaped composition, with a triangular slice of cheese standing upright, serving as its pinnacle. Independent still-lifes only became an important pictorial genre in the first years of the seventeenth century. In Italy, and particularly through the revolutionary works of Caravaggio, painted objects became carriers of meaning, and their depiction and arrangement the province of serious artistic scrutiny. Caravaggio famously asserted that it was equally difficult to paint a still-life as it was to paint figures, and the elevation of this new art form would have profound consequences to the present day. In Spain Juan Sanchez Cotan...

Provenance: with Leo Blumenreich and Julius Böhler, Munich, 1924 Dr. Frederic Goldstein Oppenheimer (1881-1963), San Antonio, Texas; by whom given to: Abraham M. Adler, New York, un...

Lubin Baugin (Pithiviers 1610 – 1663 Paris) Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist Oil on canvas 22 x 42 ¼ inches (55.9 x 107.3 cm) Provenance: Marcello and Carlo ...

Provenance: The Marchesi Strozzi, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence Sale, Christie’s, London, May 20, 1993, lot 315, as by Carl Borromaus Andreas Ruthart...

Procaccini was born in Bologna, but his family moved to Milan when the artist was eleven years old. His artistic education was evidently familial— from his father Ercole and his elder brothers Camillo and Carlo Antonio, all painters—but his career began as a sculptor, and at an early age: his first known commission, a sculpted saint for the Duomo of Milan, came when he was only seventeen years old. Procaccini’s earliest documented painting, the Pietà for the Church of Santa Maria presso San Celso in Milan, was completed by 1604. By this time the artist had made the trip to Parma recorded by his biographers, where he studied Correggio, Mazzola Bedoli, and especially Parmigianino; reflections of their work are apparent throughout Procaccini's career. As Dr. Hugh Brigstocke has recently indicated, the present oil sketch is preparatory for the figure of the angel seen between the heads of the Virgin and St. Charles Borrommeo in Procaccini's altarpiece in the Church of Santa Afra in Brescia (ill. in Il Seicento Lombardo; Catalogo dei dipinti e delle sculture, exh. cat. Milan 1973, no. 98, pl. 113). As such it is the only known oil sketch of Procaccini's that can be directly connected with an extant altarpiece. The finished canvas, The Virgin and Child with Saints Charles Borrommeo and Latino with Angels, remains in the church for which it was painted; it is one of the most significant works of Procaccini's maturity and is generally dated after the artist's trip to Genoa in 1618. The Head of an Angel is an immediate study, no doubt taken from life, but one stylistically suffused with strong echoes of Correggio and Leonardo. Luigi Lanzi, writing of the completed altarpiece in 1796, specifically commented on Procaccini's indebtedness to Correggio (as well as the expressions of the angels) here: “Di Giulio Cesare...

Provenance: Santambrogio Antichità, Milan; sold, 2007 to: Filippo Pernisa, Milan; by whom sold, 2010, to: Private Collection, Melide, Switzerland De Primi Fine Art, Lugano, Switzerland; from whom acquired, 2011 by: Private Collection, Connecticut (2011-present) Literature: Ferdinando Arisi, “Ancora sui dipinti giovanili del Panini,” Strenna Piacentina (Piacenza, 2009): pp. 48, 57, 65, fig. 31, as by Panini Ferdinando Arisi, “Panini o Ghisolfi o Carlieri? A proposito dei dipinti giovanili,” Strenna Piacentina, (Piacenza, 2010), pp. 100, 105, 116, fig. 101, as an early work by Panini, a variant of Panini’s painting in the Museo Cristiano, Esztergom, Hungary. This architectural capriccio is one of the earliest paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini, the preeminent painter of vedute and capricci in 18th-century Rome. The attribution to Panini has been endorsed by Ferdinando Arisi, and a recent cleaning of the painting revealed the artist’s signature in the lower right. Like many of his fellow painters working in Rome during his day, Panini was not a native of the Eternal City. He first trained as a painter and stage designer in his hometown of Piacenza and moved to Rome at the age of 20 in November 1711 to study figure painting. Panini joined the workshop of Benedetto Luti (1666-1724) and from 1712 was living on the Piazza Farnese. Panini, like many before and after him, was spellbound by Rome and its classical past. He remained in the city for the rest of his career, specializing in depicting Rome’s most important monuments, as well as creating picturesque scenes like this one that evoked the city’s ancient splendor. The 18th century art historian Lione Pascoli, who likely knew Panini personally, records in his 1730 biography of the artist that when Panini came to Rome, he was already “an excellent master and a distinguished painter of perspective, landscape, and architecture.” Panini’s earliest works from this period still show the evidence of his artistic formation in Piacenza, especially the influence of the view painter Giovanni Ghisolfi (1623-1683). However, they were also clearly shaped by his contact in Rome with the architectural capricci of Alberto Carlieri...

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...

Born in Antwerp, Artus Wolffordt received his training in Dordrecht where he became a master in 1603 at the age of twenty-two. He returned to his native city in 1615 and initially worked as an assistant to Otto van Veen...

Baron Pierre Narcisse GUERIN (Circle of) 1774-1833 French Venus et Adonis (Venus and Adonis) Oil on canvas Canvas: 53" high x 39 1/2" wide Frame: ...

Circle of Jacques-Louis David (French, 18th Century) Provenance: Private Collection, Buenos Aires Exhibited: “Art of Collecting,” Flint Institute of Art, Flint, Michigan, 23 November 2018 – 6 January 2019. This vibrant portrait of young man was traditionally considered a work by Jacques-Louis David, whose style it recalls, but to whom it cannot be convincingly attributed. Rather, it would appear to be by a painter in his immediate following—an artist likely working in France in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Several names have been proposed as the portrait’s author: François Gérard, Louis Hersent, Anne-Louis Girodet (Fig. 1), Theodore Gericault, and Jean-Baptiste Wicar, among others. Some have thought the artist Italian, and have proposed Andrea Appiani, Gaspare Landi...

Paul Emile Perboyre 1826-1914 French Calèche au Bois de Boulogne, Circa 1880 Oil on panel Signed lower right Panel: 12 5/8" high x 18 1/8" wide Fame: 19...

Paul Emile Perboyre 1826-1914 French Revue à Longchamp, Oil on panel Signed lower right Panel: 27 1/2" high x 45 1/4" wide Fame: 40 1/8" high x 57 1/2" wide Paul-Emile Léon PERBOYRE: painter of battles born in Horbourg near Colmar in 1826, died in 1907. Painter of history, battles. He was a pupil of Leon Bonnat. He exhibited in Paris at the Salon of French Artists, in which one he became a member in 1909. He obtained an honorable mention in 1908. Perboyre was well known for his many paintings of...