V. Ward Art

This vigorous drawing has long been attributed to Polidoro da Caravaggio: The Abduction of the Sabine Women is one of the scenes that Polidoro depicted between 1525 and 1527 on the façade of the Milesi Palazzo in Rome. However, the proximity to another drawing inspired by this same façade, kept at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and to other drawings inspired by Polidoro kept at the Musée du Louvre, leads us to propose an attribution to Biagio Pupini, a Bolognese artist whose life remains barely known, despite the abundant number of drawings attributed to him. 1. Biagio Pupini, a Bolognese artist in the light of the Roman Renaissance The early life of Biagio Pupini, an important figure of the first half of the Cinquecento in Bologna - Vasari mentions him several times - is still poorly known. Neither his date of birth (probably around 1490-1495) nor his training are known. He is said to have been a pupil of Francesco Francia (1450 - 1517) and his name appears for the first time in 1511 in a contract with the painter Bagnacavallo (c. 1484 - 1542) for the frescoes of a church in Faenza. He then collaborated with Girolamo da Carpi, at San Michele in Bosco and at the villa of Belriguardo. He must have gone to Rome for the first time with Bagnacavallo between 1511 and 1519. There he discovered the art of Raphael, with whom he might have worked, and that of Polidoro da Caravaggio. This first visit, and those that followed, were the occasion for an intense study of ancient and modern art, as illustrated by his abundant graphic production. Polidoro da Caravaggio had a particular influence on the technique adopted by Pupini. Executed on coloured paper, his drawings generally combine pen, brown ink and wash with abundant highlights of white gouache, as in the drawing presented here. 2. The Abduction of the Sabine Women Our drawing is an adaptation of a fresco painted between 1525 and 1527 by Polidoro da Caravaggio on the façade of the Milesi Palace in Rome. These painted façades were very famous from the moment they were painted and inspired many artists during their stay in Rome. These frescoes are now very deteriorated and difficult to see, as the palace is in a rather narrow street. The episode of the abduction of the Sabine women (which appears in the centre of the photo above) is a historical theme that goes back to the origins of Rome and is recounted both by Titus Livius (Ab Urbe condita I,13), by Ovid (Fasti III, 199-228) and by Plutarch (II, Romulus 14-19). After killing his twin brother Romus, Romulus populates the city of Rome by opening it up to refugees and brigands and finds himself with an excess of men. Because of their reputation, none of the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities want to give them their daughters in marriage. The Romans then decide to invite their Sabine neighbours to a great feast during which they slaughter the Sabines and kidnap their daughters. The engraving made by Giovanni Battista Gallestruzzi (1618 - 1677) around 1656-1658 gives us a good understanding of the Polidoro fresco, allowing us to see how Biagio Pupini reworked the scene to extract this dynamic group. With a remarkable economy of means, Biagio Pupini takes over the left-hand side of the fresco and depicts in a very dense space two main groups, each consisting of a Roman and a Sabine, completed by a group of three soldiers in the background (which seems to differ quite significantly from Polidoro's composition). The balance of the drawing is based on a very strongly structured composition. The drawing is organised around a median vertical axis, which runs along both the elbow of the kidnapped Sabine on the left and the foot of her captor, and the two main diagonals, reinforced by four secondary diagonals. This diamond-shaped structure creates an extremely dynamic space, in which centripetal movements (the legs of the Sabine on the right, the arm of the soldier on the back at the top right) and centrifugal movements (the arm of the kidnapper on the left and the legs of the Sabine he is carrying away, the arm of the Sabine on the right) oppose each other, giving the drawing the appearance of a whirlpool around a central point of support situated slightly to the left of the navel of the kidnapper on the right. 3. Polidoro da Caravaggio, and the decorations of Roman palaces Polidoro da Caravaggio was a paradoxical artist who entered Raphael's (1483 - 1520) workshop at a very young age, when he oversaw the Lodges in the Vatican. Most of his Roman work, which was the peak of his career, has disappeared, as he specialised in facade painting, and yet these paintings, which are eminently visible in urban spaces, have influenced generations of artists who copied them abundantly during their visits to Rome. Polidoro Caldara was born in Caravaggio around 1495-1500 (the birthplace of Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, who was born there in 1571), some forty kilometres east of Milan. According to Vasari, he arrived as a mason on the Vatican's construction site and joined Raphael's workshop around 1517 (at the age of eighteen according to Vasari). This integration would have allowed Polidoro to work not only on the frescoes of the Lodges, but also on some of the frescoes of the Chambers, as well as on the flat of Cardinal Bibiena in the Vatican. After Raphael's death in 1520, Polidoro worked first with Perin del Vaga before joining forces with Maturino of Florence (1490 - 1528), whom he had also known in Raphael's workshop. Together they specialised in the painting of palace façades. They were to produce some forty façades decorated with grisaille paintings imitating antique bas-reliefs. The Sack of Rome in 1527, during which his friend Maturino was killed, led Polidoro to flee first to Naples (where he had already stayed in 1523), then to Messina. It was while he was preparing his return to the peninsula that he was murdered by one of his assistants, Tonno Calabrese, in 1543. In his Vite, Vasari celebrated Polidoro as the greatest façade decorator of his time, noting that "there is no flat, palace, garden or villa in Rome that does not contain a work by Polidoro". Polidoro's facade decorations, most of which have disappeared as they were displayed in the open air, constitute the most important lost chapter of Roman art of the Cinquecento. The few surviving drawings of the painter can, however, give an idea of the original appearance of his murals and show that he was an artist of remarkable and highly original genius. 4. The façade of the Milesi Palace Giovanni Antonio Milesi, who commissioned this palace, located not far from the Tiber, north of Piazza Navona, was a native of the Bergamo area, like Polidoro, with whom he maintained close friendly ties. Executed in the last years before the Sack of Rome, around 1526-1527, the decoration of Palazzo Milesi is considered Polidoro's greatest decorative success. An engraving by Ernesto Maccari made at the end of the nineteenth century allows us to understand the general balance of this façade, which was still well preserved at the time. The frescoes were not entirely monochrome, but alternated elements in chiaroscuro simulating marble bas-reliefs and those in ochre simulating bronze and gold vases...

Howard Tangye (b.1948, Australia) has been an influential force in fashion for decades. Lecturing at London’s Central Saint Martins for 35 years, including 16 years as head of BA Wom...

A watercolour on paper view of a canal in Venice by French artist Paule Soulé. The pain ting is signed bottom right and presented in a gilt and painted wood frame under glass. A cha...

Howard Tangye (b.1948, Australia) has been an influential force in fashion for decades. Lecturing at London’s Central Saint Martins for 35 years, including 16 years as head of BA Wom...

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

Early 20th century watercolour on paper of a factory in a landscape by English artist E Corvin-Pearson. The painting is signed bottom right and marked ' 3 Guineas' to the backboard. ...

This large wash drawing is a slightly enlarged version of a composition executed by Hubert Robert in 1761, at the end of his stay in Rome. This composition is a marvellous synthesis of the painter's art: the clatter of the waterfall, in a grandiose setting inspired by antiquity, is opposed to the intimacy of a genre scene, made up of a few peasant women performing some agricultural work. 1. The stay in Italy, an important founding stage in Hubert Robert's carrier Hubert Robert came from a privileged family of Lorraine origin, linked to the Choiseul-Stainville family, where his father was an intendant. The protection of this powerful aristocratic family enabled him to study classical art at the Collège de Navarre (between 1745 and 1751). After a first apprenticeship in the workshop of the sculptor Slodtz (1705 - 1764), he was invited by Etienne-François de Choiseul-Beaupré-Stainville (the future Duke of Choiseul, then Count of Stainville) to join him in Rome when the latter had just been appointed ambassador. Hubert Robert arrived in Rome on 4 November 1754, aged twenty-one, and remained there until 24 July 1765. Thanks to his patron, he obtained a place as a pensioneer at the Académie de France without having won the prestigious Prix de Rome. On his arrival in Rome, he frequented the studio of the painter Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691 - 1765), the inventor of the ruins painting, and also benefited from the proximity of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s studio (1720 - 1778). During his eleven-year stay in Rome, Hubert Robert studied the great Italian masters and drew many of the great archaeological sites, multiplying the sketches which he would use throughout his career, becoming one of the masters of the "ruin landscape". Back in Paris in 1765, he was very successful. He was accepted and admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture on the same day, July 26th 1766, which was very unusual. He was appointed draughtsman of the king's gardens in 1784, then guard of the Royal Museum from 1784 to 1792. Arrested in 1793 and detained in the prisons of Sainte Pélagie and Saint-Lazare, he was released in 1794 after the fall of Robespierre and undertook a second trip to Italy. In 1800, Hubert Robert was appointed curator of the new Central Museum and died at his home in Paris in 1808. 2. Description of the artwork This composition, formerly called "La Cascade du Belvédère Pamphile" , is undoubtedly inspired by the water theatres of the Frascati villas. Hubert Robert presents a hemicycle of columns with rustic bossages at the foot of which is a cascade of water falls into a basin. The hemicycle is flanked by two high walls, pierced by window wells topped with antique masks...

A charming scene of a figure by a loch with a ruined castle and homestead in the background by one of Queen Victoria's favourite artists. William Leighton Leitch (1804-1883) Figure ...

"Basilica" is a graphite and watercolor painting of an architectural detail of the San Marco Basilica in Venice, Italy. This piece is 20.5 by 16.25 inches framed. McLean Jenkins is inspired by the work of JMW Turner, Richard Diebenkorn and Louis Khan. McLean Jenkins is a practicing architect with McAlpine and his work derives from and celebrates the classical forms of his trade. Working in graphite, ink and watercolor, McLean employs a gestural approach that frees his hand to explore a subject’s essence. His compositions rely on the quick, decisive sketch and are then given over to the whims and splashes of watercolor. Spontaneity, movement and spirit are all emphasized and his drawings collectively form their own narrative of his passion for architecture. The city of Venice has captured McLean’s imagination since his first trip there as a 12 year old boy. Over the years a kind of courtship with the city has evolved, and its impact has motivated and sustained his development as both architect and artist. His work depicting the city has been recognized within the architectural profession by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation in its award to McLean of the J. Neel Reid...

Frederick George Cotman (1850-1920) A rowing boat on the shore Watercolour with trace of pencil 4¼ x 10¼ inches Provenance: Cotman family collection Frederick George Cotman was born in Ipswich on 14 August 1850. His uncle, John Sell Cotman, was one of the cornerstones of the Norwich school and a very influential watercolourist. Frederick's first tuition came from William Griffiths...

A very attractive view of a rural lane in Pirbright by this highly collectable artist who was a contemporary and friend of John Constable. Dr William Crotch (1775-1847) Mr Pear's House at Pirbright from the Turnpike Signed with initials on reverse and inscribed as title and additionally " Thunder about/ 1 pm" watercolour and pencil 4 x 6½ inches without frame 11 x 13 inches with frame William Crotch (5 July 1775 – 29 December 1847) was an English composer and organist. According to the British musicologist Nicholas Temperley, Crotch was "a child prodigy without parallel in the history of music", and was certainly the most distinguished English musician in his day. Crotch was a professional musician, becoming the first Principal of the Royal Academy of Music...

Bridge to Brooklyn #382, watercolor, 10.5 x 14 inches (Framed size: 18 x 21 inches), $1,750 Waldo Midgley (1888-1986) had a fruitful career spanning eig...