Friday, July 29, 2016

Jonathan Richardson Senior's Cabinet of Drawings in Europe II

attributed to Pieter de Witte or to Gerrit van Battum
Landscape
ca. 1660
drawing
British Museum

The portrait painter, writer, and art collector Jonathan Richardson Senior (1667-1745) left a manuscript note to accompany the landscape above in the days when he owned it. "For this drawing I have more than once been offered 25 guineas, but refused it, chiefly because I would not suffer so capital a drawing to go out of my collection in my lifetime."  During Richardson's lifetime this work was attributed to Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610), an influential German artist working in Rome at the beginning of the 17th century. It is now believed to have been created about fifty years after Elsheimer's death by one or another of his conscientious imitators. Curators at the British Museum discuss the paradox of a work of art that remains as beautiful as it ever was, but that greatly lost prestige after being reassigned.

More of the idiosyncratic lovelies from the Richardson collection appear below.

Claude Lorrain
Moses and the Burning Bush
1660
drawing
British Museum

François Boucher
Young woman seen from behind
18th century
drawing
British Museum

Peter Oliver
Five heads
17th century
drawing
British Museum

Paul Bril
Forum of Trajan, Rome
1603
drawing
British Museum

Agostino Tassi
Stage set
17th century
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Andrea Mastelletta
Scene of Earthquake 
17th century
drawing
British Museum

Vincenzo Mariotti
Chapel of St Ignatius in the Church of the Gesù, Rome
1697
engraving
British Museum

Pier Francesco Mola
Expulsion from Eden
mid-17th century
wash drawing
British Museum

Pier Francesco Mola
St Catherine disputing in a temple
mid-17th century
wash drawing
British Museum

Paolo Anesi
Landscape with fountain outside a city
ca. 1740-65
drawing
British Museum

Herman van Swanevelt
Satyr family in a landscape
ca. 1634
drawing
British Museum

Nicolas Poussin
Nymph climbing onto the shoulders of a Satyr
 1620s
drawing
British Museum

Stefano della Bella
Interior of a barn
ca. 1625-65
drawing
British Museum

I am grateful to the British Museum for making these images available.