Andrew Clayton-Payne
Menu
    • Home
    • About
    • Notable sales
  • Andrew Clayton-Payne
    • Press
    • Publications
    • Contact

Notable sales

JOHN ROBERT COZENS

(1752 – 1797)

View from Mirabella in the Euganean Hills near Padua

View from Mirabella in the Euganean Hills near Padua
Inscribed on back of lining in graphite at lower right, "Near Mirabello / in the Neighborhood of Padua", at lower right corner, "3".
Watercolour over pencil on paper
26 x 37.5 cm
Acquired by The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Provenance

Henry Harris

Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 1937

Norman D. Newall, Esq., Newbrough, Northumberland (1888-1952)

Ian Woodner (1903-1990), New York 

Private Collection, UK

 

In 1782-83 Cozens made his second trip to Italy, traveling with the young eccentric William Beckford. The artist filled seven sketchbooks on his tour, most annotated with the place and date of execution. On 19 June 1782 he made five sketches in the Euganean Hills, a picturesque region in the Veneto southwest of Padua. One of the sketches (Beckford Sketchbooks, i, 23) was preparatory for the present drawing, Cozens's only known depiction of this composition. A related drawing, "From Mirabella, the Villa of Count Algarotti on the Euganean Hills, Ten Miles from Padua", was in the Beckford sale and is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (Bell and Girtin, no. 216, repr.). This drawing depicts a view from Mirabella, the villa of Count Francesco Algarotti (1712-1764), connoisseur and collector of drawings, of which several by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo are in the Morgan Library. In the middle distance at left is the Benedictine abbey of Santa Maria di Praglia with its Romanesque bell tower. The plume of vapor depicted in the drawing may represent a fumerole, a hole in the earth's surface from which hot gases and vapors are emitted. The Euganean Hills are volcanic in origin, and the region's many hot springs have made it a popular tourist destination since at least the eighteenth century. In a letter to Lady Hamilton dated 19 June 1782, William Beckford described the view from Mirabella that Cozens's drawing so poetically records: "Evening drawing on, and the breeze blowing fresh from the Adriatic, I reclined on a slope, and turned my eyes anxiously towards Venice; then upon some little fields hemmed in by chestnuts ... and from thence, to a mountain, crowned by a circular grove of fir and cypress ..."

Read more
Previous
|
Next
69 
of 108

andrew@clayton-payne.com

+44 (0)20 7493 6980

By Appointment,

16 Savile Row, London W1S 3PL

Copyright © 2021 Andrew Clayton-Payne
Site by Artlogic