Pedro Núñez de Villavicencio

Horatio Granville-Murray Stewart (1834 – 1904), his coat-of-arms on a label on the reverse;

Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Gentleman'), London, Sotheby's, 17 December 1998, lot 61;

Private collection, Aalst, Belgium:

From whom believed to have been acquired by the present owner.

London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 14 February – 11 May 2001; Munich, Alte Pinakothek, 23 May – 16 August 2001, Murillo: Scenes of Childhood, no. 35.

P. Cherry, Murillo: Scenes of Childhood, exhibition catalogue, London 2001, pp. 150, no. 35, reproduced. 

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: This painting has a strong old stretcher and lining, with a little old patch at lower centre. This appears to be near the hands of the boys, where there are various old pentimenti. There are other pentimenti near the feet of the boys as well. The dark ground can be seen emerging through the sky, and it is in the sky that there are various retouchings visible under ultra violet light around the heads and in the top right corner as well as down the right edge. There are a few small retouchings on the faces, with some larger old scrapes retouched on the cheek of the boy on the right and the shoulder of the boy nearby. Several rather large retouchings can be seen also on the head at centre left also, with minor touches on the other faces and around the boys hands. A little tear can also be seen on the central knee. At the base there is a patch of retouching at the lower right corner with others along the base foreground. The vigorous brushwork is largely well preserved however, with many beautifully intact areas throughout the figures. His report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

"He also painted many pictures of his own invention, following Murillo’s style in some trifles with ragged urchins, done from life, of which I saw one – executed with extreme grace and naturalness – that he presented to King Charles II…"  Antonio Palomino

 

This masterpiece of Sevillian genre painting was painted by Pedro Núñez de Villavicencio during the last years of his life, in around 1694, at a moment of great artistic invention for the artist when he produced some of his finest street scenes with children. In the foreground three young boys gloat over their triumph in a game of argolla, which has resulted in the winning of a few copper reales, regaled by the hatted urchin on the left of the scene, from the two despondent losers seen disappearing in the background. Far more alarming for the viewer however, the boy on the right of the scene raises a bat in direct challenge to the onlooker to a game that would no doubt lead to a similar end.

 

The game of argolla is similar to modern-day croquet, the aim being to hit the ball with a small wooden bat (rather than a mallet) through a metal hoop affixed to the ground by a spike, seen resting in the centre foreground of the scene. Villavicencio’s depiction of the game is prefigured by Murillo’s celebrated Invitation to a Game of Argolla, today in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, which was  painted some twenty years earlier and which includes a depiction of the same paraphernalia (see fig. 1).¹ Murillo’s treatment of the subject became a highly celebrated work within England, not least on account of it being one of the earliest works by the Sevillian master to arrive in the country, but also due to its high critical praise, amongst others by William Hazlitt, who considered it the finest painting in the gallery’s collection.

 

In the present scene Villavicencio has developed further Murillo’s earlier experiments in extending the narrative beyond the picture plane (for example, the latter’s Four Figures on a Step today in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth) through a highly imaginative and daring interpretation of the theme in which he engages and directly involves the viewer in the activity within the picture. The artist combines this remarkable directness with a highly naturalistic treatment of the children, who unlike the more noble, idealised protagonists within Murillo’s genre scenes, are mischievous, scheming and bedraggled, thereby creating a heightened sense of realism and pitching the onlooker unwittingly onto the street and at the mercy of the children’s prowess at the game. 

 

Although undated, the present work can be placed with some certainty to around 1694 on account of its close stylistic and compositional affinities with the artist’s painting of Boys Playing Dice in the Prado Museum (see fig. 2), in which the two boys walking off into the distance are repeated, and which in turn includes the figure of a well-dressed boy in the lower left foreground that recurs in the artist’s painting of the Young Waterseller, today in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville, which is signed and dated 16[9]4.² The success of Villavicencio’s genre scenes during his own lifetime is attested by the existence of one in the Spanish Royal Collection, as recounted by Palomino:

 

‘He also painted many pictures of his own invention, following Murillo’s style in some trifles with ragged urchins, done from life, of which I saw one – executed with extreme grace and naturalness – that he presented to King Charles II and is in the Palace of La Zarzuela…He presented a different one to the Count of Monterrey, Don Domingo de Haro y Guzmán, a great collector and patron of the arts.’³

Whilst Palomino's description is not specific enough to be certain, there remains a possibility that our picture may have been the artist's genre scene presented to the Duke of Monterrey.

1. See P. Cherry, Murillo: Scenes of Childhood, exhibition catalogue, London 2001, pp. 126-7, no. 23, reproduced.
2. See R. González Ramos, Pedro Núñez de Villavicencio, Seville 1999, pp. 180-1, reproduced figs 16 & 17.
3. See A. Palomino, Lives of the Eminent Spanish Painters and Sculptors, translated by N.A. Mallory, Cambridge 1987, pp.329-30, under no. 198.