Thomas Rowlandson

In this spirited watercolor Rowlandson shows Joseph Gulston (1745-1786), the celebrated English print collector and connoisseur, in an Antwerp emporium which is packed full of sculpture, paintings and prints. Gulston - who seems to have already selected two pictures, which he grips under his arm, as well as a small Egyptian statue, which pokes out of his coat pocket – leans forward and scrutinizes, through his pince-nez, a print or painted copy after Rubens's Susannah and the Elders. To his left and right, the antique dealers try to encourage a sale.

There is another version of this drawing, with compositional differences, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.¹ That work is inscribed: Gouty Gulston the Antiquarian at Antwerp and is dated 1797, the likely date of the present lot. Rowlandson had visited Antwerp in 1793 and was himself a print collector.

1. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, inv. M.49.15