Adrien Manglard Lyon 1695 - 1760 Rome

Born in Lyon in 1695, Manglard first studied figure painting with the local painter Frère Imbert, although it is highly possible that early in his career he also studied under his godfather, Adriaen van der Cabel (who settled in Lyon in 1688), whose style was to greatly influence his work.  At the age of twenty he travelled to Rome and on his arrival he was to study with the landscape painter Bernardino Fergioni (1674-1738), alongside two of the other major protagonists of landscape painting in Rome during the first half of the 18th century: Paolo Anesi (1697-1773) and Andrea Locatelli (1695-1741). Thereafter Manglard enjoyed considerable academic success, becoming a member of the Académie Royale in Paris in 1735, and of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1736 the following year. He was also elected to the 'Congregazione dei Virtuosi del Pantheon' in 1741.

The present painting epitomises the type of attractive Mediterranean coastal scene that made Manglard's reputation, and which soon ensured that he enjoyed the patronage of most of the leading Roman families, including the Orsini, Chigi, Colonna, Rondanini, and Rospigliosi, as well as patrons from further afield such as Victor Amadeus II Duke of Savoy and King of Piedmont, and Filippo Bordone, Duke of Parma (who alone commissioned more than 140 works from Manglard to decorate his palazzi). Maddalo (see Literature ) believes this to be a mature work and dates it to the second half of the 1750s. Two very similarly composed Harbour scenes are today in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge (Massachusetts) (inv. no. 179, canvas, 96.6 by 135.5 cms), and inthe Palazzina Boncompagni-Ludovisi in Rome (Maddalo, op.cit., pp. 107-8, nos. 23-24, reproduced) and probably date from the same period.