Josephus Augustus Knip Tilburg 1777 - 1847 Berlicum

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Loth Gijselman, 2-18 April 1940, no. 3628 (with 19 others by Knip);
Professor Dr. I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Amsterdam

's-Hertogenbosch, Noordbrabants Museum, J.A. Knip 1777-1847, 1977, cat. no. 34, reproduced;
Amsterdam/Dordrecht 1994-5, cat. no. 65

E.S. Bergvelt, J.A. Knip (1777-1847) landschapschilder, Amsterdam 1974 (unpublished doctoral thesis), pp. 50, 98, catalogue of drawings nr. 163;
idem, 'J.A. Knip (1777-1847), de werkwijze van een 19^de -eeuwse landschapschilder in relatie tot de kunsttheorie in Holland en Frankrijk omstreeks 1800', in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 27, 1976, pp. 11-71, 26, reproduced fig. 18

Together with the following lot and a third sheet, not in the Unicorno Collection, this study, showing the ruined palaces of the Roman Empire, forms a single broad panoramic view.  Knip regularly worked in this way, making a series of separate drawings that could be joined together into a single panorama that was too extensive to be recorded in a single drawing made from life.  Typically, he annotated all the drawings in each series with a specific letter of the alphabet, in this case 'N', and with notes indicating how the drawings were to be fitted together, as well as with symbols such as asterisks and circles in the margins to either side, to aid in the registration process.  The inscription here records that this was the 'Eerste blad van drie' (the first sheet of three), while the following lot is the 'Laatste blad van drie' (last sheet of three) in the same series.  A very large, finished watercolour in the Van Regteren Altena collection, Amsterdam, showing a procession of figures at the foot of the Palatine Hill, provides a rare example of how Knip made use of his studies of this type, as the topographical background view is clearly based on a combination of the three drawings in this series (see Amsterdam/Dordrecht 1994-5, p. 136, fig. 65.1).