Lorenzo Baldissera Tiepolo

Sir Gilbert Lewis,
thence by inheritance to,
Sir Henry Duff-Gordon,
Gift of Lady Duff-Gordon, 1936

London, Royal Academy, The Paul Oppé Collection, 1958, no. 350 (as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo);
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Exhibition of Works from the Paul Oppé Collection, 1961, no. 143 (as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo)

A.P. Oppé, 'A Fresh Group of Tiepolo Drawings,' Old Master Drawings, 1930, pp. 29-32 (as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo);
J. Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, London 1962, p. 80, under no. 44 (as Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo)

Hinge mounted by it's four edges to an old sheet. There is some slight staining to each corner as a result of the adhesive gum used verso. The sheet is slightly buckled in places, however it is in otherwise excellent condition. The medium remains fresh and vibrant throughout.
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Though the series of drawings, of which the present work is part, has been attributed both to Giambattista and to his son Giandomenico (see Literature), it is in fact far closer in handling to a drawing formerly in the collection of Robert Lehman, and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, given to Giandomenico's younger brother, Lorenzo Tiepolo.¹  Indeed the connection between the Lehman and Oppé drawings is not only limited to their strong stylistic grounds, as both works also share an identical provenance up until 1936, having both been in the collections of Sir Gilbert Lewis and Sir Henry Duff-Gordon. Whilst the Lehman drawing was included in the Duff-Gordon sale (see also lot 71) the Oppé drawing was gifted in the same year to Paul Oppé by Lady Duff-Gordon.

In his entry for the Lehman drawing² James Byam Shaw notes the influence of Giambattista, in particular his Scherzi etchings, on Lorenzo, and these influences can also be clearly felt in the present sheet, with details such as the ragged trees and the two dogs on the left of the composition, fine examples of this.

^1. See J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection, New York 1987, p. 215, no. 177, reproduced

^2. Ibid.