François-Joseph Navez

Probably, the artist's wife's family (acquired directly from the artist)
M. De Lathuy (by 1870)
Alphonse de Potter (by circa 1900)
Charles Hamoir (by descent from the above, his uncle) 
Private Collection (by descent from the above, her father)
Private Collection, Brussels

Brussels, Salon, 1848
Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, François-Joseph Navez et ses élèves, October 4 - November 2, 1969, no. 48

Louis Alvin, Fr. J. Navez. Sa vie, ses oeuvres et sa correspondance, Brussels, 1870, p. 296 
Thérèse Burollet, "François-Joseph Navez et ses élèves," L'Information d'Histoire de l'art, vol. 16, no. 3, May - June 1971, p. 120
Denis Coekelberghs, Les peintres belges à Rome de 1700 à 1830, Brussels, 1976, p. 276

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work is in very good condition. The canvas has an old glue lining. The paint layer is well supported. Under ultraviolet light, one can see some cracks and small losses that have been restored between the wooden staff and the central figure, a handful of tiny retouches in the upper left sky, and some retouches in the sky on the upper right edge. These retouches are not as good as they could be, and these could be re-examined.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Cherished by the Belgian aristocracy, François-Joseph Navez began his training at the Brussels Académie des Beaux-Arts and after winning first prize at the 1812 Ghent Salon received a travel grant to Paris. There he trained with Neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David, whose influence on his art and technique is immediately evident. When David was exiled from France upon the fall of the Napoleonic Empire in 1816, he went to Brussles with Navez. 

A further important influence was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres who, along with the Nazarenes, Navez admired while traveling to Rome and Italy’s countryside from 1817 to 1822.  In July 1819, Navez, along with his fellow artists Léopold Robert, Achille-Etna Michaellon, and Jean-Victor Schentz, witnessed the marching of vanquished brigands and their families from the nearby village of Sonnino to their imprisonment by Papal troops in Rome. In the following years, the Sonnino people and their regional costumes and traditions inspired Navez’s didactic illustrations, as well as complex multi-figural compositions of pilgrimages and processional, such as the present work.

On his return to Brussels in the 1820s Navez became director of the Académie and, after a brief detour to a more Romantic style, by the 1840s he returned to the technique of his early period with renewed energy and a sense of nostalgia as evocatively illustrated in the present work and notable others including Women Spinning in Fondi and Pilgrimage in the Roman Campagna (figs. 1, 2). Aptly recorded as La Fontaine in the artist’s early biography, the women in the present work offer refreshment to weary travelers; the compositional arrangement of the figures holding clay jugs of water poured into waiting bowls echoes a fountain’s form. The generosity and appreciation of the gesture is easily read in his models’ expressions, and the affinity between artist and subject is suggested by the work’s provenance: the painting was given to his wife’s family before passing to Alphone de Potter, a descendant of Belgian journalist Louis de Potter, Navez’s close friend during his time in Rome.