From Taddeo to Tiepolo: The Dr. John O’Brien Collection of Old Master Drawings

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Study of a boy with his hand to his mouth

Auction Closed

January 27, 09:35 PM GMT

Estimate

25,000 - 35,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Venice 1696 - 1770 Madrid

Study of a boy with his hand to his mouth

Pen and brown ink and gray-brown wash over black chalk;

bears numbering in pencil, verso: 26

244 by 190 mm; 9 5/8 by 7 1/2 in

Probably Library of the Somasco Convent, S. Maria della Salute, Venice;
Count Leopoldo Cicognara;
Antonio Canova;
by inheritance to his half-brother, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Sartori-Canova;
Francesca Pesaro;
by whom sold to Col. Edward Cheney, Badger Hall, Shropshire;
by inheritance to his brother-in-law, Col. Alfred Capel-Cure, Blake Hall;
sale, London, Sotheby's, 29 April 1885 (presumably part of lot 1024);
with E. Parsons & Sons, London;
with P. & D. Colnaghi, London;
with Richard Owen, Paris;
with Savile Gallery;
sale, New York, Sotheby's, 16 January 1986, lot 175,
purchased at this sale

B. Aikema, Tiepolo and His Circle, Drawings in American Collections, Cambridge and New York, 1996, p. 302, under no. 113, fig. 1, reproduced (as Present whereabouts unknown)

Like the outstanding Tiepolo drawings of The Holy Family and the Head of a Madonna in the collection (lots 257 and 264 below), this particularly fine example of one of the artist's bravura character head studies originates from the so-called Savile Album, which Tiepolo gave to the Somasco Convent in Venice in 1762, before he left for Spain. Though it contained two highly important series of drawings by Tiepolo, this was just one of no fewer than nine albums of Tiepolo drawings subsequently owned by the English collector Edward Cheney (1803-1884), who lived in Venice for many years. By the time this drawing reached the hands of Richard Owen, in Paris, it was one of ninety-three similar so-called fantasy heads that the dealer owned, all documented in a series of photographs in the Fine Arts Library at Harvard University.¹In studies such as this, we see all of Tiepolo's genius for capturing character, light, and energy with the minimum of lines, combined with perfectly applied passages of wash. Though he made a considerable number of these head studies, every one of them is fresh and original in viewpoint or pose; here, the boy is caught in the fleeting, momentary action of covering his mouth with his hand.

1. Harvard University, Fine Arts Library, Special Collections (Photographic Resources) [372d/T442/95(h)39]