Description
- Eugen Napoleon Neureuther
- Houses in Rome, near Santissima Trinità dei Monti
- inscribed on the reverse: aus dem Nachlass von / Eugen Napoleon Neureuther / von diesem gemalt 1837/38 in Rom / (Blick aus d. deutschen / Kunstler**** bei der /Span. Treppe auf / S. Trinità dei Monte) / Prof. Dr. Heinze Braune
- oil on artist’s board mounted on cardboard
Provenance
The artist’s estate;
Sale Munich, Montmorillon, 23 July 1883;
1
Private collection.
Exhibited
Paris, Grand Palais, Paysages d'Italie, les peintres du plein air (1780-1830), 3 April - 9 July 2001, no. 149.
Literature
T. Sharman, in Paysages d'Italie, les peintres du plein air (1780-1830), exhibition catalogue, Paris 2001, p. 245, no. 149, reproduced.
Condition
The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
This painting is in remarkably good condition. It is painted on a large piece of artist's board. The board is slightly bowed and shows a subtle wave in the center of the right side. The paint layer is stable, clean and varnished. There are hardly any retouches. There are a few spots around the extreme edges and in the darker clouds in the upper left, but the condition is particularly good within the architecture and the building in the lower half of the picture. The work should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."
Catalogue Note
Likely painted from the window of the artist’s lodgings in Rome, the composition depicts the towers of Santissima Trinità dei Monti at the top of the Spanish Steps and the other buildings of the quarter. Executed with a
plein air adherence to the realities of light and shadow on stone and tile, and without any ideal viewpoint or central focus to the composition, this canvas demonstrates a realist tendency in Neureuther’s art that is absent from the later and more extravagant Romantic visions of Rome and its buildings and monuments that the artist painted in the 1860s as part of a decorative cycle for one of this patrons, Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack, in Munich. Here, only the hyper-saturated blue of the sky, which modulates from heavy clouds at left to clearer skies at right, hints at Neureuther’s Romantic sensibilities.
An inscription on the reverse of the present painting, written by Heinz Braune, Director of the Neue Pinakothek, Munich, in the early 20thcentury, indicates that the composition was still in Neureuther’s possession at the time of his death in 1882, and was among the contents of the artist’s studio sold at auction in Munich the following year. Furthermore, Braune’s inscription dates the composition to Neureuther’s first Roman sojourn of 1836-1837.
Both the inscription and the view itself suggest that Neureuther lived near the Church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte. Indeed, the present canvas depicts the heart of the artists’ quarter in Rome: the via Sistina, partially depicted at left, contained many accommodations for the foreign artists who flocked to Rome during this period.
1. T. Sharman, op. cit., p. 244.
