Attributed to John Hamilton

By tradition in the collection of the Princely Family of Liechtenstein;
Given to Baron Salomon Mayer von Rothschild, 1822, and hung in Schilldersdorf, Moravia, before 1843;
Thence by descent to Baron Alphonse Mayer von Rothschild, Vienna (inv. no. AR918) (listed in the Rothschild 1938 inventory in Vienna as after Rubens);
Confiscated from the above in 1938 by the Nazi authorities and restituted to the Rothschild family, 1947;
With N. Coburg;
Baron Jungenfeld;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 6 December 1989, lot 7;
There acquired by Carlton Hobbs;
From whom purchased by the present collector.

F. Kunth, Die Rothschild'schen: Gemäldesammlungen in Wien, Vienna 2006, pp. 212-213 (as after Rubens).

When offered in 1989, this and the following lot were said to have been signed and dated: J. B. A. George de Hamilton Pinx 1753.  This signature suggests an attribution to John Hamilton, an artist active in Vienna in the mid-18^th century.  The son of Ferdinand Philipp von Hamilton (1664-1750), John Hamilton was from a family of court painters who specialized in still-life and animal scenes and worked in many prominent European courts, including that of Charles V and the House of Liechtenstein.  The designs in these two lots relate to a pair of paintings, possibly pendants, executed by Peter Paul Rubens in circa 1615.  The lion and the tiger in the present lot are based on details from Neptune and Amphitrite, a painting that once formed part of the Schönborn collection in Vienna that was sold in 1881 to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin and later destroyed during World War II.  The tigress with her cubs in the following lot derive from a detail of Rubens’ Four Corners of the World (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).