ABRAHAM-LOUIS-RODOLPHE DUCROS | The Via Appia near Formia, with travellers and peasants by the walls of Castellone(?), the bay of Gaeta and Mount Circeo beyond; and A port with Maltese merchants and sailors, the fort of Gaeta beyond

Count Adriano Matarazzo di Licosa;

By whom sold, London, Christie's, 11 July 2001, lot 88, where acquired.

Ducros was a Swiss painter who, having trained in Geneva, travelled to Rome in 1776. He remained in Italy for the next 30 years, journeying to Naples and the south, as well as to Sicily and Malta. This pair of paintings, rare within the artist's œuvre, the majority of which is made up of hand-coloured outline prints and watercolours, was almost certainly painted early in Ducros' career in Italy in 1778. The pair of dancing sailors, and the lady in costume in the foreground of the port scene are based on drawings that Ducros made in Malta during that year,¹ when his itinerary also took him along the Via Appia through Gaeta and Formia.

¹ Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, inv. no. 00:492-494; see J.W. Niemeijer and J.T. de Booy, Voyage en Italie, en sicile et à Malte, Ghent 1994, vol. II, cat. nos 263 and 286.