Valerio Castello

Jean-Baptiste de Boyer d'Éguilles (or d’Aiguilles; 1645-1709), Hôtel Boyer d'Éguilles, Aix en Provence;

Thence by descent to his son, Pierre-Jean de Boyer d'Éguilles (1682-1757), Marquis of Argens, Hôtel Boyer d'Éguilles, Aix en Provence;

Sir Arthur Philip Du Cros (1871-1955), 1st Baronet, Dining Room, Canons Park, Middlesex, by 1916;

Thence by descent to Roy Du Cros;

From whom acquired by the Howard Hartog (1913-1990), London, 1959;

Thence by inheritance to his wife, Margaret Hartog (1914-2008), London;

By whose estate sold ("Property from the Estate of the Late Margaret Hartog"), London, Sotheby's, 8 July 2009, lot 30;

Where acquired by the present collector.

Receuil d'estampes d'après les tableaux des peintres les plus celebres...Qui sont à Aix dans le Cabinet de M. Boyer d'Aguilles, Procureur Général du Roy au Parlement de Provence, Aix-en-Provence 1709, reproduced pl. 33 (as an engraving);

Receuil d'estampes d'après les tableaux des peintres les plus celebres...Qui sont à Aix dans le Cabinet de M. Boyer d'Aguilles, Procureur Général du Roy au Parlement de Provence, Paris 1744, p. 6, reproduced pl. 33 (as an engraving);

L. Weaver, "Canons Park, The Middlesex Residence of Sir Arthur Du Cros., Bart," in Country Life 40 (28 October 1916), p. 524, reproduced (in situ);

C. Manzitti, Valerio Castello, Genoa 1972, p. 134, under cat. no. 56 (as a lost work known only through a copy and engraving);

C. Manzitti, Valerio Castello, Turin 2004, p. 237, under cat. no. C7 (as a lost work known only through a copy and engraving).

ENGRAVED

By J. Coelemans, 1709.

Until this painting’s rediscovery in 2009, Valerio Castello’s sweeping composition was known only through a 1709 engraving (fig. 1) and two painted copies.¹ Produced during the 1650s, probably for a French patron, the work exemplifies baroque design: arranged on a diagonal, the composition’s light effects as much as the figure’s poses and gestures draw the eye across the canvas, dramatizing the familial encounter, but also grounding it in the terrestrial realm of the spectator.

The work is first recorded in the Aix-en-Provence collection of aristocrat and amateur printmaker, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer d'Éguilles, who in the late seventeenth century commissioned the Antwerp engraver Jacques Coelemans to document his paintings. By the early twentieth century, the painting had made its way to England, where by 1916 it hung in the dining room of the industrialist Sir Arthur Philip Du Cros. After passing to his son, the work was acquired by Howard Hartog and his wife, Margaret Hartog. The latter, more commonly known as Margaret Kitchin, was among the most celebrated British concert pianists of the twentieth century.

¹ One in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Aix-en-Provence, and another in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen.