Summary

Oil painting on canvas, Classical Landscape with a Traveller and Two Women conversing, a Town in the Distance by Jan Frans van Bloemen, called Orizzonte (Antwerp 1662 – Rome 1749), circa 1715/25. An oval landscape of a man and two women in the foreground, a stone urn beneath a pine in the middle distance to the left and a view of the Colosseum and other buildings beyond.

Full description

An oval landscape of a man and two women in the foreground, a stone urn beneath a pine in the middle distance to the left. Colosseum and other buildings beyond. Nicola Pio, in his manuscript life of the painter whom he calls 'Wamblomen', describes his output in words that might be directly applied to the present pictures: "beautiful pictures done in such beautiful sites, with verdant foliage, limpid silver water, and with an agreeableness of colour; accompanied by small figures of the utmost gracefulness, with rural dwellings and urns: all so well assembled, that his pictures were welcomed into all the galleries of Italy" . Van Bloemen's published biography, by Lione Pascoli, conveys much the same message, saying that Dughet's style of landscape would have died with him: "had it not been imitated to perfection by Francesco Vamblomen Orizzonte, who practised it, and with such credit and rising fame, that his works have now spread throughout Europe, and adorn the principal galleries of Rome" . The price of such success in Orizzonte's lifetime has been subsequent neglect, not least because the arcadian vision promulgated by his paintings is one that has largely lost its meaning, in a Europe no longer impregnated with the classical culture that gave them their universal resonance. The impersonality and smooth perfection of his pictures is also less congenial to an age that prefers evidence of self, of struggle and of conflict. Hence even a sympathetic observer such as the late Tony Clark could find much warmer words to say about his imitator Andrea Locatelli (1693/95-1741), who died young and poor, than about his long-lived, rich, and successful model; damning the one with faint praise, the better to exalt the other. Nonetheless, his characterisation of Orizzonte has not been bettered: "There is a gentle development in the artist's work, with few surprises in the voluminous production. He began as a careful imitator of Gaspard Poussin under more shining rococo (or Bacicciesque) skies and with intentions more charmingly intelligent than grand and noble. His palette is strong and rich, becoming more radiant with age; the brush emboldens each year towards a final sparkling pointillism. The aged Orizzonte is perhaps the greatest appreciator of the rich atmosphere and wet but very encouraging light of the Roman spring .... Only country folk (his seem at the same time biblical, classical, and contemporary) inhabit his landscapes, which are all of the same season of the year, and all both Arcadian and park-like. Enough shrewdly and genially observed details .... were used to set the scene convincingly .... Each of Orizzonte's landscapes were constructed and brought to life by a delicate observer, who might be called the Canaletto of the idea of the Roman Campagna" The sting comes in the entry in the same catalogue upon Locatelli, with the praise for the latter's "sense of tension and interplay between landscape and human figure (which van Bloemen, mechanically modernizing Gaspard Poussin, missed)"; and the characterisation of his figures: "In all his best pictures Locatelli's humans are battered but real participants in nature. They do not loiter in an easy park as in van Bloemen. Even though they may be pensioners of a certain defeat, they are inhabitants with accurate tasks" . The four pictures shown here, though alike at first blush, and framed to form a set, actually seem to exemplify something of the almost imperceptible development of which Tony Clark speaks. The upright pair, which has its own history, seems the more strongly indebted to Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675), but with a piling up of effects and motifs that distances the two pictures from their models, and leads to a slight lack of repose. The two ovals, on the other hand, which come from a set of six, have achieved a smoothness and serenity that bespeak a more practised hand, as does the way in which they are effortlessly composed to fit their elongated oval shapes. And though the figures are smoother and firmer, the distances have a shimmering quality that prefigure a little something of that greatest poet of the Roman Campagna, Camille Corot. The history of these pictures is not entirely clear, but it would seem that they are survivals from the collection of William Noel-Hill, 3rd Lord Berwick (1773-1842). Every bit as passionate a collector as his elder brother, the 2nd Baron - who, in a letter of 12 February 1811 to William about the latter's debts, suggested that his younger brother might meet some of them "by a sale of Pictures" - he set about his collecting in a different way. Instead of, like the 2nd Lord Berwick, making a few, highly expensive, purchases of imported pictures through dealers in London, his diplomatic career abroad enabled him to buy en masse on the spot, directly from the collections themselves. Lists survive in his papers of offers or purchases from collections such as those of the Balbi sisters (whence he obtained 'The Balbi Children' now in the National Gallery), Senatore Conte Michelangelo Cambiaso, and the Marchese Nicolo Cattaneo Grillo dal Portelle (from which he bought Salvator Rosa's Expulsion of the Moneychangers still at Attingham) in Genoa, and the Marescalchi collection in Bologna (whence he seems to have acquired Domenichino's Cardinal Bonsi, still at Attingham); and there are papers covering the acquisition in 1827 from one Mr. Barcholz, via an A. Schmidchen, of a group of four Hackerts, and other paintings by French artists based in Italy during the Revolution, such as Simon Denis, Jean-Pierre Péquignot, Pierre-Athanase Chauvin, and Jules-César Van Loo: most of which - having been unfashionable ever since - are still at Attingham. Having managed to keep on a more or less even financial keel while he was en poste, however (his two sales of pictures at Christie's in 1827 would seem to have been more of a weeding out, and of taking advantage of his ambassadorial status to import pictures as chattels and then to sell them, than a response to some financial crisis) - even rescuing certain pictures, such as the pair of large Hackerts from his brother's débâcle - he too succumbed to financial disaster not long after he returned home. A major group of pictures went in a sale at Winstanley's, Liverpool on 29 October 1839, of which regrettably no catalogue survives ; three or four of these are now in the Walker Art Gallery, including a Luca Giordano of Dionysus, former Tyrant of Syracuse, as a Schoolmaster that was sundered from its pendant The Murder of Archimedes at Syracuse still at Attingham. A further sale was held at Christie's on 30 May 1840, whilst major pictures (such as 'The Balbi Children') seem to have been sold privately, through Samuel Woodburn. His important library was also sold. William, 6th Lord Berwick (1802-1882; succ.1861) bought more pictures to fill the gaps in the Picture Gallery, but was then forced to hold further sales at Christie's in 1862 and 1864; and lesser sales have been held this century. It is an indication of the extraordinary profusion of the collections of the 2nd and 3rd Lords Berwick that, despite all these disposals, the Gallery with its walls, still with their original "deep lake colour", makes an impressive show to this day. Notes: (i) Cited by Denis Cockelberghs, in Les peintres belges à Rome de 1700 à 1830, Brussels & Rome, 1976, p.52. (ii) Lione Pascoli, Vite de Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Moderni, vol.I (1730), p.62. (iii) Exh. cat. Painting in Italy in the Eighteenth Century: Rococo to Romanticism, Art Institute of Chicago &c., 1970-71, p.182. (iv) Exh.cat.cit., p.198. (v) Berwick papers, Shropshire Record Office. (vi) But an advertisement of the sale was included in the Liverpool Mercury on 25th October 1839. (vii) inv. 144; cf. Foreign Catalogue, 1977, Text vol., p.83 & Plate vol., p.100. Anon, Descriptive Catalogue of Paintings and Engravings. Attingham House, Shropshire, s.d. [?between 1842 and 1861]: ?the two ovals from: p.3, in the Satin Bed Room: "Six Landscapes, By Orizonti"; ?the two uprights: pp.17 & 18, in the Large Drawing Room, each just described as: "Landscape, By Orizonti"; Anon., 'Attingham Hall', in The County Seats of Shropshire, Part 2, reprint from Eddowes Salopian Journal, 26 May & 2 June 1886, in the Picture Gallery: "fine landscapes by .... Orizonti"; Denis Cockelberghs, Les peintres belges à Rome de 1700 à 1830, Brussels & Rome, 1976, p.55 & figs 24 & 27 (the two ovals). (adapted from author's version/pre-publication, Alastair Laing, In Trust for the Nation, exh. cat., 1995)