Landscape with Figures by a Classical Monument
Franz de Paula Ferg (Vienna 1689 - London 1740)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1724 - 1737
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1143 x 1257 mm (45 x 49 1/2 in)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Osterley Park and House, London
NT 771226
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Landscape with Figures by a Classical Monument by Franz de Paula Ferg (Vienna 1689 – London 1737). Ferg was one of the most popular painters in England in the second quarter of the 18th century, because of his facility in creating compositions such as this, though generally on a smaller scale. Becoming a landscape painter against the will of his history-painter father, he was particularly adept at introducing varied and lively figures into his own and other artists' pictures. Having left Vienna in 1718, he arrived in London, via Leipzig, Brunswick, and Hamburg, around 1724. Despite earning good prices for his works, he died in poverty, for reasons related by George Vertue: he was 'so unhappily married to a boistrous extravagant hussy, ([resulting in his] being a long time a prisoner for debt), that she kept the Man always poor and indigent, slaving his spirits in misery and bondage, debased his genius, and brought him so low, that being quite exhausted, he went out to some company the last evening of his life, and dropt down dead, before he got home, in the street.'
Provenance
On loan from a private collection
Makers and roles
Franz de Paula Ferg (Vienna 1689 - London 1740), artist