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Description: | A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. The drawings shows a simple, rectangular wooden gateway between two pillars. A yard is visible beyond this, and a building is to the right. The tone in the drawing is built up with washes of sepia.
Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society:
"10.
GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO
(b. 1696; d. 1770)
STUDY OF A GATEWAY LEADING INTO A YARD
Collection of Henry Oppenheimer, Esq. From the Collection of the late Sir Edward J. Poynter, P.R.A. Drawn with the pen and brush in sepia, with sepia wash. 17.1 x 28.4 cm. (6 11/16 x 11 1/8 in.).
Though little known even to students of Tiepolo, several drawings of this type exist. They are accurate sketches from nature of buildings, mostly villas and farms in full sunlight, evidently made for the purpose of acquiring facility in handling strong lights and shadows, in which the master attained such extraordinary skill. All were done with extreme rapidity. The paper is of various sorts. Some of the outlines may have been done with the pen, but most are brush work. The surfaces in shadow are given with simple washes, the depth of shade being indicated almost always by the tone of the wash alone without hatching. In this power of precise modulation of tint without either exaggeration or monotony, Tiepolo stands perhaps alone with Rembrandt, of whom this group of drawings is curiously reminiscent. But whereas Rembrandt's farms are always represented in coordinated space as incidents in complete compositions, the Tiepolo sketches are merely detached studies. Though such farm buildings are a familiar feature in Venetian pictures from early times, it does not appear that Tiepolo ever introduced them into his finished works.
The present drawing was formerly in the collection of Sir Edward Poynter. Several similar drawings appeared in a sale at Sotheby's, July 3, 1918, as from the Legros Collection, one bearing a probably authentic signature. No sketches of this kind were known to Edward Sack, whose elaborate monograph appeared in 1910.
W. B.
[Other collections in which the rare drawings by Tiepolo of the same class are found are those of the British Museum, Mr. William Bateson, F.R.S., Mr. Charles Ricketts and Mr. Charles Shannon, R.A., and Mr. G. Bellingham Smith. ED.]"
Technique: reproduction
Reproduction by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Study of a Gateway leading into a Yard (1921.37). | Source: | Manchester City Galleries | Identifier: | mcag.emu.ecatalogue.104391 | Go to resource |
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