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拍品专文
We would like to thank Bettina Baumgärtel, director of the Angelika Kauffmann Research Project, for providing her expertise on this painting based on her examination of the original. Baumgärtel was the first to attribute the painting to Angelika Kauffmann and rehabilitate the previously unknown painting. It will be published by her for the first time in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné as ‘attributed to Angelica Kauffman’.
This naturalistic portrait of a reclining dog appears to be a study done from life. It relates to one of the two dogs in the lower left foreground of Angelica Kauffman’s Family portrait of Ferdinand IV, King of the Two Sicilies (fig. 1, 1782-83; Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, inv. no. OA 6557). In 1782, Kauffman was commissioned by Queen Maria Carolina, wife of Ferdinand IV, to paint a large group portrait of the royal family. The artist began the painting in Naples, where she was occupied over several weeks painting head studies of the royal family from life, and completed the work in Rome the following year. In Kauffman's final painting, the present dog appears with another standing dog in the lower left foreground. Their inclusion is not surprising, given that Ferdinand IV was particularly fond of hunting and apparently favoured the ‘Old Spanish Pointer’ (or Perro de Punta Español) – a now-extinct breed of Spanish pointing dog distinguished by its square muzzle and muscular build. The two dogs anchoring the composition at lower left already appear in Kauffman’s pen-and-ink study and small-scale painted modello (oil on canvas; 71 x 99 cm.), both datable to 1782-83 and in the Princely Collections, Liechtenstein.
As noted by Baumgärtel, the dog’s dimensions are almost identical to those in the final painting, thereby indicating that the present canvas must have functioned as a one-to-one modello. Though uncharacteristically loose in handling for Kauffman, the painting’s spontaneity excludes the possibility that the work is by a copyist. Rather, as Baumgärtel notes, this study of a dog is entirely in keeping with the artist’s practice of making portrait studies from life of each of the members of the royal family in preparation for her large group portrait (for which see B. Baumgärtel, in Angelika Kauffman, exhibition catalogue, Düsseldorf, 1998, pp. 276-86, especially pp. 282-83, cat. nos. 150 and 151).
The sky and landscape setting, including the greenery in the foreground, appear to be by a later hand.
This naturalistic portrait of a reclining dog appears to be a study done from life. It relates to one of the two dogs in the lower left foreground of Angelica Kauffman’s Family portrait of Ferdinand IV, King of the Two Sicilies (fig. 1, 1782-83; Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, inv. no. OA 6557). In 1782, Kauffman was commissioned by Queen Maria Carolina, wife of Ferdinand IV, to paint a large group portrait of the royal family. The artist began the painting in Naples, where she was occupied over several weeks painting head studies of the royal family from life, and completed the work in Rome the following year. In Kauffman's final painting, the present dog appears with another standing dog in the lower left foreground. Their inclusion is not surprising, given that Ferdinand IV was particularly fond of hunting and apparently favoured the ‘Old Spanish Pointer’ (or Perro de Punta Español) – a now-extinct breed of Spanish pointing dog distinguished by its square muzzle and muscular build. The two dogs anchoring the composition at lower left already appear in Kauffman’s pen-and-ink study and small-scale painted modello (oil on canvas; 71 x 99 cm.), both datable to 1782-83 and in the Princely Collections, Liechtenstein.
As noted by Baumgärtel, the dog’s dimensions are almost identical to those in the final painting, thereby indicating that the present canvas must have functioned as a one-to-one modello. Though uncharacteristically loose in handling for Kauffman, the painting’s spontaneity excludes the possibility that the work is by a copyist. Rather, as Baumgärtel notes, this study of a dog is entirely in keeping with the artist’s practice of making portrait studies from life of each of the members of the royal family in preparation for her large group portrait (for which see B. Baumgärtel, in Angelika Kauffman, exhibition catalogue, Düsseldorf, 1998, pp. 276-86, especially pp. 282-83, cat. nos. 150 and 151).
The sky and landscape setting, including the greenery in the foreground, appear to be by a later hand.