Lot 3232 - A206 19th Century Paintings - Friday, 22. September 2023, 04.00 PM
JOHANN JAKOB FREY
(Basel 1813–1865 Frascati)
Eastern landscape with ruins.
Oil on canvas.
100 × 138 cm.
Provenance:
Private collection, Switzerland.
By the end of the 1830s, Swiss-born Johann Jakob Frey had become one of the best-known painters in Rome, the mecca for 19th-century artists. He not only rapidly achieved financial success, but also received important commissions that were to have a significant influence on his artistic work. Frey’s renown as a landscape painter led him to be appointed official painter of archaeological excavation sites by the Prussian government in 1842, and he subsequently took part in a long expedition to Egypt in 1843. The painting offered here bears witness to this undertaking, but was likely created after Frey’s return from Egypt, and was based on a French expedition report from 1807. The ruins depicted are the remains of the ancient city of Antaeopolis, which was destroyed in a Nile flood in 1821. Frey combines the impressions of light, vegetation and architecture he encountered during his expedition to Egypt with the pictorial models he found in expedition reports. He painted the ruins of the city of Antaeopolis in various versions (see Maltzahn Gallery (ed.): A Collection of Drawings and Paintings by Johann Jacob Frey 1813–1865, London 1974, pp. 7 ff.). This catalogue also recounts Frey's peculiarity of signing and dating his paintings only extremely rarely, which explains the lack of both in the present work. A stylistic analysis of this painting reveals that the reflections in the water and the palm trees are typical of Johann Jakob Frey. What is also remarkable about the lot offered here is the painterly sharpness with which Frey renders this imposing landscape and presents us with a forest of palms and columns in the manner of parallelism.
Private collection, Switzerland.
By the end of the 1830s, Swiss-born Johann Jakob Frey had become one of the best-known painters in Rome, the mecca for 19th-century artists. He not only rapidly achieved financial success, but also received important commissions that were to have a significant influence on his artistic work. Frey’s renown as a landscape painter led him to be appointed official painter of archaeological excavation sites by the Prussian government in 1842, and he subsequently took part in a long expedition to Egypt in 1843. The painting offered here bears witness to this undertaking, but was likely created after Frey’s return from Egypt, and was based on a French expedition report from 1807. The ruins depicted are the remains of the ancient city of Antaeopolis, which was destroyed in a Nile flood in 1821. Frey combines the impressions of light, vegetation and architecture he encountered during his expedition to Egypt with the pictorial models he found in expedition reports. He painted the ruins of the city of Antaeopolis in various versions (see Maltzahn Gallery (ed.): A Collection of Drawings and Paintings by Johann Jacob Frey 1813–1865, London 1974, pp. 7 ff.). This catalogue also recounts Frey's peculiarity of signing and dating his paintings only extremely rarely, which explains the lack of both in the present work. A stylistic analysis of this painting reveals that the reflections in the water and the palm trees are typical of Johann Jakob Frey. What is also remarkable about the lot offered here is the painterly sharpness with which Frey renders this imposing landscape and presents us with a forest of palms and columns in the manner of parallelism.
CHF 6 000 / 10 000 | (€ 6 190 / 10 310)
Sold for CHF 12 500 (including buyer’s premium)
All information is subject to change.