Salvator Rosa

Jonathan Richardson, Senior (1667-c.1745), London (L.2184), with his shelfmark (cf. L.2983 and 2984) and on his mount,

probably his sale, London, Christopher Cock, 22 January - 8 February 1747;

Alexander Scott Carter, Toronto (according to a note on the backing sheet);

sale, London, Sotheby’s, 26 November 1970, lot 42;

John Appleby, Jersey,

thence by descent until 2010

M. Mahoney, The Drawings of Salvator Rosa, New York and London, 1977, Vol. I, p. 440, no. 45.8; Vol. II, reproduced fig. 45.8;

R.W. Wallace, The Etchings of Salvator Rosa, Princeton, 1979, p. 168, no. 37a;

P. Bellini and R.W. Wallace, ed., The Illustrated Bartsch. Vol.45 – Commentary: Italian Masters of the Seventeenth Century, 1990, p. 393, under no. 057 (Bartsch 44).

The present sheet is a preparatory study for an etching by Rosa from his celebrated Figurine series: a group of sixty-two etchings of soldiers, peasants and other figures, depicted either individually or in groups of two, three or more. These etchings, which were published with a dedication to Rosa’s friend and patron, the collector Carlo de’ Rossi, can be dated to the artist’s years in Rome, around 1656-1657. It has been suggested that, apart from helping to spread Rosa’s fame, these Figurine etchings may also have served to rebut the claims, made by the artist’s detractors, that he was merely a landscape artist without the ability to drawn the human figure. As Richard Wallace has noted, ‘Rosa was very touchy about his reputation as a figure painter...With the Figurine he undoubtedly meant to show everyone, including his detractors...that he could master the human figure in an almost infinite variety of poses and expressive states.’¹ Often acquired as a complete set of prints and bound into albums, Rosa’s Figurine etchings proved very popular among collectors well into the 18^th century.

Around forty of Rosa’s preparatory drawings for individual etchings in the Figurine series survive. All are of identical dimensions to the etchings, and in most respects very close to the final print, albeit in reverse. Other preparatory drawings by Rosa for his Figurine etchings are today in many major European and American museum collections.

The earliest known owner of this drawing was the English portrait painter, author and connoisseur Jonathan Richardson, Senior (1667-1745). Richardson owned a remarkable collection of nearly 5,000 drawings, mostly Italian works of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. His extensive collection was organized by school and date, and the drawings were further classified with a complex system of shelfmarks, typified by those found on the back of the mount of the present sheet.

^1.Richard W. Wallace, ‘Salvator Rosa’s Figurine in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’, Print Quarterly, March 1989, p.48.