Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Prince Alexis Orloff (1867-1916),

his estate sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 29-30 April 1920, lot 132;

William H. Crocker (1861-1937), Burlingame, California,

thence by descent to his son,

Charles Crocker (1904-1961), San Francisco,

thence by inheritance until,

sale, New York, Christie's, 24 January 2008, lot 47,

Private Collection, USA,

sale, Paris, Christie's, 26 March 2014, lot 69,

where acquired

San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums, on loan 1935-36;

Oakland, California, Mills College Art Gallery and Portland Museum of Art, Old Master Drawings, 1937-38, no. 80;

Chicago, The Art Institute, Paintings, Drawings and Prints by the Two Tiepolos, Giambattista and Giandomenico, 1938, no. 56

D. von Hadeln, The Drawings of G. B. Tiepolo, New York 1929, II, pl. 106;

G. Knox, 'The Orloff Album of Tiepolo Drawings', The Burlington Magazine, vol. CIII, no. 699, June 1961, pp. 273, 275, no. 13

A luminous example of the extraordinarily accomplished drawing style of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, this large-scale drawing is characterized by the fluid use of different shades of golden-brown washes, skillfully applied to leave the white of the paper to define the spaces.

The sheet originates from an album of outstanding drawings by Tiepolo that belonged to the exiled Russian Prince Alexis Orloff, which was dispersed at auction at the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, in 1920 (see Provenance). In a 1961 article in The Burlington Magazine, George Knox described this important group of drawings, pointing out that until that point the only record of them was the catalogue of the 1920 sale.¹ Characterized by their large format, ambitious compositions and brilliantly sophisticated use of a light-filled, golden-brown wash, the drawings by Giambattista from the Orloff album include many of the most spectacular and beautiful of all the artist's surviving drawings.

Knox noted two possibilities regarding the history of the album. It could have been purchased by Prince Alexis Orloff at the end of the 19^th century, which leaves open the possibility that it was part of the large collection of Tiepolo drawings bought by the London dealer Parsons and Sons at the sale of Edward Cheney’s drawings, at Sotheby’s in 1885. Alternatively (and in Knox’s view more probably), the drawings were part of the Orloff family collection and descended from Gregory Vladimirovitch Orloff (1777-1826). Gregory was the son of Vladimir Grigorievitch Orloff, who was appointed President of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1766. He wrote books about Italian music and painting and spent most of his life outside Russia, in the last years of 18^th Century. Four of Orloff’s uncles (as well as his father) were prominent men in the Russia of Catherine the Great.