The Marketplace at Pirna
The Marketplace at Pirna
- Artist
- Bernardo Bellotto
- Artist Dates
- 1722-1780
- Artist Nationality
- Italian
- Title
- The Marketplace at Pirna
- Date
- c. 1764
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 48.4 x 79.6 cm (19 x 31-3/8 in)
- K Number
- K1914
- Repository
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
- Accession Number
- 61.71
- Notes
Provenance
Catherine II of Russia [1729-1796]; Frederick II of Prussia [1744-1797]; Prussian Royal Collections; Niederländisches Palais, Berlin. (Hugo Moser) in 1919; Duke of Anhalt-Dessau; (Caspari, Munich) 1930. [1] Max Emden [1874-1940], Brissago/Porto Ronco, Switzerland; sold 1938 through (Caspari, Munich) to (Karl Haberstock, Berlin and London). [2] Munich Central Collecting Point, no. 4111; restituted 15 April 1946 to Holland; returned to (Hugo Moser, New York). The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1961 to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, no. 61.71. [1] Exhibited in the Ausstellung venezianischer Malerie at the Galerie Caspari, Munich, in October 1930. [2] Haberstock owned two versions of this work, having acquired the second version from Arthur Tooth in London in 1939. He retained this version until 1941 when he sent it to his bank depository in Tegernsee, Germany. Its wartime fate is unknown and it is possible that the provenances of the two versions have become confused.
Catalogue Entry
Bernardo Bellotto
The Marketplace at Pirna
K1914
Houston, Tex., Museum of Fine Arts (61-70), since 1953.(1) Canvas. 19 x 31 3/8 in. (48.3 x 79.1 cm.). Good condition; cleaned 1952. In the 1750s, chiefly between 1752 and 1755, Bellotto painted ten large views of Pirna (a few miles from Dresden), each measuring approximately 135 x 240 cm. and all now in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie. As with other series of views by Bellotto, smaller replicas exist of the more popular of the scenes. Thus, several repetitions of the Market Place at Pirna are now known. The extent of Bellotto's part in the execution of the replicas has not been determined, but no doubt seems to have been raised as to his authorship of K1914, which may well date before the end of the 1750s. It follows the Dresden composition remarkably closely, and almost identical with K1914 in both composition and size is a painting which was at Knoedler's in 1953.(2) Some other Pirna views in the Dresden series are known in replicas of the same size as K1914, notably a view of the Fortress of Sonnenstein, one version at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, and another in the collection of Frank C. Petschek, New York.(3) Provenance: Hugo Moser, New York (sold to the following).' Kress acquisition, 1952 –exhibited: 'Venice 1700-1800,' Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Mich., and John Herron Art Museum, Indianapolis, Ind., 1952, no. 6 of catalogue, as Bellotto; after entering the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: 'Art Treasures for America,' National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Dec. 10, 1961-Feb. 4, 1962, no. 6, as Bellotto.
References
(1) Catalogue by W. E. Suida, 1953, no. 31, as Bellotto. (2) Photograph in National Gallery archives. The Knoedler version was reproduced in Pantheon, vol. VI, 1930, p. 483, when it was shown in an exhibition of Italian paintings at the Caspari Gallery, Munich. It was exhibited anonymously in 'Masterpieces of Art,' New York World's Fair, 1940, no. 36 of catalogue, as Bellotto. (3) Seen here in 1952. (4) In a letter of Feb. 28, 1952, to Dr. Suida, Moser writes of having bought K1914 at the Niederländisches Palais, Berlin; he says that on the back of the painting was the label 'Preussische Koenigskrone' and the number 8350 of the 'General-Katalog,' a catalogue prepared by G. F. Waagen in the middle of the nineteenth century and destroyed by fire during the Second World War. Suida (op. cit. in note 1, above) adds that K1914 had been a personal gift of Catherine II of Russia to Frederick II of Prussia and remained in the Prussian royal collection until the revolution, 1919, when it was sold to Moser.