PROVENANCE -

Henry Blundell (1724-1810), Ince Blundell Hall, near Liverpool, and by inheritance to Colonel Sir Joseph Weld; Christie’s, London, 12 December 1980, lot 101.

EXHIBITED -

Bournemouth, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Paintings from Lulworth Castle, May-July 1967, no. 81.

London, Kenwood House, Anton Raphael Mengs and his British Patrons, 1993, p. 91, no. 22, illustrated (catalogue by S. Roettgen).

Forlì, Musei San Domenico, Maddalena: Il mistero e l’immagine, 27 March – 10 July 2022, p. 350, no. 8.5, illustrated in colour.

LITERATURE -

G.L. Bianconi, Elogio Storico del Cavaliere Anton Raffaele Mengs, Milan, 1780, p. 95.

J.P. Doray de Longrais, Oeuvres du chevalier Antoine-Raphael Mengs traduites par J.P. Doray de Longrais, Regensburg, 1782, p. 37.

H. Jansen, Œuvres complètes d’Antoine-Raphael Mengs, premier peintre du Roi d’Espagne contenant différens Traitès sur la Theorie de la Peinture. Traduit de l’Italien, Paris, 1786, I, p. 68.

C.F. Prange, Des Ritters Anton Raphael Mengs ersten Mahlers Karl III König in Spanien hinterlaßne Werke …. herausgegeben von M.C.F. Prange, Halle, 1786, I, p. 122, no. 53.

J.N. De Azara, Opere di Antonio Raffaello Mengs, primo Pittore del Re cattolico Carlo III. Pubblicate dal Cavaliere D. Giuseppe Nicola d’Azara e in questa edizione corrette ed aumentate dall’avvocato Carlo Fea, Rome, 1787, p. XLII.

A. Fabroni, Elogi di uomini illustri italiani, Pisa, 1789, II, p. 328.

J.N. De Azara, The Works of Anthony Raphael Mengs. First Painter to his Catholic Majesty Charles III. Published by the Chev. Don Joseph Nicholas D’Azara Spanish Minister at Rome. Translated from the Italian, London, 1796, III, p. 5.

H. Blundell, An Account of the Statues, Busts, Bass-Relieves, Cinerary Urns and other Ancient Marbles and Paintings at Ince. Collected by H.B., 1803, p. 223, no. XXXVIII.

Dr. Gronau, Ince Blundell Hall Catalogue, 1948.

D. Honisch, Anton Raphael Mengs und die Bildform des Frühklassizismus, Recklinghausen, 1965, p. 124, no. 253.

G. Sestieri, Repertorio della pittura romana della fine del Seicento e del Settecento, Turin, 1994, I, p. 128.

S. Roettgen, Anton Raphael Mengs 1728-1779, Munich, 1999, I, p. 139, no. 91, illustrated. 

ENGRAVED -

Thomas Chambers (c. 1724 -1789).

A full size copy by James Shaw (fl. 1769-1784) was sold at Dreweatts, Newbury, 2 March 2023, lot 5.[i]

Blundell came from an old Lancashire family but as a Roman Catholic was excluded by the penal laws from holding public office. He occasionally

purchased paintings in Paris and elsewhere during the early 1770s, but it was not until a decade after the death of his wife and his receipt of a considerable additional inheritance from a relation in 1767 that Blundell, already in his fifties, began to form the vast collection for which he is remembered. He was influenced in this by his friend and Lancashire neighbour, Charles Townley, the most significant eighteenth century English collector of classical antiquities. Townley’s collection had already assumed its definitive form when Blundell first saw Rome and Naples in his company in February-September 1777, and it is hardly surprising that Blundell first turned his attention to the purchase of antiquities. Very much more surprising was the extent of Blundell’s purchases. Buying initially from Thomas Jenkins, the foremost dealer in Rome, who had a reputation for being expensive, Blundell then employed as his agent the former Jesuit John Thorpe, a relationship that was to last for fifteen years until the latter’s death in 1792. With two further visits to Rome in 1782-3 and 1786, Blundell’s acquisitions rapidly exceeded even Townley’s in number, Blundell’s demands as regards the quality and condition of his classical acquisitions not being as stringent as Townley’s and, unlike Townley, he also purchased works by contemporary Italian sculptors. The sculpture collection, for which he built a special Pantheon in c. 1801-5, was given in 1959 to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, now the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (see G. Vaughan, Henry Blundell’s Sculpture Collection at Ince Hall in Patronage and Practice. Sculpture on Merseyside, ed. P. Curtis, 1989, pp. 13-21).

Blundell’s picture collecting followed a similar pattern. On his arrival in Naples in March 1777, he and Townley both commissioned from Volaire views of the 1767 eruption of Vesuvius (Blundell’s was sold at Christie’s, London, 12 December 1980, lot 104); however, while Townley’s interest in paintings was very limited, Blundell’s appetite for acquiring them in large quantities became immediately intense and remained seemingly inexhaustible until his death.  It was probably on this first, brief ‘grand tour’ that he acquired most of his collection of works by contemporary Italian painters, a set of four views of Naples by Antoniani (sold at Christie’s, London, 12 December 1980, lot 99) and pictures by Mengs (offered at Christie’s, London 12 December 1980, lot 101) and Cades (see Christie’s London, 19 April 1991, lot 28).  He also commissioned copies of old masters by English artists in Italy, including Gavin Hamilton (see the pictures sold at Christie’s, London, 12 April 1991, lots 32 and 33), later continuing his patronage of contemporary English painters by acquiring works from Penny, Wilson and Stubbs.

Blundell’s taste in the painting of previous centuries was particularly eclectic, ranging from river scenes by Salomon van Ruysdael (one, apparently bought from Cavaceppi in Rome, was included in the exhibition, The Treasure Houses of Britain, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985-6, no. 295) to an enormous masterpiece by Sebastiano Ricci, The Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne (J. Daniels, Sebastiano Ricci, 1976, no. 214, fig. 175). A large trompe l’oeil still life by Jacobus Biltius (sold at Christie’s London, 12 December 1980, lot 100), which may have been the first picture he bought, in 1770, was still his pride and joy when he came to catalogue his collection thirty-three years later. His Account …, published in 1803, lists 197 paintings. Blundell’s picture buying evidently accelerated after its publication as he seems to have increased this number to more than 300 by the time of his death seven years later. Since the paintings seem to have been numbered more or less according to the date of purchase, it is possible to gain some impression of the development of his taste.  In his later years he took a particular interest in early Netherlandish and German art, presumably under the influence of the great Liverpool collector William Roscoe (1753-1831). While the then completely unfashionable ‘primitives’ evidently appealed to him more as historical curiosities than for aesthetic reasons, some of his purchases in this field can now be seen as the gems of the collection.  The Virgin and Child attributed to Jan van Eyck, sold in 1922 and now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the double-sided Journey of the Magi by the Master of Saint Bartholomew (now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), the Virgin of the Cherries attributed to Joos van Cleve, and the Allegory of the Old and the New Law by Hans Holbein the Younger (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), were all bought during the last seven years of Blundell’s life when he was nearly blind. Waagen saw the collection intact (see G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 1854, III, pp. 242-60) and part of it was exhibited in Liverpool in 1960 before its removal from Ince.[ii]

It is often stated that Blundell began collecting in the 1770s, but there is strong evidence that, at least on occasion, he commissioned or purchased paintings at much earlier dates. His collection included an impressive view of The Castel Sant’Angelo and the Ponte Sant’Angelo, Rome, Saint Peter’s and the Vatican beyond by Antonio Joli, which is in the original English carved giltwood frame, is of a standard English canvas size (approximately 40 x 50 in.) and is datable on stylistic grounds to Joli’s period in England 1744-1749. Although he was based in London, he also worked, for instance, for Temple Newsam House near Leeds, and it seems highly probable that the painting was commissioned by Blundell, then in his twenties.

It seems highly probable that this, apparently Garofalo’s only depiction of Hercules, was executed for Ercole II d’Este, 4th Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio (1508-1559), who succeeded his father in 1534. Ercole was an avid collector and patron of the arts, his interests including antique sculpture, coins and gems as well as contemporary sculpture and painting, and he founded a tapestry workshop in Ferrara. Ercole’s commissions show an understandable predilection for depictions of his Olympian namesake. Jacopo Sansovino began for him in 1550 an over life-size statue of Hercules, originally intended for the Porta Ercolea at Modena, but eventually erected by Ercole at Brescello, where it still stands in the main square. The Labours of Hercules were represented in wall paintings by Girolamo da Carpi and in a set of tapestries woven by the Ferrara tapestry workshop from cartoons by Battista Dossi (fragments are in the Louvre). Shortly after Ercole came to power, Dosso Dossi painted for him a Hercules and the Pygmies (Alte Galerie des Steiermärkischen Landesmuseums Joanneum, Graz), in which, as Gregor Weber has recently emphasised (in the catalogue of the Ferrara and Dresden 2003 exhibition, p. 37, fig. 1), the features of the classical hero resemble those of the Duke in portraits such as the bust by Prospero Sogari Spani Clementi (ibid., p. 32, fig. 6) and the medal by Pompeo Leone (ibid., p. 34, fig. 10). Such a resemblance is equally apparent in our painting. How it might have left the Este collections remains to be ascertained.

[i] 43 ¼ x 35 ¼ in. (110 x 90 cm.)

[ii] Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Pictures from Ince Blundell Hall, 3-30 April 1960.