PROVENANCE -

(Possibly) the artist’s posthumous sale, Maître Ridel, rue des Jeûneurs, Paris, 19 March 1851, part of lot 25 ‘several views of Rome and its surroundings taken from nature’.

Private collection, France.

This sketch is evidently related to the painting, also on paper laid down, once in the collection of Joanny Benoît Peytel (1844-1924), sold at Christie’s, Paris, 22 June 2006 (lot 67) and now in the Rijksmuseum. That is in a more square format (19 ¼ x 24 ¼ in., 48.5 x 61.3 cm.).

Drolling won the Prix de Rome in 1810 and went to Rome in the next year. 

The aqueduct was destroyed in 1843.

We are grateful to Didier Segon for confirming the attribution from a digital image.