PROVENANCE -

Baron D’Inhaca, Hotel Métropole, Lisbon; sent to Christie’s, London, in May 1895 and delivered by them to Foster’s on 28 June.[i]

W.A.G. Bartley, Anglo-Overseas Engineers & Merchants Ltd, Lennox House, Norfolk Street, Strand, London WC2; Christie’s, London, 16 March 1923, lot 97, as ‘Canaletto’ (to Viscount Dunsfold).[ii]

Prince George of Denmark (1920-1986), by whom given to the late owner, a London private collector, in 1973.

Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780) is only known to have had one pupil in his early years in Venice, his brother Pietro Bellotti,[iii] born in 1725, who on 5 November 1741 undertook to pay Bernardo 120 ducats a year for board and training, an arrangement which was terminated on 25 July 1742. Pietro would presumably have been an assistant in his uncle Canaletto’s studio for several years before the date of these documents. The probability that he accompanied his brother to Rome in the first half of 1742 is supported by the presence of his name on the back of one of Bernardo’s drawings of Lucca.[iv] He had moved to France by 1748, to judge from the fact that on 24 March 1749 the baptism took place in Toulouse of his first child by a French woman, whom he married the following day.[v] Pietro’s career and work in Toulouse have been known since Robert Mesuret’s researches in the 1940s and 1950s,[vi] and have since been mentioned in numerous books of a general nature.[vii] Paintings by him were exhibited at the Académie Royale in Toulouse at irregular intervals between 1755 and 1790, consisting of views of various European cities and a few capricci, all lent by local collectors. Bellotti seems to have left Toulouse by the 1770s, and he must also be the ‘Pietro Bellotto di Canaleti’ who in 1755 applied for permission to practice his art in Nantes, where he is again mentioned in 1768. He is also documented in Besancon in 1761 and Lille in 1778-9. Pietro is not recorded after 1790, but in 1805 the first curator of the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, who had known him, stated that he had ‘died a short time ago in France’.

Quite a number of his paintings remain in French private collections and have recently been published by Anne and Udolpho van de Sandt.[viii] A set of no fewer than seventeen small canvases is recorded in the collection of the Marquis de Beaumont at the Chateau de Merville, near Toulouse, the majority with eighteenth century inscriptions on the reverse identifying the artist as ‘Bellotti’.[ix] A pair of large pendants showing The Grand Canal and the Entrance to the Cannaregio and The Castel S. Angelo and the Vatican, once owned by the Président Puget, a recorded patron of Bellotti, was sold from the Desarnauts Collection, Toulouse, at Sotheby’s, New York, 28 January 1999, lot 334.[x] Four additional paintings have since been published by Dario Succi:[xi] a view of The Molo, looking West, which was subsequently sold at Sotheby’s, London, in 2003,[xii] The Lock at Dolo, signed on the picture surface (one of only two known signed views),[xiii] and with a pendant Capriccio of Buildings at Padua, and a Capriccio of a walled Town by the Lagoon, a variant of one of the Beaumont set.[xiv] This not inconsiderable body of work shows Pietro to have been a very competent painter of view paintings, usually based on prints and generally on a small scale. Charles Beddington has added to those a group of paintings which he proposes as works of the painter’s early period in Venice (Beddington, op. cit., pp. 21-5). More recently a number of capricci of classical ruins have re-emerged, several of them signed, and two views of England, published as Bellotti’s work by Beddington (C. Beddington, ‘Pietro Bellotti in England and elsewhere’, The Burlington Magazine, CXLIX, No. 1255, October 2007, pp. 678-84). With other, unpublished, works a significant œuvre is now known, and Charles Beddington intends to publish a catalogue raisonné.

Of particular interest is a handbill issued in Paris in 1754/5 with the following advertisement: ‘LES PLAISIRS DE LA COUR: OU THÉÂTRE SANS PAREIL. AVIS AUX AMATEURS DES BEAUX ARTS. La Peinture Architectorique & Prospective arrivée à son plus haut dégré de perfection. Le Sieur CANALETY, Peintre Venitien, convie les Curieux des Beaux Arts & de Peinture à voir son Théâtre sans pareil, composé des plus belles Vûes de l’Europe, comme Venise, Rome, Florence, Milan, Turin, Londres, Versailles, Strasbourg, plusieurs Ports de Mer, & autres morceaux d’Architecture antique & moderne, le tout peint à l’huile & de sa grandeur naturelle, les ayant vûs & tirés sur les lieux d’après nature, les ayant rendus susceptibles par la légéreté & la delicatesse du pinceau, s’étant acquis de la réputation par tout où il passe: il n’avoit dessein de les faire voir qu’à des personnes de l’Art & connoisseurs, afin de s’attirer leur estime ainsi que leur conseil; mais ces Amateurs sentant le plaisir que cela pourroit procurer aux personnes de la Ville, l’ont engagé de les faire voir au Public. Le sieur CANALETY avertit ceux qui sont charmés de voir son Ouvrage, qui surement leur plaira, par la beauté, le choix & la variété des objects, qu’il le fera voir à toute heure en Foire, dans la Loge de la Veuve BERNARD, en entrant par la Porte de Tournon. Cette Piéce a été vue par Sa Majesté, Monsieur le Dauphin, Madame la Dauphine & de toute la Cour, avec beaucoup de succès & d’applaudissemens. Il se transportera dans les Maisons de ceux qui lui feront l’honneur de l’appeller. 

Le sieur Canalety apprend le Dessein.

Le prix est de 24 sols par personne’

[i] Christie’s stencil 609m on the stretcher.

[ii] Christie’s stencil 411DP on the stretcher.

[iii] Bernardo and his descendants in Poland seem to have been the only members of the family to spell their name with a final ‘o’. Not be confused with the figure painter Pietro Bellotti (1625-1700).

[iv] In the British Museum; S. Kozakiewicz, Bernardo Bellotto, Recklinghausen and London, 1972, no.60.

[v] It may be no coincidence that both Canaletto and Bellotto left Venice around this time, the former for England in 1746, the latter for Dresden in 1747.

[vi] See especially R. Mesuret: ‘Pietro Bellotti un veneziano di Tolosa’, Arte Veneta, 6, 1952, pp.170-2.

[vii] See, for instance, R. Pallucchini: La pittura veneziana del Settecento, Venice-Rome, 1960, p.228, fig.606; R. Pallucchini: La pittura nel Veneto: Il Settecento, II, ed. M. Lucco et al., Milan, 1996, p.523.

[viii] A. and U. van de Sandt: ‘Alla ricerca di “Pietro Bellotti, un veneziano di Tolosa”’, Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte, 25, 2002, pp.91-120.

[ix] Van de Sandt, p. 110, figs. 14-16, 18-20, 22, 24 and 26.

[x] Sold after the sale, this is now in a private collection, U.S.A.; Van de Sandt, pp.106 and 119, notes 71-6, figs.7-8.

[xi] D. Succi: ‘Pietro Bellotti: un altro “Canaletto”’, in the catalogue of the exhibition da canaletto a zuccarelli: il paesaggio veneto del Settecento, Villa Manin, Passariano, 2003, pp.164-7, figs.138-40, and pp.394-5, no.111, illustrated in colour.

[xii] 62 by 76.7 cm.; Sotheby’s, London, 11 December 2003, lot 42 (purchased by Lampronti).

[xiii] ‘Bellotti dit Canalletti’.

[xiv] Van de Sandt, fig.10.