(Paris 1774–1832 Rome)
Italian Landscape with Travellers by a Well, dated 1805, oil on canvas, 61 x 75 cm, framed, (Rei)

Provenance:
Auction Arcole, Paris, 11th of December 1989, lot 75;
unknown owner;
auction Christie’s, London, 11th of December 2002, lot 85.

Born in Paris in 1774 Pierre-Athanase Chauvin studied in his native city under Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. He travelled to Rome 1802 and settled there permanently two years later. Chauvin enjoyed considerable success in the Eternal City, where he became a popular figure within the international artist circle. He exhibited at the Salon from 1793 to 1831. Chauvin specialized in classical landscapes and views of well-known sites in and around Rome and Naples. He did not inherit his master‘s aspirations to history painting but Chauvin‘s major debt to Valenciennes is his mastery of light and atmospheric recession. His first known work, the Banks of the Anio, near Rome (1807; Boulogne-Billancourt, Bibliothèque Marmottan), executed three years after he settled permanently in Rome, indicates that he did learn from direct observation of nature. Our picture also displays Chauvin‘s picturesque form of Neo-classicism which proved to be extremely popular. His landscapes may be characterized by their elegant, balanced compositions and the masterful rendering of atmospheric recession and warm Mediterranean light.

from a Bavarian private collection