Italian landscape with aqueduct - Nicolas-Antoine TAUNAY (1755-1830)

Nicolas-Antoine TAUNAY (1755-1830)
Italian landscape with aqueduct, probably the heights of Taomirne.
Oil on canvas
56.4 x 45.5 cm
Circa 1800

Provenance :

Handwritten label on the stretcher from the “Deichmann-Schaaffhausen” family in 1868
Deichmann-Schaaffhausen family, according to an 1868 inventory label on the stretcher.

It was probably the wealthy collector Abraham Schaaffhausen who acquired the painting from Taunay in the 1810s. Originally from the Rhineland, he had made his fortune in trading and real estate transactions, before founding a bank in his name in 1791. This soon became one of the first and most important sources of financing for heavy industry
in the Rhineland region of Westphalia. Welcoming French policy under the Empire, he became the first financier of the Westphalian Crown, and enabled the development of the Ruhr mining companies.
With the fall of Napoleon and Prussia's seizure of the Rhineland following the Congress of Vienna, Schaaffhausen's bank was taken over by his sons-in-law Joseph-Ludwig Mertens in 1816 and Wilhelm-Ludwig Deichmann after the crisis of 1837. The bank became the mainstay of German industry, financing some 200 factories and companies.

This Italian landscape depicts Roman ruins in Sicily, probably on the heights of Taomirne, with a woman riding a mule in the foreground, followed by two cows. The panorama is typical of what Taunay liked to depict, notably the area around Messina with its aqueduct. As his specialist, Claudine Lebrun-Jouve, points out, this painting has all the hallmarks of a classical landscape.

Son of enamel painter Pierre Henri Taunay (1728-1781), Nicolas-Antoine entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1770 as a protégé of Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié (1735-1784), where he was awarded the Académie's second medal. A pupil of Lépicié, Brenet and Casanova, he exhibited for the first time in 1777 at the Salon de la Correspondance, and worked on the illustration of Les Heures de Cythère, whose plates were engraved by Macret.
A few scenes inspired by Orlando furioso won him a place at the Académie royale de peinture in 1784, enabling him to obtain a scholarship to Rome. After three years in Italy, where he visited Naples and Sicily, he returned to Paris to exhibit regularly at the Salons.
He married Joséphine, daughter of the architect Jacques Rondel, in 1788, and lived in Montmorency during the French Revolution. In 1795, he became a member of the Institut and took part in numerous artistic commissions. Under the Consulate and Empire, he exhibited again at the Salons, winning a gold medal in 1804, and received numerous commissions to represent Napoleon's campaigns, also working for the Manufacture de Sèvres. After the fall of the Empire,
Taunay took part in an artistic mission set up by the Count of Barca, in Brazil, embarking in 1816 with various artists such as Jean Baptise Debret, a close friend of Jacques Louis David. On his return to France, he exhibited again at the Salons, showing picturesque landscapes of Brazil. He was awarded the Légion d'honneur in 1824 and became the dean of his class at the Institut in 1829, before dying the following year. His studio was sold in 1831 and again in 1835.

Related works:

- The surroundings of Messina with the aqueduct. Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 53.3 cm. Los Angeles County
Museum of Art (inv. 58-47-2), former collection of Count Reiset. N°P275 in the catalog raisonné.
The surroundings of Messina with the aqueduct. Oil on canvas, 25.6 x 32.4 cm. Private collection, former Denon collection, Hamilton sale 1882. N°P276 in the catalog raisonné.
The surroundings of Messina with the aqueduct. Oil on canvas, 10.8 x 16.2 cm. Private collection.
N°P277 in the catalog raisonné

Bibliography:
Claudine-Lebrun-Jouve, Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, 1755-1830. Arthena, 2003