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National Gallery of Art - THE COLLECTION
image of Italian Comedians
Antoine Watteau (artist)
French, 1684 - 1721
Italian Comedians, probably 1720
oil on canvas
Overall: 63.8 x 76.2 cm (25 1/8 x 30 in.) framed: 94.3 x 106.4 cm (37 1/8 x 41 7/8 in.)
Samuel H. Kress Collection
1946.7.9
From the Tour: 18th-Century France — The Rococo and Watteau
Object 2 of 10

Provenance

Commissioned by Dr. Richard Mead [d. 1754], London; (Mead sale, London, 20 March 1754, no. 43); purchased by Wood for William Beckford, Sr., Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire; Richard Beckford, London and Fonthill Abbey; Wood [with contents of Richard Beckford's house]; sold 1755 [with contents of house] to Sir James Colebrooke. Roger Harenc; (his sale, London, 3 March 1764, no. 52, in same lot as a Musical Conversation); purchased by Augustus Henry, 3rd Duke Grafton. Thomas Baring [d. 1873], Stratton Park, Hampshire, by 1851; by inheritance to his nephew Thomas George Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook, Stratton Park, Hampshire. (Asher Wertheimer, London); on joint account with (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London): by whom sold 1888 to Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh [d. 1927], Co. Down, Northern Ireland; by inheritance to his son, Walter Edward Guinness, London. (Wildenstein, London, New York and Paris). Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza [d.1947], Schloss Rohoncz, Rechnitz, Austria and Villa Favorita, Castagnola, Switzerland, by 1930 [at Schloss Rohoncz in 1931; most (or all?) of collection moved from Schloss Rohoncz to Villa Favorita by ca. 1937]; sold c. 1936 to (Wildenstein, London, New York and Paris,); sold 1942 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1946 to NGA.[1]

[1]See A Gift to America, exh. cat., North Carolina Museum of Art, 1994, no. 36, p. 207.

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