Provenance

Mrs. Philip Hill

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Sun pours across a landscape with trees and plants growing around and on an arched stone ruin, a bridge and river, and, in the distance, buildings along a flat-topped hill carpeted with grass in this vertical painting. Tiny in scale in the landscape, about two dozen men, women, and children wear dresses and clothing in shades of tan, brown, turquoise, cream white, black, red, and mustard yellow. Close to us, the arched ruins, possibly of an aqueduct, are nearly hidden by tall trees, bushes, and growth hanging from its deck. The trees growing up in front of the ruins nearly span the height of the painting and take up most of the left half of the composition. A river winds from the lower right corner into the distance to our right, passing under a bridge in the middle distance on the right edge of the painting. The shallowly arched bridge crosses the river in front of a long block of a building with rows of windows and arched arcades. The flat-topped hill rises in the center distance. There, a freestanding arch could be another ruin. Buildings with brown walls and terracotta-red roofs, along with the pointed spire of a church, are contained within a town wall a little farther down the hill from the arch. More churches with spires are nestled into the valley to our left of the hill, extending into the distance. The people are scattered through the landscape, and they all have pale skin. Closest to us, a man and woman stand near a black and white dog that barks at a pair of swans in the river, at the bottom center of the composition. A woman nearby bends over a basket on the ground, and a man with a long staff, tucked into the vegetation near the aqueduct, looks on. More people sit, stand, or play by the riverbank closer to the bridge or look at the water from the bridge itself. On the river is an elaborately decorated, long, narrow boat like a gondola. One person in the boat props open a yellow and white parasol; another, who rows the boat, wears a blue and yellow outfit with a cap like an overturned flower blossom. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition and the sky above is brilliant topaz blue.
Canaletto, English Landscape Capriccio with a Palace, c. 1754, oil on canvas, Paul Mellon Collection, 1964.2.2

English Landscape Capriccio with a Palace

Canaletto · c. 1754 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1964.2.2

We look slightly down across a sun-drenched plaza with people scattered among ruins, buildings, and around a free-standing column in this vertical landscape painting. The people we can see have light skin. Towering trees with celery, sage, and forest-green leaves frame a small plaza paved with flax-colored stones. A tree to our right almost reaches the top of the painting, and a shorter tree in front of it has toppled onto the plaza. To our left, in the lower corner, a man sits behind a shadowy balustrade, looking down. In the lower center of the painting, a man walks toward us, holding a basket over one arm and dead poultry in the other hand, and a dog sits nearby. Slightly farther back is a tall stone column with a door in its base and a statue on top. A woman wearing a red shirt and blue skirt sits on a step in front of the door. Along the left side, the plaza gives way to a tree-lined, dirt road that meanders toward a stone arch in the middle distance, and to a cluster of low buildings beyond. Two towers catch the light, one with a slate-blue dome and the other with a peach-colored steeple. Farther back from the buildings is a dark line of trees at the base of a steep green hill dotted with groves of trees, which rises high over the plaza below. Another building complex, glowing in warm tones of straw yellow, sits at its top. Small dots of red, white, and blue suggest a handful of people making their way up the hill’s wide path. A river with moss-green water pouring over a dam extends from the lower right corner into the distance along the right edge of the painting. Near the column, a man fishes at the water’s edge. The water winds back to a row of silvery-gray buildings in the far distance. Several people in red, yellow, or white, tiny in scale, dot the riverbanks and cross the bridge. A screen of thin, pale pink clouds float across the light blue sky.
Canaletto, English Landscape Capriccio with a Column, c. 1754, oil on canvas, Paul Mellon Collection, 1964.2.1

English Landscape Capriccio with a Column

Canaletto · c. 1754 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1964.2.1