Lot 2217 Dα

After fleeing Naples in 1799 and moving to Florence, Jacob Philipp Hackert was considered one of the most important landscape painters of his time. His works were to be found at the Russian Tsar's court as well as in aristocratic and bourgeois collections in Germany and England. In addition to the classical landscape painting, Hackert also cultivated the small animal painting in these late years in Tuscany, in which he now took particular pleasure. In these works he placed the closely observed animals in a landscape that was shown close-up but usually opened up onto a wider landscape in the background. Thus the animals, not the landscape, are the actual motif of the picture.



The late, smaller animal paintings, to which Dr Nordhoff will dedicate a special publication in the near future, were initially painted on the estate of an English couple, Mr and Mrs Woodburn, who had left their house to Hackert during a long trip to England. Hackert later created further animal paintings in his own house in Careggio. The large number of animal portraits Hackert produced after 1800 indicates that they met with great interest. After his death, 25 such animal studies with donkeys, oxen, goats or cows were in his estate, which - together with other paintings and drawings - were auctioned by his heirs in Berlin on 30th July 1811.