Claude Lorrain

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Claude Lorrain

1600-1682

Two Men Tending an Ox

1635-1645

Pen and brown ink over black chalk.

4 x 6 inches (102 x 152 mm)

Thaw Collection.

2017.154

Notes:

When the dealer Hans Calmann acquired Claude's Animal Album at sale in 1957, it had been kept intact in the Odescalchi family in Rome since at least the eighteenth century. Calmann dismantled the album and sold the 64 sheets individually; this sheet was no. 56 of the album. While most of the drawings in the Animal Album depict animals singly or in small groups, the present sheet is among the twelve that show animals with their attendant herdsmen. Claude observed two men tending an unyoked ox: one man grasps the ox's horn and steadies the animal while the other reaches underneath the animal. Geometrical designs on the verso have bled through the sheet and suggest Claude was experimenting with perspective.

Provenance:

Prince Don Livio Odescalchi (1652-1713), Rome (in an album listed in his 1713 inventory as “Sei Quinternetti di carta legati assieme con sessanta due disegni rappresentanti Animali, e Painte de Claudio Gelle Lorenese”); by descent to Donato Sanminiatelli (1929-1979) and Maria Odescalchi (b. 1930), Rome; sale, Sotheby's, London, 20 November 1957, lot 67; the album acquired and dismembered by Hans M. Calmann (1899-1981), London; Galerie Claude Aubry, Paris; Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw, New York.

Associated names:

Odescalchi family, former owner.
Calmann, Hans M., 1899-1982, former owner.
Thaw, Eugene Victor, former owner.
Thaw, Clare, former owner.

Bibliography:

Thaw Catalogue Raisonné, 2017, no. 239, repr.
Stampfle, Felice, and Cara D. Denison. Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene V. Thaw. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1975, no. 17, repr.
Roethlisberger, Marcel, Claude Lorrain. The Drawings, 1968, no. 228.

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