Footnotes

• PROVENANCE:
  Bossi-Beyerlen sale, Stuttgart, 27 March 1882, lots 640-649;
  Eduard Sack (Lugt 903a).
  
  LITERATURE:
  Eduard Sack, Giambattista und Domenico Tiepolo: Ihr Leben und Ihre Werke Hamburg, 1910, no. 148;
  George Knox, Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo: A Study and Catalogue Raisonné of the Chalk Drawings, Oxford 1980, M.262, as 'The head of a boy with short hair; the right cheek resting on the hand, the eyes shut, three quarters face'.
  
  
  
  This drawing (evidently of the same model as lot 2) may be traced first to the Bossi-Beyerlen collection, sold in Stuttgart, 27 March 1882, and thence to the collection of Eduard Sack (1857-1913), listed in his celebrated monograph of 1910. There is no known record of any reproduction of this drawing.
  
  The history and character of the Bossi-Beyerlen collection, with its celebrated code, indicating a price in florin and kreutzer is set out in the catalogue by Knox and Christel Thiem, Tiepolo: Zeichnungen von Giambattista, Domenico und Lorenzo Tiepolo exhibition catalogue, Graphische Sammlung Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1970, pp. 7-10, 198 – English edition 1971 – and by Knox 1980, pp. 200-209. The sale in Stuttgart in 1882 offered 149 drawings of heads in red chalk in 10 lots which were bought by Beyerle, Bihn, Eisenmann, and the auctioneer Gutekunst.
  
  It is not clear how the series of some 29 chalk drawings, mostly heads in red chalk, came into the collection of Eduard Sack, or how they were dispersed, but it is very gratifying that these two fine drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo have come to light.
  
  We would like to thank George Knox for confirming the attribution to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

Auction Notices

• An attribution to Lorenzo Tiepolo (1736-1776) has also been suggested.

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Category: Fine Art / 19th Century Paintings

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