
Thomas Seaman
Specialist, Head of Sale
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Sold for £24,320 inc. premium
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Specialist, Head of Sale
Provenance
The Valmontone Family.
Thence by descent.
With Trosby Galleries, Palm Beach.
Mr. & Mrs. John H. Perry, Jr.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, 29 February 1984, lot 9.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, 1 February 2019, lot 588.
Property of a gentleman (acquired from the above sale).
In the present lot, we see a family portrait full of rich tones, intricate fabrics and overt symbolism. The consolidation of prominent nineteenth century families is represented in the sitters. The seated young girl is Gwendalina Doria Pamphili (born 1846) and her brother, Giovanni-Andrea, the Prince of Valmontone (born 1843) stands to her right. Both are distantly related, through their mother, the daughter of the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, to the elder Bertam Talbot. He is seated with an arm around the prince's shoulder in a display of familial solidarity. St. Peter's Basilica sits in the distance as a reminder of the Doria-Pamphili's devotion of the Catholic church and its history with it.
Carl von Blaas, an Austrian portrait, genre and history painter, was father to the well known painter Eugen von Blaas (1843-1931). He was a professor at the Vienna Academy and was elected to the hereditary nobility by Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1877 after completing a series of frescoes for the Arsenal in Vienna.