RCEWA - The Fortress of Königstein from the North,

Statement of the Expert Adviser to the Secretary of State that the meets Waverley criteria Two and Three.

Further Information

The ‘Applicant’s statement’ and the ‘Note of Case History’ are available on the Arts Council Website: ww.artscouncil.org.uk/reviewing-committee-case-hearings

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Bernardo Bellotto, also known as ( 20 May 1722 – 17 November 1780) The Fortress of Königstein from the North 1756-58 Oil on canvas, 132.1 x 236.2 cms (52 by 93 in.)

Provenance: Commissioned from the artist by Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of (1696-1763) in , by 30 March 1756. Probably Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston (1739-1802), , and by descent to his son Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784-1865). Sold by ‘Palmerston’ for £200 to the Earls of Derby (probably to Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby (1775-1851)), and at Knowsley Hall, Lancashire, by 1850; thence by descent.

Select Bibliography (including exhibition catalogues): George Scharf, A Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures at Knowsley Hall (London, 1875), p. 10, no. 17 Stefan Kozakiewicz, Bernardo Bellotto (Recklinghausen, 1972), vol. I, pp. 83, 84, and 100-102, vol. II, pp. 183 and 186, no. 235, reproduced Ettore Camesasca, L’opera complete del Bellotto ( 1974), p. 104, cat. 142, reproduced Alberto Rizzi, La Varsavia di Bellotto (Milan, 1990), p. 8, reproduced Edgar Peters Bowron, Bernardo Bellotto: The Fortress of Königstein (Washington, 1993), pp. 4-5, reproduced Jane Martineau and Andrew Robison, eds., The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century, exhibition catalogue, London and Washington 1994 (New Haven and London, 1994) p. 429, under no. 256 Angelo Walther, Bernardo Bellotto genannt Canaletto: Ein Venezianer malte Dresden, Pirna und den Königstein (Dresden and Basel, 1995), pp. 84-85 Edgar Peters Bowron, ‘Bellotto’s Fortress of Königstein at the of Art, Washington DC’, Apollo CXL (September 1994), p.72 Edgar Peters Bowron, in Diane de Grazia and Eric Garberson, eds., The Collections of the , Systematic Catalogue: Italian of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Washington 1996) under inv.1993. pp. 14-18 Alberto Rizzi, Bernardo Bellotto: Dresda, , Monaco (1747-1766) (Venice 1996), p. 93, no. 74, reproduced Nigel Gauk-Roger, ‘Bellotto, Bernardo’, in Jane Turner, ed., The Dictionary of Art (London and New York 1996), vol. III, p. 677 Werner Schmidt, ed., Bernardo Bellotto genannt Canaletto in Pirna und auf der Festung Königstein (Pirna, 2000), pp. 146-51 Edgar Peters Bowron, in Edgar Peters Bowron, ed., Bernardo Bellotto and the Capitals of , exhibition catalogue, Venice and (New Haven and London, 2001), pp. 200-202, under no. 65 Karl Schütz, in Wilfried Seipel, ed., Bernardo Bellotto genannt Canaletto: Europäische Veduten, exhibition catalogue, Vienna (Milan 2005), p. 98, under no. 16 Andreas Henning, in Dario Succi, ed. Bernardo Bellotto. Il Canaletto delle corti europee, exhibition catalogue Conegliano 2011 (Venice, 2011) p.116, and Dario Succi in the same volume, p.147 Theresa Wagener, in Andreas Schumacher, ed., Canaletto. Bernardo Bellotto Paints Europe, exhibition catalogue, Munich (Munich, 2014), p.123 and p.244 under no.48

Condition: The Fortress of Königstein from the North is in extremely good condition for a painting on this scale (I examined it in strong light). It appears to have been cleaned and restored relatively recently. The landscape and architecture are in excellent condition. There has been careful minor re-touching in passages in the sky but there are no visible or substantial losses. Its handsome frame also appears to be in good condition.

DETAILED CASE: objection under Waverley Two and Three

The Fortress of Königstein from the North is a superb painting of great aesthetic merit; it is of outstanding art-historical significance for its character as an unusual view-painting by Bellotto, whose artistic achievements and independent vision have only recently been fully recognized, and for its iconography as a striking representation of a European military complex of strategic and emblematic importance.

From a low viewpoint with travellers and peasants in groups on the road and a carriage in the distance, the historic fortress of Königstein with its diverse buildings rears up imposingly as though emerging from the craggy rockface. The terrain below is cultivated with rich plantings of trees; in the mid ground cattle are prominent with their herdsmen, while above them, improvements are in train with scaffolding and men at work. The cool light playing over the various structures and the fissured rockface, the deep tonalities of greys and browns, the pattern of white accents across the surface and above all the sheer variety of shades of green convey both the chilly strength of the fortress and the calmness and fertility of the surrounding countryside. The freshness of handling enlivens the painting, adding to the sense of a view captured in specific atmospheric conditions.

Bellotto’s boldness of vision is striking: here his response to the landscape of Saxony is imbued with a Piranesian sense of the expressiveness of architecture, and the character of the painting is wholly unlike the earlier Italian city views that are mainly found in UK collections. Of the four views of Königstein remaining in this country (see below) it is the most significant and visually arresting in its treatment and iconography, as Bellotto effectively captured the historical and symbolic resonance of the fortress in a specific setting that has additional appeal as a picturesque rural landscape. He drew on his wide experience of constructing urban views that fuse topographical correctness with scenographic flair, and on his familiarity with Dutch and Flemish landscape and animal painting (assisted by his personal extensive print collection). The winding road, with its staffage of picturesque trees and colourful figures, the natural erosion of the chalky earth in the centre or the characterful cattle above convey the rhythms of a tranquil landscape, but the spiralling upward motion of the composition and the strong play of light across the varied textures of stone and structures make the experience of the fortress silhouetted against the sky a moment of high drama. The continuity of everyday rural activity is assured by the coiled energy implicit in the rearing fortress.

Particularly compelling is Bellotto’s fusion of inventiveness and authenticity. The artist creates the impression of absolute realism through careful attention to detail, whether architectural, geological or naturalistic, and through his brilliant treatment of texture, from weathered stone to shirt sleeves or knotted tree-bark. In topographical terms, the components of the fortress can be identified, with the medieval ‘emperor’s castle’ re-modelled in 1619 in the Georgenburg structure in the centre, the Seigerturn watchtower of 1601 rising to the right, or the defence structure of the Flèche below, under construction from 1755. Yet Bellotto also powerfully conveys the essence of this Saxon fortress as a symbol of dynastic strength, military might and enlightened rule.

The painting is one of five large-scale views of this strategically important and historically resonant site that were commissioned from Bellotto by Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, following upon his major series of views of the capital city and its rural surroundings and fortifications. At Dresden since 1747, Bellotto had become a successful, prestigious and wealthy court artist. He began work at Königstein about 30 March 1756, no doubt making drawings there. His two views of the interior of the complex (Manchester City Art Gallery) emphasise the variety of its buildings and the orderliness of military and domestic life there; but it is the three exterior views that are remarkable and innovative in evoking its monumentality, its layered history and its dominant situation. In these, the beholder gradually approaches Königstein, viewing it from the north-west as a colossal structure seen across a panoramic landscape (Washington, National Gallery of Art). In the painting still at Knowsley Hall, the fortress is viewed from the south-west, rising above the rolling countryside with the emphasis upon its magnitude and impregnability, while more unusually and importantly in the present painting, the beholder is faced with the extraordinary diversity both of the architecture and of the rock-face in which it is rooted, evoking its legendary character and its varied building history.

Bellotto’s sense of the dynamic nature of viewing paintings informs his approach to ostensibly topographical commissions, so that perspectival construction is balanced with pictorial invention. He needed to ensure that the Fortress of Königstein from the North would make a strong visual impact amidst the other Königstein views and the previous twenty-five of Dresden and Pirna that were already in the , and it is these pictorial strategies that give the painting additional art-historical interest. The Königstein views were no doubt also intended for the royal palace, but little is known of their immediate history. While Bellotto was at work on the commission, Frederick the Great of Prussia invaded Saxony in August, at the start of the Seven Years’ War in Europe; battle raged around the fortress, with Augustus III and his sons fleeing Königstein for Warsaw on 20 October 1756 after the defeat of their troops. Bellotto presumably had completed the series by the time he left Dresden for Vienna in December 1758; it is unknown whether he retained the paintings and sold them privately in Vienna, or whether they were seized by the Prussians during the war (Bellotto’s possessions, including his art collection, crated for safety in his absence, were destroyed during the bombardment of Dresden in 1760). No autograph replicas are known, unlike his practice in Dresden, again presumably because of the disorder of war.

All five views came early to British collections: the two paintings now in Manchester (formerly Marquis of Londonderry collection) had arrived in Bellotto’s lifetime, being sold at Christie’s, London on 7 March 1778, lots 79 and 80. The three exterior views seem to have belonged to Henry Temple, 2nd Lord Palmerston. The Washington painting (formerly Lord Beauchamp collection at Madresfield Court, exported in 1993) is recorded in his house at Hannover Square as ‘View of Keenigsteen: Cannaletti’ in an inventory of the late 1790s. The fact that the three paintings were given the same frames, and that the 13th Earl of Derby recorded in a note inserted into a copy of the 1846 catalogue of paintings at Knowsley Hall, ‘Königstein Castle 2 Canaletti (Palmerston) £200’ strongly suggest they shared the same provenance, with the Derby views inherited by the 3rd Lord Palmerston.

Our appreciation and understanding of Bellotto’s distinctive achievements and art-historical importance has significantly deepened since the 1990s: archival research and connoisseurship have established his early reputation and prodigious talents, while research on his career as a European court artist at a time of political and artistic change, a fascinating subject, has generated many recent exhibitions. Bellotto has emerged from the shadow of Canaletto and of the Venetian context of his youth to be regarded as an outstanding artist in his own right who developed a highly original style, and whose greatest artistic legacy is his series of views of Dresden, Pirna and Königstein.