Notes
FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
(LOTS 102-105)
'On a sudden, about noon, I heard a violent noise within the mountain, and at a [spot] about a quarter of a mile off the place where I stood, the mountain split and with much noise, from this new mouth a fountain of liquid fire shot up many feet high, and then like a torrent, rolled on directly towards us. The earth shook at the same time that a volley of pumice stones fell thick upon us; in an instant clouds of black smoke and ashes caused almost a total darkness; the explosions from the top of the mountain were much louder than any thunder I ever heard, and the smell of the sulphur was very offensive. My guide alarmed took to his heels; and I must confess that I was not at my ease. I followed close, and we ran near three miles without stopping; as the earth continued to shake under our feet, I was apprehensive of the opening of a fresh mouth, which might have cut off our retreat. I also feared that the violent explosions would detach [some] of the rocks of the mountain of Somma, under which we were obliged to pass; besides, the pumice-stones, falling upon us like hail, were of such a size as to cause a disagreeable sensation upon the part where they fell. After having taken breath, as the still earth trembled greatly, I thought it most prudent to leave the mountain, and return to my Villa, where I found my family in a great alarm, at the continual and violent explosions of the Volcano, which shook our house to its very foundation, the doors and windows swinging upon their hinges'.
Sir William Hamilton's description of the eruption of Vesuvius of 19 October 1767, taken from in his Campi Phlegraei of that year is the finest description of the most spectacular natural phenomenon of the Age of Enlightenment. Although not of the destructive force of the disastrous Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the volcanic activity of Mount Vesuvius in the mid-18th century was to have a profound impact on western perceptions of nature for much of the following century.
Since its most celebrated eruption of 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius has erupted around three dozen times. After sporadic outbursts in the Classical and post-Classical eras, it experienced a sustained period of activity in the late 10th and early 11th centuries before slipping into a period of quiescence from the 13th century and in the following years it again became covered with gardens and vineyards as of old. Even the inside of the crater was filled with shrubbery. In December 1631, however, the mountain entered a new and particularly destructive phase, when a major eruption buried many villages under lava flows, killing around 3,000 people. Torrents of boiling water were also ejected, adding to the devastation. Activity thereafter became almost continuous, with severe eruptions occurring in 1660, 1682, 1694, 1698, 1707, 1737, 1760, 1767, 1779, 1794, 1822, 1834, 1839, 1850, 1855, 1861, 1868, 1872 and 1906, its last eruption occurring as recently as March 1944, destroying the villages of San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, Massa di Somma and part of San Giorgio a Cremano.
Besides that of 79 AD, it was the number of eruptions in the second half of the eighteenth century that had the greatest impact on modern appreciation of the volcano's history, to a large degree because of the depictions of many of its eruptions at the time by some of the greatest landscape painters of the time. The reasons for this artistic fascination with the mountain did not derive entirely from the artistic possibilities that it afforded. To a degree, popular imagination and interest had been fired as early as the 1740s by the first excavations at the archaeological sites at Pompeii and Herculaneum. In addition, however, and arguably more importantly, it was a consequence of the concurrent expansion of scientific curiosity and knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment and the development of the concept of the Sublime. The latter derived from Classical philosophical views that were encapsulated by the literary treatise On the Sublime (1st century AD), traditionally ascribed to Longinus. In essence, Longinus defined the Sublime as differing from beauty and evoking more intense emotions by vastness, a quality that inspires awe. Whereas beauty may be found in the small, the smooth, the light and the everyday, the Sublime is vast, irregular, obscure and superhuman.
There was, and remains, little to match a volcanic eruption for its vast, superhuman and awe-inspiring qualities, and the appearance from the middle of the century of regular examples of this phenomenon in the middle of Europe led not surprisingly to a considerable degree of fascination, particularly in France and England, with vulcanology. Of those pursuing the subject, including such luminaries as John Whitehurst, Jean-Etienne Guettard, Nicholas Desmarest and Rudolph Erich Raspe, perhaps the most important was William Hamilton, who even referred somewhat deprecatingly to his contemporaries describing him as Le Pline moderne du Vesuve (British Library, Add. MS 34,048. f. 15), and whose election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society followed rapidly after his two letters to that body in March and April 1767 describing his observations of the eruption of that year ('An account of the last eruption of Vesuvius', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, LVII, 1768, pp. 192-200; and [Extract of a letter from the Hon. Sir William Hamilton.. giving an account of the new eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1767], idem, LVIII, 1769, pp. 1-12).
Hamilton's relative pre-eminence in the field derived at least in part from his ability to study at first-hand the almost continual volcanic activity of Vesuvius in the late 1760s and throughout the 1770s. Since his arrival at the court of Naples in 1764, he had maintained one of his residences at the Villa Angelica, situated near Portici in the foothills of Vesuvius, and from there he had observed the rumblings from the mountain from its awakening in September 1765. The sustained nature of his observations are made evident in his third letter to the Royal Society, dated 29 December 1767, in which he drew sketches illustrating the changing shapes of the volcano's cone (ibid.) and which was accompanied by a painting in transparent colours that 'when lighted up with lamps behind it, gives a much better idea of Vesuvius, than is possible to give by any other sort of painting' (for which see B. Sorensen, 'Sir William Hamilton's Vesuvian apparatus', Apollo, 159, May 2004, pp. 50-7).
These pictorial depictions of Vesuvius' eruptions, borne from a scientific desire for accurate records rather than from artistic leanings, awakened keen enthusiasm amongst Hamilton's peers. The President of the Royal Society wrote to him that: 'The representation of that grand & terrible scene, by means of transparent colours, was so lively and so striking, that there seemed to be nothing wanting in us distant spectators but the fright that everybody must have been fired with who was so near' (British Library, Add. MS 42,069, f. 61). This enthusiasm and fascination grew and, in 1772, Sir William's first five letters to the society were reprinted as a book, Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna and other Volcanos, whose success is evident in its being reprinted in 1773 and again the following year, and its also being translated into German in 1773. Not content with that, however, and in particular desiring to convey his findings in more than words, Hamilton republished the letters in 1776 in a volume entitled Campi Phlegraei: Observations on the Volcanos of the Two Sicilies, accompanied by fifty-four hand-coloured engravings after designs by Pietro Fabris. Published in both Italy and England it sold widely throughout Europe and was hailed as a masterpiece.
Fabris' illustrations were widely influential in the views of the eruption that were produced by numerous landscapists in the 1770s and subsequent years. This trend was a response to the enormous interest in the spectacle amongst Grand Tourists, fuelled by the scientific studies of Hamilton and, to a lesser degree, his peers, and with an appetite for Romantic landscape fired up by such literary sensations as 'Ossian' and 'Werther'. Vesuvius quickly became one of the regular stops for the fashion-conscious traveller and a depiction of the volcano erupting as much a key souvenir as views of the city, the harbour and it surrounding landscape were and had been to previous generations, provided by artists such as Vanvitelli, Vernet, Joli and Bonavia. Volaire was presumably drawn to Naples as a landscapist drawn by the ready market for view painting, generally being thought to have arrived there in 1769 and producing works such as the pair of large pictures, Marine with Fishermen and Seaport by Moonlight (both Compiègne, Château) of 1770. It was his good fortune that he arrived and subsequently stayed in Naples during one of the most dramatic two decades in the history of the volcano, there being eruptions that included periodic lava flows from 15 February 1770-30 April 1770; 1 May 1771-30 May 1771; 29 December 1773-1 February 1774; 4 August 1774-1 December 1774; 20 December 1775-3 April 1776; 29 July 1779-13 August 1779; 1 July 1785-30 November 1787; 1 August 1788-15 August 1788; and 5 September 1790-16 November 1790.
It is not known when Volaire died - his last known dated works are the Nocturnal Marine at Naples of 1784 (Palazzo Reale, Naples) and an Eruption of Vesuvius of 1785 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Toulon), but he must have seen the majority of the above lava flows. Two of the most spectacular, of 1771 and August-December 1774, he himself described as an eyewitness in inscriptions on several of his paintings, for example the Eruption of Vesuvius of 1771 in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, or the The Eruption of Vesuvius by Moonlight of 1774 in the Peter Moores Foundation, Compton Verney, Warwickshire. One painting of the 1771 eruption was engraved for the Abbé Richard de Saint-Non's Voyage pittoresque, ou description des Royaumes de Naples et de Sicile (1781; i, pl. 32); it has been suggested that Saint-Non's (or more accurately Vivant de Non's, for which see the note to lot 102, below) commission first turned Volaire's interest to the Vesuvius' eruptions, but it seems unlikely, if he did arrive in 1769, that he had not witnessed the activities of 1770 (that included on 16 March a fracture on the east flank of the Gran Cono with ejecta and a lava flow into the Canale dell'Arena, towards il Mauro and Boscoreale, on the 18th, another flow on top of the previous, stopping after two days and then until the end of April several flows into the Vallone dell'Arena) and had not thought himself of the artistic potential of the spectacle.
Either way, although he was not the first artist to depict the volcano's eruptions (for example Carlo Bonavia had in a painting of 1757 commissioned by Lord Brudenell and now in the collection of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu), Volaire soon established himself as the pre-eminent specialist in that field, creating for himself a European reputation and greatly influencing subsequent depictors of the view. Of those latter, including Charles Grenier La Croix de Marseille, Michael Wutky and Philipp Hackert, the most celebrated was perhaps Joseph Wright of Derby, who was in Naples from early October to early November 1774. As Judy Egerton, in the catalogue of the exhibition Wright of Derby (London, Tate Gallery; Paris, Grand Palais; and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990, p. 166, under no. 101), noted, Wright would not have seen an explosive eruption over that period, although he would have seen the lava flows from a fracture of the cone to the Vallone dell'Arena that continued until December 1774. As such, his depictions of the mountain's eruptions are thought to have been influenced directly by Volaire's work (as well as his own imagination). Egerton (op. cit., p. 170, no. 103) compares the horizontal format and the setting of the 'brilliant glare of Vesuvis' against the pale light of the moon with clouds and the water of the bay, and wonders whether Volaire influenced Wright or vice versa, noting that 'it would be interesting to know whether there are comparable moonlight effects in Volaire's work before Wright visited Naples, or whether Volaire might have learned something from Wright.'
There are, of course, numerous paintings by Volaire depicting the eruption of 1771 that should answer that question, but the difficulty is that the date normally refers to that of the eruption, rather than of the painting itself. So, for example, the engraving of the Eruption of 1771 mentioned above was presumably based on a painting dating to shortly before the commission of 1779, of which the ghost-writer, Vivant de Non (the Abbé had not been to Italy since 1760) breathlessly wrote: 'suddenly, there sprang out of it a mass of burning stones forming, in their flight, a mass of fire with the very crater of Vesuvius at its base; as it slowly rose, it formed a fiery cylinder of prodigious height..... The spectacle lasted for three quarters of an hour. At the same time, there came out of the top of the mountain a thick, black smoke which, because the air was so still, rose directly and reached an immeasurable height... These [burning stones] were thrown up in so huge a number that the whole of Vesuvius, right down to the valley, seemed aflame..... Quickly, an unbearable stink of sulphur spread out over the environs. One could hear explosions that sounded like frequent artillery shots all the way to Naples.' Nonetheless, even if many of his paintings date from some years after the events, it seems very unlikely that not one of Volaire's depictions of the 1771 eruption was painted before October 1774.
If that argument is still unconvincing, then the celebrated Bergeret de Grandcourt painting surely answers the question. The painting (Paris, Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des Sites, Ministère de la Culture, Direction du Patrimoine) was commissioned by the latter, a fermier général and one of the richest men in France, for the château de Nègrepelisse after a tour of Italy made in the company of Jean-Honoré Fragonard. In his diary for 23 April 1774 he records that during an excursion to the crater rim they met 'a painter called M. Volaire, supremely skilled in rendering the horror of Vesuvius and from whom I have ordered a painting.' It is likely that Volaire painted the commission either immediately or very shortly after that visit, some six months before Wright's arrival in Italy, and almost certainly before the earliest suggested paintings by Wright of the subject. However, although it may have been Volaire's work that influenced Wright, the former was not the first artist to have used the device: it appears in a painting by Carlo Bonavia of circa 1758 in a private collection, Naples (N. Spinosa and L. Di Mauro, Vedute napoletane del settecento, Naples, 1989, p. 192, no. 63, fig. 60).
This picture depicts Volaire's most celebrated view, known in a few other versions, including those in the Art Institute of Chicago and the Richmond Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia. It is also very comparable to the Bergeret de Grandcourt commission mentioned in the introduction, above. Adapted by numerous other artists, the composition does appear to be an invention by Volaire, as a comparable painting by Antoniani depicting the Eruption of Vesuvius of 1767 formerly owned and possibly commissioned by Sir William Hamilton was not actually painted until 1776; therefore, although Antoniani may have been a witness of that earlier explosion, he probably adapted Volaire's celebrated composition for his own memories of the event. Interestingly both employ a little artistic license in including a view of the entire north side of the Bay of Naples, with the city, Ischia and Procida, which should not technically be visible from this viewpoint.
It is difficult to tell for certain which eruption is depicted, and indeed one should question to what degree Volaire's paintings are accurate records rather than more generalised souvenirs. However the scene is clearly similar to the eruption of 1771 depicted in lot 20, below; it is also interesting to note the very close similarity of the specifics of this composition with the engraving of the Eruption du Mont Vésuve du 14. Mai 1771 in the Abbé de Saint-Non's Voyage pittoresque, ou description des royaumes de Naples et de Sicile (Paris, 1781-6). There are differences - for example the rather more dramatic smoke and fumes from the lava flow - and one would not suggest that this painting was the actual basis for the engraving, but it certainly supports the view that the eruption represented here is that of 1771 (for which see the note to lot 103).
Volaire was born into a family of artists from Toulon: his grandfather Jean (c. 1660-1721) was a history painter, besides working on the decoration of naval vessels; his father, Jacques (1685-1768), was official painter of Toulon between 1729 and 1766 and in 1745 was commissioned to paint a large Glory of the Holy Sacrament that remains in Toulon Cathedral; his uncle, François-Alexis (1699-1775), and cousin Marie-Anne (1730-1806) were also artists. The first known reference to Pierre-Jacques dates from 1755 when he was documented (as 'le fils') working on the restoration of paintings in Toulon Cathedral. The greatest development of the young artist's career came with the arrival at Toulon in September 1754 of Joseph Vernet, who was working on his celebrated series of the Ports of France for King Louis XV. Vernet seems to have taken on Volaire as an assistant in 1754 or 1755, and from that master Volaire learned the sharp sense of observation, lively technique and care in the design and lighting of a painting that is evident in the present work. He was Vernet's most inventive follower, not content to copy his master's well-tried formulae but prepared to adapt to new aesthetic criteria.
By 1764 Volaire was in Rome, where he worked until the end of the decade, producing landscapes and seascapes in the manner of Vernet, such as the Landscape with a Waterfall in the Musée d'Art, Toulon, or the Shipwreck of 1765 in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. These Roman works are close to Vernet in theme and style, although Volaire liked to depict his figures in lively silhouettes against the light: a penchant that clearly continued throughout his career. As noted in the introductory text, above, he is thought to have arrived in Naples in 1769, and remained there during the 1770s and 1780s. He is traditionally thought to have died in Naples before 1802, but it has been suggested that he might be the 'Voler peintre' who died in Lerici in circa 1790 after being manhandled by Neapolitan guards (cf. Correspondance des Directeurs, XVI, 1907, p. 89, and note 2, p. 90).
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