Lot 37: PIETRO FABRIS

THE PROPERTY OF SIR PETER MOORES, CBE DL, REMOVED FROM PARBOLD HALL DOCUMENTED IN NAPLES 1756 - 1804 NAPLES, A VIEW OF MERGELLINA AND THE PALAZZO DONN'ANNA BEYOND, WITH FISHERMEN DRAWING THEIR CATCH, PEASANTS GRILLING FISH AND OTHER FIGURES CONVERSING dated lower right: 1777 oil on canvas 103.5 by 157 cm.; 40 3/4 by 61 7/8 in.

Private collection, Monaco; Anonymous sale ('Property from a Deceased's Estate'), London, Sotheby's, 6 July 2000, lot 237, for £260,000, where acquired by Giacomo Algranti on behalf of the present owner.

Despite the significant role Pietro Fabris played in the development of eighteenth-century Neapolitan landscape painting, we know very little about his early life. Although his work focused so closely on capturing the quintessence of Neapolitan everyday life, Fabris describes himself as "Inglese" in the dedication to his Raccolta di varii Vestimenti ed Arti Del Regno of 1773, and is similarly referred to in the introduction to Sir William Hamilton's, Campi Phlaegrei, a study of volcanoes which Fabris illustrated. Other circumstantial evidence which points to his possible English origins is his continued connection with London, exhibiting at the Free Society of Artists in 1768 and the Society of Artists in 1772. Perhaps it was this English connection which made him so popular with the English Grand Tourists whose southernmost stop was often in Naples or perhaps, it was in homage to his English patrons that he went to such lengths to encourage his links with England. This Mediterranean view is a fine example of Fabris' talent for blending the colourful aspects of daily life with his careful approach to the topographically accurate description of landscape. The date of 1777 suggests that the work may have been conceived as a pendant to his Figures merry-making on the shore at Posillipo, beyond them Vesuvius smoking, signed and also dated 1777, and of similar size which was formerly with Algranti.1 Though still a small fishing village during the eighteenth century, the expansion of Naples meant that Mergellina was gradually absorbed and is now part of the city itself. Originally known as the Villa Sirena, the Palazzo Sant'Anna sits just west of the Mergellina harbour and is so-named after Anna Stigilano who inherited the house in 1630. 1. The painting had been previously sold New York, Christie's, 16 January 1992, lot 129, for $450,000.