Description
Such highly finished drawings by Hackert, younger brother of Jakob Philipp Hackert (who painted Waterfall of Marmore at Terni), are extremely rare. The Hackert brothers were among the first Romantic artists to adopt the practice of drawing and painting en plein air in Rome. Italians were amazed when they saw the artists roaming the countryside with large portfolios, executing finished outline drawings entirely from nature. This drawing accurately represents an aqueduct built in the middle of the 18th century in southern Italy. The degree of finish, meticulous detail of the vegetation and rocks in the foreground, recession of space, and subtle treatment of light are astonishing.
Provenance
Venator, a small auction house in Cologne in the 1960s; German private collection; C. G. Boerner, New York
Accession Number
2011.116
Medium
gouache with graphite underdrawing
Dimensions
Matted: 49.4 x 69.8 cm (19 7/16 x 27 1/2 in.); Sheet: 42.3 x 64 cm (16 5/8 x 25 3/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Credit Line
Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund, acquired in honor of Alfred M. Rankin Jr. in recognition of his service as President of the Board of Trustees of the Cleveland Museum of Art (2006-2011)
Tags
Drawing Neoclassical & Romantic (1751–1850) Graphite & Pencil Gouache German
Background & Context
Background Story
Carl Ludwig Hackert (1749-1805) was a German painter known for the precisely observed, atmospherically composed landscape paintings of Italian subjects that make him one of the accomplished landscape painters of the German-Italian veduta tradition. The Aqueducts at Caserta from 1789 depicts the aqueducts at Caserta in the precisely observed, atmospherically composed manner that distinguishes Hackert's best work from the more general veduta painting of his contemporaries. Hackert was part of the Hackert family of painters who were among the most accomplished veduta painters working in Italy, and the 1789 painting shows the German-Italian veduta tradition at its most accomplished.
Cultural Impact
The Aqueducts at Caserta is important in the history of veduta painting because it demonstrates the precisely observed, atmospherically composed manner that Hackert brought to Italian subjects as one of the accomplished landscape painters of the German-Italian veduta tradition. The Hackert family—among the most accomplished veduta painters working in Italy—produced some of the most precisely observed views of Italian architecture, and the 1789 painting shows this tradition at its most precisely observed.
Why It Matters
The Aqueducts at Caserta is Hackert's precisely observed German-Italian veduta: the aqueducts at Caserta rendered in the atmospherically composed manner of one of the accomplished landscape painters of the German-Italian veduta tradition. The 1789 painting shows one of the most impressive architectural structures in southern Italy at its most precisely observed.
