Signed, dated and inscribed with the location on the verso Dl Dupr. delt / Veduta di Favallo. Vicino di Sala. Ducato di Parma. 1787.
Graphite, pen and brown ink and brown wash, watercolour heightened with gum arabic
374 x 260 mm. (14 x 10 in.)
SOLD TO A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
Dupr worked as a landscapist, etcher and draughtsman. He trained with the decorative painter Johannes van Dregt and from 1767 with Jurriaen Andriessen at the Amsterdam Drawing Academy. He travelled to Switzerland and the Rhine, on his latter visit he was accompanied by his friends Jan Ekels the Younger and Jacques Kuyer. Dupr lived in Italy from 1785-90 on a grant from the Holland Scientific Society of Haarlem, and made views of the Roman campagna and cities. Afterwards he settled in Amsterdam.
Watercolours by Dupr are very rare, however a few are known in the Rijksmuseum1, he usually works in brown monochrome2. Brown monochrome is used in this drawing, however Dupr has extensively used watercolour in this drawing, and he used it throughout the sheet. There are three drawings by Daniel Dupr in the British Museum, one was drawn in Bologna also in 1787, the same time as my drawing3.
The watercolour is in an excellent condition and is very fresh.
This drawing by Dupr depicts a rural scene near Parma. Further research may reveal more on the town of Favallo and Duprs sketching tours in Italy. There is a town called Sala Baganza, which is near Parma, and it is possible that this town is the one that Dupr refers to in his inscription on the verso of this drawing. Two other drawings from this sketching tour are known4.
1.J.W. Niemeijer, Eighteenth-Century Watercolours from the Rijksmuseum Printroom, Amsterdam, Zwolle, 1993, nos.19 and 20.
2.London, Crispian Riley-Smith, Master Drawings, 2002, cat.no.11, now private collection, New York.
3.A.M. Hind, Catalogue of drawings by Dutch and Flemish artists preserved in the department of Prints & Drawings, vol IV, 1931, p.159.
4.The Unicorno Collection, Sothebys, Amsterdam, 19 May 2004, lot 332, and in the Fogg Art Museum, A.Mongan and P.J.Sachs, Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art, 3 vols., Cambridge 1940, vol.1, cat.no.562, ill.vol.3, fig.282.
