| | | | | | | | Document | Sale Catalog Br-A2144 | |
| Auction House | Christie's -- from catalog: Christie | | Sale Location | At his Great Room in Pall Mall, London, England, UK | | Seller(s) | More, Jacob
Liss
from catalog: the late Jacob More, Esq. dec.; Mons. Liss, of Antwerp | | Lugt Number | 5413 and 5395 | | No. of Painting Lots | 192 | | Notes | There is a duplicate Lugt number because HdG lists an anonymous 1795 sale for Jacob More and it could be refering to this sale.
According to the title page this sale contained paintings, but in fact it included a few drawings as well. The sellers advertised were the deceased landscape painter Jacob More (1740-1793), formerly of Rome, and Mons. Liss of Antwerp, whose paintings were supposedly brought to London because of the French invasion of Flanders. Apparently Christie's had originally planned to hold two different sales of these collections because the London Times advertised them separately up until the first day of the sale. The More pictures were scheduled to be sold on both February 26th and 27th, while the Liss pictures would be sold only on the 27th. However, the printed catalogue combines the two collections throughout both days. The sale only includes eighteen lots that formerly belonged to Jacob More, and twenty-five that belonged to Liss. Most of the 194 lots in this sale were from the collections of others, primarily the nobleman Thomas, 2nd Viscount Hampden (1746-1824) who owned thirty-six lots, the Dutch-born engraver turned dealer Christian Josi (1768-1828) who owned twenty-five lots, and the Flemish artist turned dealer Philippe Joseph Tassaert (1732-1803) who also owned twenty-five lots; in general their pictures sold for small amounts, most for under £10.
As was typical for the time, the sellers advertised on the title page were presented in order to attract potential buyers, and apparently there was considerable interest in these collections. The artist Joseph Farington (1747-1821) records in his Diary a visit to Christie's to preview them on Wednesday the 24th. (Vol. II, p. 498.) He was introduced to Col. Thomas Stanley (1749-1816), who wanted an opinion on the quality of a couple of the paintings. Farington recommended against purchasing them, and apparently his advice was followed because the Colonel is not recorded as a buyer of any of the lots in this sale. Farington returned to attend the sale on Saturday, and he further recorded in his Diary that the dealer Michael Bryan (1757-1821) "and his connections laid out abt. £1200." (Vol. II, p.500.) for Dutch pictures from the Liss collection, about which nothing is presently known. Bryan purchased at least eighteen lots, some of them not from the Liss collection, and often with the help of an unidentified buyer called "Renemisnil". But the total for his known purchases only adds up to £678.17, so presumably he used others who attended the sale to bid for him as well, although this information is not recorded in the auctioneer's copy of the catalogue. Quite possibly the jeweler Pratbernon acquire one of the most expensive lots in the sale on his behalf, a Portrait of Govartius by Anthonie van Dyck, as the painting appears in a sale of Bryan's collection held a few years later, on May 18, 1798. (no.A5646.) Pratbernon is recorded having spent £241.10 for this picture in 1796, and two years later Bryan was able to sell it for £367.10, which demonstrates the rising cost of high quality pictures at this time. Today this painting is located at the National Gallery, London, called a Portrait of Cornelis van der Geest [52].
The most expensive painting in the sale came from the collection of Jacob More, a Debarkation of Cleopatra by Claude, which an unknown buyer named "Francis" purchased for £262.10. More, who was born in Edinburgh, had traveled to Italy in 1773 and during his twenty-year residence in Rome he established a favorable reputation as a landscape painter. Eventually he began working as a dealer and agent of Old Master paintings, some of which he exported to England in 1786-1787. (Rome. Archivio di Stato, Camerale II, Busta 12, f.294.) He was planning to move back to England in 1793, but died suddenly of a fever. In March of the following year his nephew (of the same name) and heir exported out of Rome pictures by his uncle as well as others referred to vaguely as "school of" or copies. (Busta 14, f.298.) The group is described clearly enough to identify the majority of them in the sale held at Christies, but without any of the dubious artist attributions. [JIAT] | | Catalog Location(s) | CL [annotations used in Sales Contents; photocopy in Provenance Index Sales Files] Auctioneer's copy, annot. with all sellers, buyers and prices.
RKDH Annot. with most prices. | | See Also | Sale Contents | | | Art Sales Catalogues Online | | | |
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