Friedrich Nerly

(German, 1807-1878)

Bacino di San Marco, Venice

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, Germany.
Anon. sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 9 September 2020, lot 677.
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner.


The present lot is one of a number of magnificent panoramas of Venice which Nerly produced. Born Christian Friedrich Nehrlich in Erfurt in Germany, following the death of his father, the artist was raised by relatives in Hamburg. In the artistic milieu of the city, Nerly soon became the protégé of the artist, writer and patron Baron Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, who encouraged the young artist's talent for observing nature. In 1827, patron and pupil undertook extensive travels throughout Germany, and during a visit to Wiemar, Nerly made the acquaintance of Goethe. The following year saw Nerly's first trip to Italy, where he stayed, spending six years in Rome working within a well-established community of German artists including Johann Christian Reinhart, Friedrich Preller and Erwin Speckter. Nerly's landscape studies of Rome and the surrounding areas, as well as of Naples and Southern Italy, were much admired by his peers, and rate among the best of German realistic landscape art of the period.

Nerly settled in Venice in 1835 and it is here that he Italianised his name from that of his German birth. He set up a studio in the Palazzo Pisani, near the Campo San Stefano, and soon gained a reputation as one of the finest vedute painters of the age, producing numerous views of the city which were in high demand among educated travellers. He frequently produced multiple versions of compositions, including thirty-six views of the Piazzetta.

In the present lot we see how Nerly's realist tendencies give way to a more Romantic depiction of the glory of Venice. The artist has positioned himself so as to include several of the city's most famous landmarks. In the distance, we see the sunset behind the domes of Santa Maria della Salute, beside which stands the Punta della Dogana and the entrance to the Grand Canal; to the right, along the Riva degli Schiavoni, stands the Doge's palace, behind which we see the Campanile; on the Molo, at the entrance to the Piazzetta San Marco, stand the columns of Marco and Todaro, beyond which we see the Biblioteca Marciana.

Following his death in 1878, the remains of Nerly's artistic estate were gifted to the city of his birth, where it is now housed by the Angermuseum.