Core Record |
| Title |
Garden Scenes in Italian Villas: Villa Albani, Rome |
| Collection |
Lancaster City Museum |
| Artist |
Attributed to Montbard, George (French artist, 1841-1905) |
| Date Earliest |
possibly about 1870 |
| Date Latest |
possibly about 1892 |
| Description |
There are eighteen canvases in this series of paintings depicting named Italian gardens. Here a man in sixteenth century Italianate clothes walks along a path towards two women, who descend steps into the garden. The garden is arranged in formal flower-beds and the wall behind the man is topped with sculpted heads. A painted plaque in the lower left identifies the garden as that of the Villa Albani. The provenance provided by the North Euston Hotel was that these works once adorned the walls of the Savoy Hotel in London. However, Susan Scott, the Savoy's archivist, has no record of the Italian Villa murals. The attribution to George Montbard (by C. Loye) has not been confirmed but is specifically based on the similarity of these works to Montbard's illustrations of English country houses which appeared in the Illustrated London News in the late 1880s. |
| Current Accession Number |
LANMS 19.10 |
| Inscription |
front ll 'Villa Albani' |
| Subject |
buildings and gardens (Villa Albani, Rome); figure (one man and two women) |
| Measurements |
117 x 165 cm (estimate) |
| Material |
oil on canvas |
| Acquisition Details |
Given by North Euston Hotel to Lancashire County Museum Service about 1975. |
| Provenance |
Savoy Hotel, London, about 1880(?); thought to have been then transferred to the North Euston Hotel, Fleetwood about 1892. |
| Notes |
The canvases are various sizes, ranging in height between 115cm and 117cm and in width between 19cm and 165cm. All works are on canvas without stretchers, having been previously fixed to the wall with wooden batons tacked around the front edges of the individual works. After examining various images of etchings and paintings by Montbard at the Witt Library, London, it would seem that Montbard's style is much more progressive than these works, i.e. his figures are not romanticized Renaissance figures, but rather observed depictions of indigenous populations. Also, his draftsmanship is superior to that exhibited in these works. Michael Young as an expert on the works of Georges Montbard was contacted in 2004 by LCMS regarding this series of murals but he also refutes the attribution to Montbard on stylistic grounds. |
| Rights Owner |
Lancashire County Museum Service |
| Author |
Lisa Howard |
