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Provenance: Jules David (L.1437);
Eugène David (L 839);
David sale, Paris, 17 April 1826, in lot 66;
Second David sale, Paris, 11 March 1835, in lot 16
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Notes: David was in Rome from November 1775 to July 1780, staying at the Académie de France which at that time was housed in the Palazzo Mancini. While there, he drew extensively, largely copying classical sculptures, works which would later serve him well in his paintings. He also made some copies after old master paintings and drew some landscapes in and around Rome. These drawings were made in sketchbooks, but on his return to France he mounted them in albums, organized by subject, and he kept the albums in his studio until his death (though seems not to have taken them to Brussels when he went there in exile). After David's death, it appears that his sons, Jules and Eugène, broke up the original albums and composed them into 12 different albums, probably to make them more saleable. At this time, they put their paraphes on the drawings to confirm their authenticity. These albums were included as one lot in the estate sale of 17 April 1826, where they remained unsold and were returned to David's widow. She died soon after and the albums were reoffered in a sale on 11 March 1835. At this point, two went to the Louvre (numbers 7 and 9) and the rest were bought by members of the family. The present location of three albums (nos. 2, 5, and 12) is unknown; others are in museums: the Fogg (no. 1), the Getty (no. 11), the Pierpont Morgan Library (no. 8), and Stockholm (no. 3), while nos. 6 and 10 have been dismembered and sold, around 1978 and 1959 respectively. It seems likely that the present group of five drawings were originally in the same album, but it has not yet been possible to identify which (although it is unlikely to have been no. 10 which was quite thoroughly recorded by the seller, Germain Seligmann). Drawings and pages from album 6 were already missing before it was acquired and published by Galerie Prouté in 1978. For an extremely impressive and complete discussion of the composition and history of the albums, see Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat, Jacques-Louis David, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan 2002, vol. I, pp. 391-407.
This very lovely view of the Tiber is similar in style to other landscapes from the albums, although more intimate and less schematic in composition than others in the same medium. The very faint drawing on the verso is presumably after an antique sculpture.
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