Classical Landscape with Temple of the Sybil
1710-65
Oil on canvas, 42 1/2 ins by 40 3/8 ins.
Collection Details
Duke of Bedford sale, Christie’s, 19 January 1951, lot 34: bt by Lord Faringdon.
Literature
G Scharf, Catalogue … Woburn Pictures, 1890, No. 385.
Exhibition Details
Art of Claude Lorraine, 1969, No.135.
Companion Picture
This one comes from a series of pictures by Lambert, to which the preceding work also belonged, depicting classical and ‘English’ landscapes: of the latter, one is in the Tate Gallery (cf Scharf, op cit, Nos.383–91).
Background
As is pointed out in the 1969 exhibition catalogue, the composition repeats in reverse, with slight variations, Claude’s Landscape with Argus guarding Io, at Holkham since the eighteenth century and probably known to Lambert from Wood’s engraving of 1746. The date is likely to be subsequent to 1751, for Lambert’s pictures were not mentioned by Horace Walpole in his account of a visit to Woburn in that year. The temple is reminiscent of that at Tivoli.
The Trustees of the Faringdon Collection 24.
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