$15,000
Estimate: $12,000 - $18,000
The George D. Horst Collection of Fine Art
Auction: March 30, 2014 3:00:00 PM EDT
Signed 'RICO' lower left, oil on panel
14 5/8 x 10 5/8 in. (37.1 x 27cm)
Provenance: Estate of Watmough.
Stan V. Henkels auction, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania sale of December 11, 1917, lot 15.
Acquired from the above auction.
The George D. Horst Collection of Fine Art.
NOTE:
Rico y Ortega's career first began in Paris and was then firmly established in Venice, which he first visited in 1872, summered annually thereafter and ultimately settled, establishing a residence in the Dorsoduro neighborhood. He studied with Federico de Madrazo and Juan Antonio de Ribera, first exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1864 - where his work was regularly shown - and the Salon des Artistes Francais. Working in the traditional en plein air manner, sometimes from a moored gondola, Rico's paintings feature panoramic vistas which often employ the use of single vanishing point perspective in a vertical composition (as in the present painting), almost beckoning the viewer to enter the picture. While artists from the Baroque period onwards through the 19th and 20th centuries were drawn to the picturesque vistas of the Italian 'city on the water,' few painters active in the late 1800s so convincingly captured its light, churches, bridges and shimmering reflections of its lagoon and canals with as much skill and optical clarity as Rico.