Pierre Hubert SUBLEYRAS (1699-1749) View of Tivoli, around 1745 Canvas 35,6 x 46,4 cm Provenance: - London, John Lischawa collection. - Christie's sale, New York, January 29, 2014, n° 58. Bibliography : - P. Conisbee et al, In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Open-Air Painting, Washington, National Gallery of Arts - Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Art Museum - Saint Louis, The Saint Louis Art Museum, Yale University press, 1996-1997, p. 113, no. 2. - P. Conisbee, La Peinture de plein air avant Corot, Corot, un artiste et son temps, actes du colloque (Paris, musée du Louvre, et Rome, Villa Médicis, 1996), sous la direction de V. Pomarède, C. Stefani et G. de Wallens, Paris, 1998, p. 364, n° 12. Exhibition : In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Open-Air Painting, Washington, National Gallery of Arts - Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Art Museum - Saint Louis, The Saint Louis Art Museum, 1996-1997, n° 2. This small painted study was first published in 1996 by Philip Conisbee in the catalog of the exhibition In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Open-Air Painting. Although the practice of plein-air painting dates from the seventeenth century, Vernet was one of the first artists to theorize it, as attested by a letter on landscape painting attributed to him and by the testimonies of contemporaries (including Joshua Reynolds: "I would recommend you, above all things, to paint from Nature, instead of drawing; to carry your palette and pencils to the waterside. This was the practice of Vernet, whom I knew at Rome: he there showed me his studies in colors, which struck me very much for the truth which those works only have which are produced while the impression is warm from Nature ". Letter from J. Reynolds to Nicolas Pocock, 1780, quoted in Claude-Joseph Vernet. 1714-1789, London, Kenwood House, 1976, n. p.: "I would recommend you above all things to paint from nature, instead of drawing, to take your palette and brushes to the water's edge. This was the practice of Vernet whom I knew in Rome; he showed me his studies in color which struck me a lot by this truth that only works produced when the impression of nature is still warm"). Or again Charles-Nicolas Cochin: "It is one of the most essential things that the effect of light and color, and it is what a painter always needs the most [...]. It is by this care that M. Vernet made himself so familiar with nature [...]. When he did not have time to do a colored piece, he wrote on his drawing the tones of the colors". Originally from Avignon, a city belonging to the pope at the time, Vernet stayed in Italy, especially in Rome, for nearly twenty years from 1734 to 1752. The style of our "study from life" is close to that of the background of his paintings of the 1740s, in particular the pair The Ponte Rotto in Rome and The Bridge and the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Paris, Musée du Louvre), and the École des Beaux-Arts has a drawing of the Temple of Vesta, taken from a different angle. It was undoubtedly during his Italian years that Vernet built up a repertoire of sketches, painted on the spot, which he reused in his large compositions by staging them with figures. In 1789, the catalog of the sale after Vernet's death mentions "33 Paintings & studies, painted after nature, both in Rome and in Naples, of different sizes, on canvas, without frame". Then the trace of these sketches is lost, and their importance in the history of landscape painting is forgotten, none of them, signed or documented, having appeared. Our study by its freshness, its framing, its limpid luminosity announces the oils on paper of Wilson, Valenciennes, Granet, Corot and other "foreign travelers" until late in the 19th century. The site of Tivoli attracted artists from the Renaissance onwards, as it interested both the proponents of the naturalist landscape, above all Flemish and Dutch, and those of the ideal landscape, Roman and French. The Temple of the Sybil was used as a picturesque motif, illustrated by artists for several centuries.