The Arts: Music

Artist Gaspare Traversi (Italian, ca. 1722 - 1770)

Date1755-1760

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 60 3/4 x 81 5/8 inches (154.31 x 207.33 cm)
Framed: 71 5/8 x 92 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches (181.93 x 234 x 8.89 cm)

Credit LineGift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Object numberF61-70

Signedlower left: Gaspar Traversi P.[inxit]

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionIn this interior scene of eight men and one woman, a young lady sits stiffly at center left before a harpsichod. Although her hands are positioned on the keyboard, she looks directly out at the viewer. Around her is an assortment of musicians and admirers. Seated in the extreme left corner and partially obscured by shadow is a musician playing what appears to be a viola da gamba. Behind him is a flute player. Behind the woman is an elderly man who turns the pages of the score with his left hand and holds a rolled sheet of music in his right. Another man leans over the harpsichord. Behind this man is a pair of men in conversation. In the right foreground is a youngish man wearing a scarlett coat with gold trim. Behind him is another man dressed in a gray wig and black robes. A gray and white cat is curled up on the ground near his feet.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Exhibition of Art Treasures for America from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, December 10, 1961-February 4, 1962, no. 95.

Painting in Italy in the Eighteenth Century: Rococo to Romanticism, The Art Institute of Chicago, September 19-November 1, 1970; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, November 24, 1970-January 10, 1971; The Toledo Museum of Art, February 7-March 21, 1971, no. 103.

The Golden Age of Naples: Art and Civilization Under the Bourbons, 1734-1805, The Detroit Institute of Arts, August 11-November 1, 1981; The Art Institute of Chicago, January 16-March 14, 1982, no. 51a.

Genre, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, April 5-May 15, 1983, no. 24.

A Gift to America: Masterpieces of European Painting from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, February 5-April 24, 1994; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, May 22-August 14, 1994; Seattle Art Museum, September 15-November 20, 1994; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, December 17, 1994-March 4, 1995, no. 52.

Gaspare Traversi: napoletani del ‘700 tra miseria e nobilità, Castel Sant'Elmo, Naples, Italy, December 13, 2003- March 14, 2004, no. 40a.

Luce sul Settecento: Gaspare Traversi e l’arte del suo tempo in Emilia, Galleria nazionale, Parma, Italy, April 4-July 4, 2004, no. 20a.

Gallery Label

These paintings by Traversi are arguably the artist's masterpieces, and their satirical realism is typical of the worldly mockery of the 18th century. Though their full meaning is not entirely clear, it is possible that the artist is commenting on the folly of flattery. The fulsome admiration of the bystanders for the pianist, who represents the art of music, and the draftswoman, as the art of drawing, seems too exaggerated to be sincere. It has been suggested that the figure to the right in Music may be a wealthy Englishman on the Grand Tour since red was a popular color for the costume of English tourists at the time.

Provenance

With R. Herzka, Vienna, by 1927;

R. Rosenfeld, by May 16, 1952;

Purchased from his anonymous sale, Important Ancient and Modern Pictures and Drawings, Christie’s, London, May 16, 1952, lot 26, by David M. Koetser, London, 1952-February 20, 1953 [1];

Purchased from Koetser by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York, February 20, 1953-1961;

Its gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1961.

NOTES:

[1] Rosenfeld is listed as the seller in an annotated auctioneer catalogue, Christie’s Archive, London.

Published References

Roberto Longhi, “Altri dipinti di Gaspare Traversi,” Vita Artistica 2, no. 10 (October 1927): 239-40.

Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, eds., Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler 33 (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1939), 361.

Catalogue of Pictures by Old Masters and Works of the Modern School (London: Christie, Manson and Woods, May 16, 1952), 7.

Riccardo Bacchelli and Roberto Longhi, eds., Teatro e immagini del settecento italiano (Turin: Edizioni Radio italiana, 1953), 90, 194, (repro.).

Wilhelm E. Suida et al., The Samuel H. Kress Collection: Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1959), 92, 93, (repro.).

Exhibition of Art Treasures for America from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1961), unpaginated, (repro.).

The Kansas City Times (October 15, 1961), unpaginated, (repro.).

Thomas B. Hess, “Culture as the Great American Dream,” Art News 60 (December 1961), 55.

Roberto Longhi, “Altri dipinti di Gaspare Traversi,” in Saggi e ricerche, 1925—1928, vol. 2, part 1 (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), 218-19, (repro.).

John Maxon and Joseph J. Rishel, eds., Painting in Italy in the Eighteenth Century: Rococo to Romanticism, exh. cat. (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1970), 242-43, (repro.).

John Canaday, “A Delightful Company in a Risky Project,” The New York Times (September 20, 1970): 19, (repro.).

Denys Miller Sutton, “Editorial: Where the Lemon Trees Blossom," Apollo 92 (1970): 172, (repro.).

Italo Faldi, review of Italy in the Eighteenth Century: Rococo to Romanticism by John Maxon and Joseph J. Rishel, eds., The Burlington Magazine 113 (1971): 571.

Mario Praz, Conversation Pieces; A Survey of the Informal Group Portrait in Europe and America (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), 71-74, (repro.).

Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 530, 541, (repro.) [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 62, 73, (repro.)].

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 205, 502, 589.

Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, 16-18^th Century (London: Phaidon, 1973), 117-18, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 141, 261, (repro.).

Civiltà del ’700 a Napoli, 1734—1799, vol. 1, exh. cat. (Naples: Museo di Capodimonte, 1979), 230-31, (repro.).

Ferdinando Bologna, Gaspare Traversi nell’illuminismo europeo (Naples: Gaetano Macchiaroli, 1980), 23n44, 26-27, 51, 64, 85, (repro.).

The Golden Age of Naples: Art and Civilization Under the Bourbons, 1734-1805, vol. 1, exh. cat. (Detroit: The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1981), 150-51.

Ellis K. Waterhouse, “The Literature of Art: Gaspare Traversi nell’illuminismo europeo by Ferdinando Bologna," The Burlington Magazine 123, no. 939 (June 1981): 364.

Robert Hughes, "Art: When Europe Began in Naples," Time (August 31, 1981).

F. Schulze, “Vintage Bourbon,” Art in America 69 (December 1981): 111, 112, (repro.).

Michael Stoughton, “The Golden Age of Naples: Art and Civilization under the Bourbons 1734-1805," Art Journal 13 (1982): 55.

Ross E. Taggart and Laurence Sickman, Genre, exh. cat (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 13.

Francesco Barocelli, “Di Gaspare Traversi: Due scene e un autoritratto,” Paragone 37, nos. 431-433 (1986): 106, 108, (repro.).

Nicola Spinosa, Pittura napoletana del settecento, vol. 2, Dal Rococò al Classicismo (Naples: Electa, 1987), 104, (repro.).

Robert Enggass, “Gaspara Traversi” (Kress Lecture, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 24, 1989), 11-12, 14-15.

Giuliano Briganti, ed., La pittura in Italia: Il Settecento, 2nd ed.,vol. 2 (Milan: Electa, 1990), 11, (repro.).

Jean K. Cadogan, ed., Wadsworth Atheneum Paintings II: Italy and Spain, Fourteenth Through Nineteenth Centuries (Hartford: The Atheneum, 1991), 251n8.

Jacques Foucart, ed., Musée du Louvre: Nouvelles acquisitions du département des peintures (1987—1990) (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1991), 174.

Michael Churchman and Scott Erbes, High Ideals and Aspirations: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1933-1993 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 87.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 130, 191, (repro.).

Chiyo Ishikawa, A Gift to America: Masterpieces of European Painting from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, exh. cat. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 50, 57, 264-67, 265, (repro.).

Francesco Barocelli, “The painter on the drawing room, Gaspare Traversi; the singular fluency of Traversi,” Franco Maria Ricci 14 (October 1994): 88-89, 90, 92, (repro.).

Letter from Minna Heimbürger-Ravalli to Eliot W. Rowlands, January 23, 1995, NAMA curatorial files.

Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300-1800, (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 21, 436-447.

Nicola Spinosa, Gaspare Traversi: napoletani del ‘700 tra miseria e nobilità (Naples: Electa, 2003), 142-143.

Nicola Spinosa and Lucia Fiornari Schianchi, Luce sul Settecento: Gaspare Traversi e l’arte del suo tempo in Emilia, exh. cat. (Naples: Electa, 2004), 101-102.

Ian Kennedy, “Gaspare Traversi’s Allegories of Music and Drawing,” Ricerche sul ‘600 napoletano saggi e documenti 2010-2011 (Naples: Arte'm, 2011): 72-75, (repro.).

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