Elijah Visited by an Angel
Framed: 48 3/4 x 38 1/2 inches (123.83 x 97.79 cm)
- 116
With Carlo Foresti, Milan;
Purchased from Kunsthandel AG Lucerne and Galerie Fischer, through Böhler & Steinmeyer, Inc., New York, stock no. K_35-029, by Charles Bain Hoyt (1889-1949), Lucerne, Switzerland, January 13, 1933-probably until at least July 1943 [2];
Purchased from Hoyt by John Seymour Thacher (1904-1982), Washington D.C., by 1949-1982 [3];
His bequest to John K. Havemeyer (1911-1983), New York, as Vision of Saint Jerome, 1982-1983 [4];
His bequest to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1983.
NOTES:
[1] Provenance from Carlo Foresti through Charles Bain Hoyt is as recorded in the Kunsthandlung Julius Böhler stock cards, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich/Photothek, Julius Böhler Archive, Lucerne Index, L_7076, p. 1 and Lagerbuch, Record Group Böhler Kunsthandlung, (03 Unternehmen, F043 Julius Böhler), Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, Munich. Copies in the Nelson-Atkins curatorial files, courtesy Meike Hopp, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte and Richard Winkler, Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv.
[2] Kunsthandel AG Lucerne and Böhler & Steinmeyer, Inc., were branches of the Julius Böhler family’s group of companies. A list of artworks from Hoyt’s collection that were placed for safekeeping in the Creditanstalt, Kapellplatz, Lucerne on July 23, 1943, includes a painting by Magnasco, Angel Appearing to Jacob. This may be the Nelson-Atkins painting, as the subject and dimensions are very similar. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Art of Asia Department, Charles Bain Hoyt papers, courtesy Victoria Reed, Curator of Provenance, MFA Boston.
[3] Hoyt and Thacher were good friends. A handwritten note on the Böhler & Steinmeyer invoice for the painting reads, “sold to Jack.” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Art of Asia Department, Charles Bain Hoyt papers.
[4] Ownership of the painting had not yet been formally transferred from the Thacher Estate to Havemeyer at the time of Havemeyer’s death on April 2, 1983. The Nelson-Atkins did not take custody of the painting until both estates were resolved, in 1988.
Art News 31, no. 17 (January 21, 1933): 8, (repro.), as Tobias and an Angel in a Landscape.
Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in Landscape, vol.3 (New York: E. Wyhe, 1933), unpaginated, (repro.), as Hermit in a Landscape.
Maria Pospisil, Magnasco (Florence: Fratelli Alinari, 1944), 41, 42, 50, 80, (repro.).
Benno Geiger, I disegni del Magnasco (Padua: Le Tre Venezie, 1945), 43- 44.
Benno Geiger, Saggio d’un catalogo delle pitture di Alessandro Magnasco, 1667- 1749: Regesti e bibliografia (Venice: Ateneo, 1945), 54.
Georg Gerriet Syamken, “Die Bildinhalte des Alessandro Magnasco, 1667-1749” (PhD diss., Universitӓt Hamburg, 1965), 41.
Fausta Franchini Guelfi, Alessandro Magnasco (Genoa: Cassa di Risparmio, 1977), 127, (repro.).
Peter Dreyer, Kupferstichkabinett Berlin: Italienische Zeichnungen (Stuttgart: Belser, 1979), 248.
Eliot W. Rowlands, “Two European Paintings Enhance Museum Collection,” Calendar of Events (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) (January 1989): 2, (repro.).
Jacob Bean and William Griswold, 18th Century Italian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990), 144.
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), 183, (repro.).
Elliot W. Rowlands, The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings, 1300-1800 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 368-71, (repro).
