Lot 1042 | Jakob Philipp Hackert | Goat in front of Cliffs

HACKERT, JAKOB PHILIPP
1737 Prenzlau - 1807 Florence

Title: Goat in front of Cliffs.
Date: 1801.
Technique: Oil on wood.
Measurement: 36 x 27,5cm.
Notation: Signed and dated lower left: "Filippo / Hackert / 1801".
Frame: Framed.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

Claudia Nordhoff wrote to us about this work in March 2024:

"Jakob Philipp Hackert had also devoted himself to small-format animal portraiture at all times, but it was only after his escape from French-occupied Naples in 1799 and his final settlement in Florence in 1800 that he began to occupy himself with it in greater detail. The decisive factor was his friendship with the Englishwoman Jane Woodburn, wife of Colonel David Woodburn (1745-1804). The couple had acquired a country estate in the small town of Settignano near Florence and allowed Hackert to use the property during her absence. On 28 September 1802, the painter wrote to his friend Count Bogislaus Dönhoff zu Dönhoffstädt (1754-1809) in Berlin on 28 September 1802: "Nahe hier bey der Stadt [Florenz] 4 Milien bey Settimiano hat eine Englische Freundin Mdme Woodburn zwey poteri [gemeint ist ein Landhaus mit zwei Wirtschaftsgebäuden], die Sie mir 17 Monath während ihrer Abwesenheit in England gelaßen hat, um ihr Landhauß zu genißen, da Mahle ich Ziegen, und Esel, Ochsen nach der Natur aber so daß es fertige Bilder werden. Außerdem noch felsen, und vorgründe" ["Not far from the city [Florence] 4 miles from Settimiano, an English friend, Madame Woodburn, has a country house with two farm buildings, which she left me 17 months during her absence in England to enjoy her country house, where I paint goats, donkeys and oxen according to nature, but so that they become finished pictures. Also rocks and foregrounds."] (quoted by Claudia Nordhoff, Jakob Philipp Hackert, Briefe (1761-1806). Göttingen 2012, p. 187). From 1804, Hackert executed his animal portraits on his own estate in Careggi, which he acquired at this time. The small-format pictures share goats, sheep, donkeys and cows in front of a small section of landscape; they are always executed lovingly and with great care. The present portrait of a goat was painted in the first year of Hackert's involvement with animals on Mrs Woodburn's estate and (together with two other goat pictures from 1801) marks the beginning of the series. The importance that the animal pictures had for Hackert can also be seen from the fact that he sent five of them to the Academy exhibition in Berlin in 1806 (see Nordhoff 2012, p. 614)."

We are grateful to Claudia Nordhoff, Rome, who confirmed the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph, for her help in cataloguing it.