FREY, JOHANN JAKOB1813 Basel - 1865 Frascati


Title: View of Palermo with the Monte Pellegrino.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 66 x 83.5cm.
Notation: Signed"J.J.Frey".
Frame: Framed.
Provenance:
Private ownership, Italien.

Johann Jakob Frey, a native of Basel, initially studied with his father, Samuel Frey, a landscape painter and lithographer, and with the history painter Hieronymus Hess. After a period in Paris, he moved to Munich in 1834, where he was impressed by Carl Rottmann's landscape painting. A patron, also from Basel, enabled the young painter to travel to Italy and move to Rome.

Here he quickly became one of the most respected foreign landscape painters. Johann Jakob Frey explored and painted the surroundings of Rome together with Joseph Anton Koch and Johann Christian Reinhard. He made drawings and sketches on location, which he later turned into large paintings in his studio.
At the end of the 1830s, Frey moved temporarily to Naples, from where he also travelled to Sicily and Tunisia in 1840. From this trip, the artist may have brought back the present motif with the view of the Bay of Palermo with Monte Pellegrino. The present painting is not dated, but it can be assumed that it was created after 1840.
In 1842, Johann Jakob Frey took part in the Prussian expedition to Egypt together with the archaeologist Richard Lepsius. His work had already been highly recognised and appreciated, but after his return to Rome he became a celebrated star, especially among foreign tourists. His patrons included Ludwig I of Bavaria, Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia and English aristocrats. On the 'Grand Tour', his studio was a regular destination for art-loving tourists to Rome from all over the world.
Johann Jakob Frey chose an unusual perspective for the present painting. The painter's position is slightly elevated at the bend of a hairpin bend. The view follows a countryman walking downhill. A little further ahead, there is a confusing hustle and bustle; where a country woman on horseback, followed by a large herd of goats, and a group of two people and a donkey walking uphill meet. This lively situation slows down the view before it captures the expanse of the picturesque bay of Palermo with Monte Pellegrino. And then the eye wanders in the other direction, uphill. Here the path continues parallel to the edge of the picture into the depths. To the right and left of the path are a cross on a pillar and a wayside shrine. There are also people here.
Frey's paintings are characterised by large trees that rise up against the southern blue sky, which shines through the finely painted foliage. The slender shape of such trees is just as much a characteristic of Johann Jakob Frey's paintings as the charming transition from the strongly sculptural details in the foreground to the slightly hazy atmosphere of the coast in the background. Frey's paintings, with their clarity and delicacy, are as fascinating today as they were almost 200 years ago.