Victor-Jean NICOLLE
1754 - 1826
View of a oratory near the Great Circus in Rome
Watercolor, pen and brown ink, brown and gray wash, mounted.
175 × 119 mm
Inscription on the mount: Vue d’un Oratoire près le grand Cirque, à Rome
Provenance: A. Ernest Moreau, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, March 31–April 1st, 1924, lot 74.
The existence of a drawing titled Projet de frontispice pour une suite d’oratoires, as well as the uniform dimensions of many of the watercolors devoted to this theme, suggest that Nicolle may have considered publishing a collection. Although this project appears never to have come to fruition, it nonetheless attests to the coherence and ambition of this series, within which this drawing naturally finds its place.