VICTOR-JEAN NICOLLE (1754-1826)

A CAPRICCIO VIEW ON THE PALATINE HILL, ROME
Signed l.r. V.J. Nicolle
Pen & ink with watercolour
18 x 12 cm
 
PROVENANCE:
With Galerie Cailleux, Paris & Geneva;
With Galerie Artesepia, Paris
 
EXHIBITED:
Geneva, Galerie Cailleux, Cent dessins français, 1982, no. 68;
Geneva, Galerie Cailleux, Rome et l'Antique, 1983, no. 51;
Paris, Galerie Cailleux, 'Le Dessin en Couleur', 5th June - 13th July, 1984, cat. no. 43 (repr.)
 
 
 
 
Jean de Cayeux wrote of this drawing in his 1984 exhibition catalogue that the view is one drawn with considerable artistic license: the foreground on the right shows part of the temples of Concord and Vespasian, with what appears to be a path down to the Tiber; however, the rural background and romanticised soldiers suggest that 'Nicolle a préféré une vision élégiaque à une reproduction fidèle du Forum romain.' 
 
 
 
Victor-Jean Nicolle trained in Paris at the École Royale Gratuite de Dessin, the free drawing school founded in in Paris by Jean-Jacques Bachelier (1724-1806). Nicolle won the Grand Prix de Perspective in 1771, and after graduating he entered the architectural studio of Louis François Petit-Radel (1739-1806), who under the First Empire became inspector general of civil buildings and built the Roule slaughterhouse, among other accomplishments. 
 
Nicolle’s architectural specialism and training was put to great use during his lengthy sojourns in Rome, which appear to have been between 1787-1798 and 1806-1811. Often filled with anecdotal detail, Nicolle’s drawings from his Italian period are almost all rigorously accurate in their topography. They are, as such, important documentary evidence of the appearance of the Eternal City in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Like many artists in Rome before him, Nicolle was also inspired by Hubert Robert and Piranesi's capricci, and drew a number of his own imagined landscapes, subterranean scenes and classical interiors, demonstrating an originality that comparatively few of his contemporaries could manage. Nicolle would generally make his topographical drawings 'sur le motif' in pen and ink, which he would then finish with watercolour in his studio. Best known for his Roman views, he also produced drawings of other cities in Italy, including Bologna, Venice, Verona, Naples and Florence, while in France he made numerous studies of Paris and its environs. 
 
Although he never exhibited at the Salons, his reputation as a topographical artist was such that in 1810 he received a commission from Napoleon for fifty watercolour views of the principal monuments of Paris, intended as a wedding present for the Empress Marie-Louise, with this group now at Malmaison. Other significant groups of drawings by Nicolle are today in the Louvre, the Musée Carnavalet and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, as well as the museums of Rouen and Lille.