Death of Actaeon
Artist
Agostino Carracci
Italian, 1557–1602
Date1584–1586
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions49 x 72 in. (124.5 x 182.9 cm)
Frame: 55 x 77 5/8 x 3 1/4 in. (139.7 x 197.2 x 8.3 cm)
Frame: 55 x 77 5/8 x 3 1/4 in. (139.7 x 197.2 x 8.3 cm)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LinePurchased with funds from the State of North Carolina
Object number52.9.150
On View
Not on view[1] See The Whitehall Evening-Post, November 12, 1785, 3 and The London Chronicle, November 15–17, 1785, 478. See also Whitley 1928, vol. 2, 32, which notes that Greenwood received the painting from a “gentleman in Westminster” and the Chelmsford Chronicle June 23, 1786, which states that “a London broker” bought the painting at a “Yorkshire baronet’s sale.”
[2] On West’s acquisition of the painting from Greenwood, see the articles listed in note 1. John Greenwood (1727–1792) was an American painter and later art dealer and auctioneer who moved to London in 1764. He opened up his own auction house in the 1770s and eventually became one of London’s principal dealers in old master paintings. For a more detailed biography, see Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds., “Greenwood, John (1727–1792)” in Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 23 (New York: Macmillan and Co.; London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1890), 85–86.
[3] Joseph Farington (1747–1821) references West’s ownership of the painting in a diary entry of October 2, 1803; The Farington Diary, vol. 2, 157: “West has been cleaning his collection of pictures.—He spoke warmly of the excellence of the Hunting by Titian. He remarked that Titian had studied the effects of those mountains which border on the Tyrol, & are composed of a blue slate. He said Titian adopted the principle of making dark distances & light foregrounds, which produces sublimity.”
[4] According to a letter from Paul Sandby, London, 1784 [sic] to James Gandon, in Mulvaney, 1846), 73–74, cf. Whitley 1928, vol. 2, 31–33, “The picture…remained in the possession of the West family until 1898, when it was sent to Christie’s as A Grand Stag Hunt, called the Death of Actaeon, by ‘Titian’.
[5] Joseph Farington referenced the unsuccessful sale in a diary entry of July 9, 1820; see The Farington Diary, 1922–1924, vol. 8, 255.
[6] See Whitley 1928, vol. 2, 33: “The purchaser was Lord Ronald Gower, who knew nothing of the picture’s remarkable early history, but admired it extremely…” Lord Gower also owned Luca Giordano’s The Finding of Moses now in the NCMA.
[7] In a letter from Hermann Voss to Koetser dated December 31, 1950, Voss equivocates between attribution to Annibale Carracci vs. Agostino Carracci. Koetser sold it to the NCMA as Annibale, but W. R. Valentiner changed the attribution to Agostino based on Creighton Gilbert’s unpublished opinion that it is early Agostino, when the artist was under the influence of Tintoretto. He pointed to the painting’s similarity to Agostino’s works recently rediscovered in the Vienna Museum.
Published ReferencesThe Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, September 27, 1785, 3.
The Leeds Intelligencer, September 27, 1785, 2.
Hereford Journal, September 29, 1785, 3.
“West’s Titian,” The Whitehall Evening Post, November, 12 1785, 3.
“West’s Titian,” The London Chronicle, November 15–17, 1785, 478.
“West’s Titian,” The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, November 16, 1785, 3.
“West’s Titian,” The London Chronicle, November 17–19, 1785, 487.
Chelmsford Chronicle, June 23, 1786, 2.
Entry for 2 October 1803 in The Farington Diary, vol. 2, ed. James Greig (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923), 157.
The Morning Chronicle, May 26, 1820, 4.
Entry for 9 July 1820 in The Farington Diary, vol. 8, ed. James Greig (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923–1928), 255.
Entry for 9 July 1820 in The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 16, January 1820–December 1821, ed. Kathryn Cave (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), 5535.
A Catalogue of the Truly Capital Collection of Italian, French, Flemish, and Dutch Pictures Which were selected from Various Distinguished Cabinets and under peculiar advantages, during the greater part of the last half century by Benjamin West, Esq. P.R.A.(London: Smeeton, 1820), lot 85 (as Titian, Death of Actaeon).
A Catalogue of the Remaining and Reserved Part of the Very Valuable Collection of
Italian, French, Flemish, and Dutch Pictures, of Benjamin West, Esq., Deceased, Late
President of the Royal Academy (London: Christies, 1824), lot 80 (as Titian, Death of Actaeon).
Thomas Mulvaney, ed., The life of James Gandon : with original notices of contemporary artists, and fragments of essays (Dublin: Hodges and Smith, 1846), 72–74.
W. Roberts, Memorials of Christie’s: A Record of Art Sales from 1766 to 1896 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1897), 95–96.
Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures, Drawings & Sketches by
Benjamin West, P.R.A., Which have remained in the possession of the Family ever since his
death (London: Christie, Manson, and Woods 1898), lot. 157, 18 (as Titian, A Grand Stag Hunt).
Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters, Including a Special Collection of paintings and Drawing by Claude, (London: William Clowes and Sons, Limited, 1902), cat. no. 147, 38.
Algernon Graves, A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813–1912, vol. 1(London: Graves, 1913), 423. (as school of Giorgione)
William T. Whitley, Artists and Their Friends in England, 1700–1799, vol. 2 (London and Boston: The Medici Society, 1928), 31–34.
Sophie von la Roche, Sophie in London, 1786, being the Diary of Sophie v. la Roche, trans. Clare Williams (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933), 153.
H[enry] P. R[ossiter], “Capt. William Baillie, 17th Dragoons and John Greenwood, of Boston,” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 41, no. 244 (June 1943), 28–32, at 32.
W. R. Valentiner, Catalogue of Paintings Including Three Sets of Tapestries (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1956), cat. no. 180, 78.
Betty Chamberlain, “How to Get and Spend a Million Dollars for Art,” Art News 55, no. 2 (April 1956), 41–42 at 42.
Harold Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, vol. 3, The Mythological & Historical Paintings (London: Phaidon, 1975), 136–138, 211, no. X-14 (as Agostino Carracci [?])
Robert Alberts, Benjamin West: A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 179–193 at 185.
Daniele Benati in The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (exhibition catalogue) (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1986), 255.
Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 231, cat. no. 123n1, 449, cat. no. 522n1.
Frank Herrmann, The English as Collectors: A Documentary Sourcebook (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, and London: John Murray, 1999), 347.
Catherine Loisel, Inventaire général des dessins italiens, vol. 7, Ludovico, Agostino, Annibale Carracci (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2004), 52–53.
Daniele Benati, 1609–2009. Annibale Carracci: due opere per un centenario (exhibition catalogue), (Ferrara: Edisai, 2009), 23–24, 29, 34n20.
Jonathan Yarker, “Copies and the Taste for Titian in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in The Reception of Titian in Britain: From Reynolds to Ruskin, Peter Humfrey, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 50, 51, fig. 11, 53n39–40.
Kaylin Haverstock Weber, “The Studio and Art Collection of the ‘American Raphael’: Benjamin West, P.R.A. (1738–1820)” (PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2013), 63, 101–103, fig. 31.
Exhibition HistoryLondon, Royal Academy of Arts, “Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters, Including a Special Collection of paintings and Drawing by Claude,” Winter Exhibition, 1902, cat. no. 147 (as school of Giorgione, lent by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower).
Object Rights Statement
The North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) makes images of its collection available online to support research and scholarship and to inform and educate the public. Certain works of art, as well as the photographs of those works of art, may be protected by copyright, trademark, or related interests not owned by the NCMA. The responsibility for ascertaining whether any such rights exist and for obtaining all other necessary permissions remains with the applicant. To request images and/or permissions from the NCMA, please complete our online request form.
