About This Artwork

Canaletto
Italian, 1697-1768

Capriccio: A Street Crossed by Arches, n.d.

Pen and brush and brown ink, with brush and gray wash, over graphite, on ivory laid paper
294 x 208 mm
Inscribed verso, lower right, in pen and brown ink: "A present from Sig. Canale / commonly called Canaletto"
Samuel P. Avery Fund, 1943.514R

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Drawings: Old and New," 1946, p. 10, cat. 7, pl. I.

Boston, The Museum of Fine Arts, 1958.

New York, Wildenstein and Company, "Master Drawings from The Art Institute of Chicago," October 17-November 30, 1963, n.p., cat. 17, pl. VIII, as "Ruins of a Courtyard."

Art Gallery of Toronto, "Canaletto," October 17-November 15, 1964, p. 99, cat. 79 (ill.), cat. by W.G. Constable; traveled to The National Gallery of Canada, December 4, 1964-January 10, 1965; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, January 29-February 28, 1965.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Italian Drawings from The Art Institute of Chicago," 1979-1980, cat. 126, pl. 133, cat. by Harold Joachim and Suzanne Folds McCullagh; traveled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "18th Century Venetian Drawings," January 11-May 5, 1985.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "The Broad Spectrum: Color on Paper, Past and Present," September 12–October 31, 1999, hors. cat.

Publication History

Otto Benesch, Venetian Drawings of the Eighteenth Century in America (New York, 1947), p. 37, no. 50 (ill.).

Masterpieces in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1952), n.p.

W. G. Constable, Canaletto I (Oxford, 1962 and 1976), p. 566, no. 845, pl. 160.

Winslow Ames, Drawings of the Masters: Italian Drawings From the 15th to the 19th Century (New York, 1963), p. 29, fig. 5.

John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (London, 1970), pp. 149-150 (ill.).

Harold Joachim, Italian Drawings and Sketchbooks in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1979), no. 1A7.

Ownership History

Probably given by the artist to John MacGowan (died 1780), Edinburgh [his stamp, Lugt 1496, verso, upper left, in black]; sold January 26, 1804, lot 118. Count Antoine von Seilern (1901-1978), London [Constable 1962]. David M. Koetser Gallery, Zurich, by 1942 [Constable 1962]; sold to the Art Institute, 1943.