The Hatvany Collection: Highly important old master drawings

London, Christie, Manson & Woods Ltd., 1980.
8vo, 99, [5] pp., ill.

An auction catalogue from the Christie's sales of the collection of Baron Paul Hatvany (1899–1977), a descendant of one of Hungary's wealthiest Jewish families, who settled in England at the outbreak of the Second World War. Hatvany assembled a distinguished collection of Old Master drawings, paintings and bronzes; on his death several of his most important pictures were presented to the British nation as a token of his affection for his adopted country. The collection was dispersed in two sales: drawings on 24 June 1980 and bronzes and works of art on 25 June 1980.

This catalogue covers the drawings sale: 81 lots, including works by Mantegna, Bruegel, Rubens, Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Parmigianino, Tiepolo, Watteau, Fragonard and Ingres, each described in detail.

Like all auction catalogues, it is an essential source for provenance research: many of these sheets are now in major museum collections, and the 1980 sale is an important link in their ownership history. Among them: the J. Paul Getty Museum (lot 2, a cutting from a gradual; lot 8, Three Studies of Trees by Fra Bartolommeo; lot 10, Portrait of a Young Woman, attributed to Andrea Previtali); the Metropolitan Museum of Art (lot 75, Uriah before King David by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout); the Art Gallery of South Australia (lot 17, Head of Giuliano de' Medici by Jacopo Tintoretto; lot 35, Cupid Extracting a Thorn from Venus' Foot by Carlo Maratti); the National Gallery of Art, Washington (lot 74, Joseph Recounting His Dreams by Rembrandt); and the Morgan Library & Museum (lot 3, Three Standing Saints by Andrea Mantegna). Other drawings later reappeared at Christie's, among them lot 37, Studies of Heads of Orientals by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (28 January 1999); lot 9, Study of a Tree by Fra Bartolommeo (7 July 2010); and lot 38, A Venetian Capriccio by Francesco Guardi (26 January 2012).

Binding & condition

Original boards. Illustrated endpapers. Near very good: very light rubbing, a light scratch to the fore-edge.