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Lot description
Signed and dated lower right: F. Nerly fecit 1837 This depiction of an elegant Arabian stallion, led by an Oriental groom through a wide, open landscape, represents an important early work by the young Friedrich Nerly from his Milan period, shortly before he settled permanently in Venice. The genesis of the painting can be reconstructed with considerable precision thanks to an oil sketch as well as drawings of both the horse and the groom preserved in Nerly’s Milan sketchbook. The oil sketch, executed in the same year as the present painting, identifies the Arabian stallion in an inscription: “Tursi / Cavallo Arabo pel (sic) Re di Württemberg” (“Tursi / Arabian stallion of the King of Württemberg”). Wilhelm I, King of Württemberg, was an important patron of the young Friedrich Nerly: he commissioned paintings from him and appointed him his artistic agent in Italy. The king, who spent the summer months regularly in Italy, established in Stuttgart a stud farm of Arabian horses that would become highly successful – Tursi was one of these stallions. Composition, colour palette, and lighting are already anticipated in the Erfurt oil sketch: the rich, warm brown of the horse, the bright red of the groom’s turban, and the restrained blue of his clothing. At the centre stands – appropriately – the royal stallion, turning his head back in an elegant movement. The expansive landscape and southern atmosphere, evoked by the blue of the sky and the earthy tones of the ground, come fully into their own only in the finished painting. Nerly’s Milan sketchbook contains two sheets directly related to this work: one shows the stallion and groom at the centre, surrounded by studies of the horse’s head from various angles. Another sheet presents a variation of the poses of horse and handler and records the groom’s attire in a coloured brush study. The relationship between Nerly and the King of Württemberg would remain close. In 1852 Wilhelm I awarded the artist the Order of the Württemberg Crown, honouring one of the protagonists of Romantic painting. For the oil sketch and the two Milan sketchbook sheets (all in the Angermuseum, Erfurt), see: Claudia Denk et al. (eds.), Friedrich Nerly. Von Erfurt in die Welt. Die Gemälde und Ölstudien des Nerly-Bestandes im Angermuseum Erfurt, Berlin 2024, pp. 255–257, no. 18. The work is listed in Nerly’s 1846 catalogue and can be dated to the year 1838 (cf. Österreichische Blätter für Literatur und Kunst, 3rd year, no. 54 [Vienna, 5 May 1846], pp. 423 f., as well as no. 55 [Vienna, 7 May 1846], pp. 427–429). We would like to Dr Dorothee Hansen and Dr Maren Hüppe for important information regarding this work.