1308 - Constantin Hansen (1804 Rome – 1880 Copenhagen)

Constantin Hansen (1804 Rome – 1880 Copenhagen) Boy Playing a Ball Game Against a neutral, light-colored background, a boy crouching on the ground holds a small bat and a white ball. A finely painted, subtly executed figure study for the well-known work “Scene på Molo’en ved Napoli” (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Inv. No. KMS393), in which the boy on the far right appears to be engrossed in a traditional, boules-like ball game with a friend, while a crowd has gathered in the port of Naples—with the lighthouse and the smoking Vesuvius in the background —has gathered to listen intently to the words of a street storyteller reciting from Ludovico Ariosto’s famous epic “Orlando Furioso.” Hansen began work on this large-format painting in Naples in 1838 and completed it the following year in Rome. As this preliminary study suggests, however, he had already conducted extensive studies of the setting and figures prior to that. As early as the late summer of 1835, Constantin Hansen—who had trained in Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg’s studio in Copenhagen—traveled via Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Nuremberg, Munich, and Salzburg to Italy, where he undertook extensive study trips and remained for the next eight years, until he returned to his homeland in 1843 after a stopover in Munich. Oil with pencil on paper, mounted on canvas; Signed and dated 1837 on the reverse. On the reverse, a fragment of an old paper label with a description; 18.5 cm x 26.5 cm. Framed. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. Signed and dated 1837.